In March 2001, we took a year out to do some travelling.

The first three months were spent touring America on motorcycles. You can read more about our 15,000-mile US trip by following the link from this blog. The diary is incomplete, but includes our participation in the 2001 Route 66 Mother Road Rally. We made a lot of friends that summer,and motorcycles have since become a bit of a feature of our lives - so has Route 66.

The following August we bought a house in SW France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was an impulse buy. We were actually looking for a place to rent until the tenants moved out of our house in London. Frankly, we never imagined owning a French home. Unlike many Brits who buy holiday homes in France, the rural life never appealed. Londoners to the core, we like being able to walk round the corner to the supermarket or bar. Not for us, the holidays spent astride a ride-on lawnmower smuggly uttering “You can’t buy land like this in SE England”, as we tend our 80 hectare estate!

But, having struck out on an economically viable summer rental, this plain 3-storey townhouse ticked all the boxes. It is situated in acharming, slightly run-down, French market town in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Just behind the Marie, we are a short stroll from the bakery, confectioners, hardwear store, supermarket, and several bars and restaurants. Better still, the house had been partially converted into two flats. With a small amount of work, we could keep one as a holiday home, and let the other to pay the mortgage. And it was cheap. Sold!

With one flourish of our ballpoint ’stylo’, we suddenly had a holiday home within 20 minutes of our friends Billy and MrsF (you can read more about them too by following the link on our home page), and the idea of moving permanently to France began to take seed.

5 years later, here we are, now permanently installed with our two kittens, Tigger and Foggy, in France. In an eerie manifestation of déjà-vu, we have embarked on another conversion project, to knock our two flats back into a single 3 or 4 bedroom house. Let’s hope it doesn’t take 6 years this time …