So what's the dream?

For reasons I won't go in to here we both found ourselves without jobs in January, so we decided to go to Chamonix for the winter and then move in to the farm in May. The theory being that our first impressions of living there would be good rather than how cold it was. Plus we just wanted to go skiing and see various friends who were in Chamonix for the winter too... You can see what we got up to in Chamonix here.

The plan now is to move in in May and to get a number of animals and become as self sufficent as we can. The wedding we are going to in June will hopefully only cause a minor hiccup in progress (surely pigs, chickens etc can feed themselves for a few days??)

• Initial plans for animals include pigs (on order), chickens, rabbits, a cat, a dog and horses. Other possibilities are bees, ducks, sheep, goats and cows...
• The list of fruit and veg is too long to include here but we plan on growing for ourselves as well as for the animal and barley and hops for brewing beer.
• Water currently comes from a spring and we would like to be able to keep it like that.
• Heating and hot water we are thinking of solar tubes and a wood gasification boiler as there is a lot of sun and wood on the property.
• We will consider solar PV as well although it is perhaps too expensive to install.
• We would like to develop cheesemaking, brewing, baking and conserving skills
• Along with all this we have hobbies we would like to start or develop such as knitting, spinning, playing the piano (Doug), horse riding, skiing, hill walking, wood turning or carving (we have so much wood)
• We hope to be able to sell excess fruit, veg and animals but need to understand the practicalities of this in red tape entangled France where the tax system appears to be comprehensible by noone, not even the tax man.
  
• We would also like to convert the sheep barn (by which I mean two walls of stones in danger of collapsing at any moment) in to a small rental cottage and cater for cyclests and perhaps horse riders in the future.
• Any other ideas for saving/earning money greatly appreciated

Watch this space to see what actually happens...

Doug in his natural habitat

The backstory - the house is ours!

We returned 2 weeks after putting the offer in to exchange contracts (which is done in France before the searches etc and is binding on both sides with dependancy on the searches being ok and in the case of a mortgage being required on that being granted)

We then waited for several months will the searches were done and while the S.A.F.E.R decided whether they were going to intervene or not (not in the end)

Then in December, on the weekend before Christmas, we went to complete the sale. This involved us and the seller going to the Notaire's (the solicitor's) office with the agent and signing a thousand documents. Before doing this we went to the house to check that everything was still in line with when we made the offer. We were a bit suprised to find that the seller hadn't finished moving out yet. Initially he was hoping to spend that night there but on realising we were going to stay there he decided to go and stay with his parents.

That night there was a massive storm with crazy wind and we thought our new purchase was going to collapse or at best have the new roof blown clean off before we had even owned it for 24 hours. Luckly both it and us survived intact although our nerves were a bit over wrought by morning.

Do you think it is going to fall down

Don't worry - previous picture is the barn. House doesn't have giant holes in the wall (unless they happened recently)

We were over for 4 days and we spent a lot of time with the seller (Raymond) as he showed us things like how to work the pump which brings water to the house from the spring and how to cut down a tree - I don't think we are nearly ready to qualify for his level of tree cutting yet which involved kind of dicing the tree in mid air with the chain saw when part of it got stuck on some branches above... we stood well back.

It was a very useful few days but very exhausting and it felt rather like we were visiting Raymond on his farm rather than in our own future home.

Raymond showing us around (and worrying we are incapable)

 There are more pictures here

The backstory - so... the Pyrénées then?

After very extensive internet research we decided that somewhere near the La Mongie/Grand Toumalet ski area would suit us, this is the biggest ski area in the French Pyrénées. Probably somewhere close to Bagnère de Bigorre which is close to, but on the edge of the Pyrénées giving enough flat land for properties to have decent amounts of land.

Aside
In France it is hard to find places with more than an acre or so of land as an agency called the S.A.F.E.R monitors and has veto on all sales of property with more land than this attached (the size of land they monitor varies slightly department to department). The purpose of this is to protect farm land and stop it getting broken up in to smaller plots, to achieve this they can intervene once an offer has been accepted and buy the property themselves for resale to a local farmer. This process doesn't simplify land purchase in France any...

