Still can't quite believe it.

It's still not really sunk in that we'll be living in France on our own Vineyard soon. I just really really want to get a buyer for our place here though. It's starting to freak me out a little how little interest we seem to be having, especially as we sold it on the first day it was on the market last time.

We already have visitors for France lined up which is so exciting, my aunt and uncle and then Dad and Linda... just hope I'm out there by then and I'm not still here waiting on the house to be sold...

Fingers crossed.

Is it wrong that I already have names for the mythical chickens...?

pruning...

before on the left and after...
inside the house that's going to be the gite.
me pruning in some extraordinary attire.
vines...

Taille the vines

As we are learning there are 3 million things we have to do and by certain times. Which meant that last weekend we went out to France with P's sister and our friend James.

Our lovely estate agent Helen met us at the vineyard and Dominique the current owner showed us how to prune or Taille the vines. He showed us several times and supervised our selections of which latte to leave, which to cut for next year and which to remove completely.

He then left us to it until around 6pm when he came out and marched down the row declaring "bon" "bon" "trop long" and snapped the tops of several and then invited us in for aperitifs.

Over the course of Fri pm to Mon lunchtime we pruned 9000 vines with another 9000 or so still to go. Dominique and Annie showed us such hospitality, clearing out the little house that is going to be the gite and everyday putting fresh coffee on and several bottles of wine on the table and indeed coming out on Sun am to help us speed up.

I hurt in places I didn't know it was possible to hurt! My pecs for example creaked for days and Tues application of alcohol gel at work was not a pleasant experience on my open cuts and scrapes.

It was lovely though, although hard work, to be among the vines, hear the birds and watch the deer ambling about.

So now we just need to sell our house here.... anyone want a lovely house in Hampshire?

It's taken a while and I'm greyer than before!

Its been a long stressful slog to get to the point where it's even safe to risk doing this blog in case of tempting fate.

Back in January P and I wen to France to look at a vineyard that P had found on the internet. We've been looking for somewhere in France for a considerable amount of time, about 4 years or so and we've looked at about 30 or so a couple of which we almost brought.

The Vineyard had been on the market for 6 months and had come down in price and typically now had lots of interest in it.

We went, we saw, we liked....

We put in an offer and it was accepted. I have felt sick and stressed pretty much continuously since.

The amount of paperwork involved in a french mortgage application is astonishing!! I had a serious falling out with the horrible woman at my bank and am now a big fan of filing things in a sensible and organised fashion.

To cut a long and VERY boring story short our mortgage has been approved, the currency exchange rate fixed and short of SAFER putting a spanner in the works it's ours!

Yikes.