One of the questions we are most frequently asked is ‘what made you decide to move to France’ and in all honesty, thats actually quite hard to answer. We do both remember talking about how nice it would be to have a holiday ‘home from home’ in France, but somehow that turned into buying a house in Normandy, giving up our jobs, packing our bags and setting out for our new life in an old red post office van ! That was in 2002.
Any ideas of an easier, more relaxed life soon went flying out of the window when reality dawned. We had bought an old farmhouse with dependant buildings with the idea of converting them all into Gites - but an awful lot of hard work lay before us if we were to succeed. We knew nobody in France, and between us could just about manage to say ‘hello’ in French.
Set in a small hamlet of houses called La Haute Hague, the farmhouse and buildings are several hundred years old and up until 1995 were still used as a working farm. The property was then bought by an English couple, who converted the original house into a holiday cottage.
The rest of the property however, was still in its original ‘barn’ state and so, whilst Lisa went back to work in the UK, Paul started work on the original house and waited for the necessary conversion permissions to come through for the barns. Unfortunately for him, that winter was really cold and with no heating in the house, he often took drives in the car just to warm up !
Still, eventually, the weather warmed up, the permissions were granted and Lisa finally moved in to begin a life as a builders mate ! Around this time we took our first booking – for August 2004 and so now the clock was ticking !
Looking back it seems unbelievable that we ever managed a half of what we achieved, from the digging out of earth floors, damp proofing and laying new concrete floors, to the building of complete new floors, pointing walls, putting in new windows, putting in new Fosse drainage systems, electrics, plumbing etc. All of these had to be tackled in a foreign language, using strange materials and complying to different regulations to those that we were used to.
Finally, August 2004 arrived and thankfully we were ready (just) for our First Guests in the Longère. The Cidrerie just needed a few finishing touches and by Summer 2005 the Stables was finished also. Just in time for Lisa to put away her steel capped builders boots and start work for a bank in Caen. This was well timed for her, as I think she had seen enough cement and plaster to last a lifetime.
Over the following years, we have continued to grow the business and increase our bookings year on year. To our delight many of our guests return in following years and we remain in contact with many guests who have become good friends.
Our memories of these years are a mixture of back breakingly hard work, stress, frustration, achievement, joy, pride and delight. And, we can finally confirm - it is nice to have your own home from home in France
