2. the station

We had a date for the big move but nowhere to move to. Where should we go? How should we do it? Should we follow the general advice and rent first in whatever area took our fancy before committing ourselves to a property? It was April 2007.

Our friend Andrew and his father, generously allowed us to use their house in the Lot that summer. Using it as a base we decided to explore the Albigeois, an area east of Toulouse.
It had everything we needed: close to Spain, to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, half an hour away to Toulouse airport, with its own micro-climate and a picture-perfect village nearby perched high up on a rock amidst the clouds, it was just right.

Back in London Fox carried on scouring the net for houses. He would keep an eye on properties, which had its price reduced, tracking those we liked on different websites, while I checked crime rates, local taxes, areas affected by termites and floodplains. The wall of our lounge looked like one of the HQ of a military operation. We had a map of the Midi-Pyrenees pinned to the wall with coloured pins marking the houses that caught our interest.

By the time we were ready to go back to France the following summer to start our viewings we had developed an unhealthy obsession with an unlikely house: an old train station built in the second half of the 19th century (see above). It was big, needed a lot of work and was nowhere near the Albigeois, or even the Midi-Pyrenees.

But luckily it was a stone throw away from our friends Dave and Cathy, in the Poitou-Charentes. While I tracked down the notaire dealing with the sale in an attempt to avoid paying the agency fees, Cathy and Dave played detectives and scoured the area in search of the station. Within days we had the address and phone number of the owners and all their neighbours, had made an appointment through the notaire in two weeks time and had additional pictures our friends took from the window of their car.

The thing was, we didn't think we could wait that long to view it and the notaire was on holiday til then. So I called the owners and made an appointment directly with them for the end of the week. And when the notaire called to postponed the viewing for a couple of days we thought we'd better come clean and save on introductory fee. I told her I needed to talk to Fox and that I would call her back. I waited for a bit before doing so: not to worry I then said, we arranged a viewing directly with the owners, we'll keep you posted if we decide to go ahead. Her shock should have been enough of a warning but we were too excited to notice.