Why`s and wherefores

I promised a few days ago to continue the tale of why a Welsh girl and a Devonshire lad ended up in west France. You may recall that a French student, Cecile, first aroused our liking for France.  We spent several touring holidays here in hired campers, often crossing from Plymouth to Roscoff in Finisterre, my favorite port of entry.  Passing the time in the fishing port one day waiting for the ferry we looked in the shop window of an immobilier and realised that houses were on sale at ridiculously low prices compared to Britain where house prices had soared.  At first our plan was to sell the Plymouth house,  buy in Brittany and live in delicious idleness on the interest from the profit.

This plan wasn`t as daft as it now seems, as interest rates were as high as 15 per cent then (late eighties)  Luckily better sense prevailed and the plan was changed to using money from a legacy to buy south of the Loire where weather was likely to be warmer.
  We signed up with an English estate agent who was in partnership with a French immobilier and offered viewing trips to a mouthwatering selection of houses. Surprise, surprise all the Tours properties were sold (we suspect years ago) and the only one on offer was highly unsuitable.  Going on to our second Agent based at La Motte St Heray we were showed three and fell in love with the third, pictured here at La Mort Limouzin, between La Rochelle and Poitiers, Well sort of. I`ll tell you more about its somewhat lugubrious name another time. We were quite happy to pay the asking price of £10,000 for the house, including agents fees and were flabbergasted when told the price included a large barn, an open barn (or hangar), a range of stone outbuildings, an orchard, a paddock and a further stone building on the other side of the road!
  This was perhaps the only time in our lives that we were in at the right time as the price seems ludicrous today. I`ll tell you of our adventures with the French house buying procedures in a later issue, just adding here that as we didn`t have the slightest intention of buying on this trip we didn`t have the 10 percent deposit required.  No problem said our Immobilier, later to become a  firm friend,  Just let me have an English cheque with the £ changed to French francs (remember them? ) for 10,000 ff . So we did.
  On getting back to Plymouth I rushed to the Cooperative Bank, a rather staid organisation and confessed what I`d done. The teller looked at me, gave the expected sharp intake of breath and said We`ll have to charge you £25 for the conversion...  We were on our way!