On the August bank holiday in 2011 we went to Bagnère de Bigorre, having looked at the particulars of about 40 places and narrowed it down to 2 we wanted to see (the rest had various things wrong including no access in winter, too far from skiing, not enough land, too expensive, too ruined, no electricity, north facing etc etc). One of these we were extremely excited about as it looked amazing in the photos.
In the event one was withdrawn from sale before we saw it because the members of the family who had just inherited it couldn't decide whether they were going to sell it or not (luckly the less favoured one)

We saw this place and as my beloved mother would say - 'it spoke to us' - in her case this normally means she is about to spend a lot of money on something that is going to cost even more money to bring up to spec, but will almost always give her a great deal of fun and pleasure. I suspect it is going to be the same with us (the money bit and hopefully the fun bit...). We loved it so much we had trouble playing cool and leaving it until the next day before making an offer. Even in our excited state we realised we had better see a bit of the area first and inspect where we could ride the horses, how long it took to get to the ski area etc. The drive to skiing is slightly longer than we would like, but we thought that a fair compromise as useable land is obviously harder to find deeper in to the mountains.

So to summarise we bought the first house we saw, in an area we had never been before that weekend, with no clear idea how we were going to earn money living there. What could possibly go wrong?

The backstory - more changes?

In 2011 we discovered that the Canadian authorities were issuing letters to people in our queue telling them that it was going to be 2 years minimum (given other communications you could read this as NEVER as it meant 2 years until they considered what to do about this bit of their backlog again).
We were both struggling a bit to enjoy (or bear) working in the city so we decided we were going to have to change the dream to somewhere else.
We gave the matter some thought and considered Austria, Italy, Spain and France. For all language was going to be an issue with French perhaps being a little easier as we had both done it at school (yes I know we should have learnt having had a place in Chamonix for 8 years... but we hadn't)

We looked some places in the Alps - mainly we didn't get further than the particulars as they just didn't have enough land for self sufficiency and horses (about 5 acres or 2.5 hectares) for example a place in Ivoray nearish to Samoens ski area. We really like the house and the location but it only had one hectare on a steep slope and the biggest issue was it was about twice what we could 'afford' (in quotes as that is all a bit relative and many people with sense might argue we couldn't afford to buy anywhere in France and leave IT)

We then started considering the Pyrénées as it is much cheaper than the Alps and still has skiing and the mountain environment we wanted. The skiing there is less good than the Alps but there had to be some compromise given that it didn't look like we were going to win the lottery any time soon...

The backstory - so what changed?

While waiting and waiting and waiting for many many years (during which the Canadian authorities changed the rules twice, each time putting us further back in the queue behind others who had applied after us) we fantasized about our new life and what we could do - own a horse, have a garden, have chickens in the garden, grow our own veg.
We realised over time that working in IT had no part in these dreams and was rather something of a blight so we started thinking about other things we could do instead. We still haven't come up with a VIABLE alternative... but read on we are going with an UNVIABLE (is that a word?) one.

So the dream started to change... we looked for smaller resorts where it would be cheaper to buy something and perhaps we could afford a bit more land and get work as ski instructors or rent part of the house as holiday accomodation.

The residency kept dragging on, but this was now a good thing because we were going to need more money now to get this new dream started.

The dream was now to move to a place called Rossland which is near Fernie but smaller (close to the US border and in the Rockies) and give up IT for ski instruction and holiday letting.

The backstory - where?

We had certain requirements, these have changed over time, but initially they were

• Skiing, sailing and horse riding near by
• Good supply of IT jobs
• Somewhere much smaller than London but still big enough to have the hustle and bustle of town life but small enough that getting out would be easy

We talked about a number of places
Sydney - The skiing wasn't close enough (and weren't the sharks a bit of a setback on the sailing front) plus being too far from home
Geneva - Too Swiss plus they speak a funny language there
New Zealand - Too far from home and too small feeling
Vancouver - Loved it!

In 2003 we spent the ski season from January to May in Whistler and loved it. We spent a bit of time in Vancouver on the way home and liked the feel of it there too.
We had a winner!

Close to the sea for sailing

Close to the mountains for skiing and horse riding

Good skiing in Whistler...

... even though our skiing was too rubbish to appreciate a lot of it...

So we looked in to Canadian residency, and it seemed that it should be very doable as it was based on a points system taking in to account things like your education, age and profession and we easily qualified.
We submitted the application and it then looked like we would have something like 2.5 years to wait as they only accept a certain number of people each year. This was a little disappointing but kind of a good thing as it would give us a little longer on a London income to save up to give us a good start while we looked for jobs etc.

The back story - why?

I have read lots of blogs recently and many seem to start in the middle of the story leaving me wondering why the people decided to do what they are doing.
This blog is aimed at family mainly and friends who want to see what we are up to... but perhaps it is interesting to understand why we have made this crazy leap into the unknown...

On holiday, sailing in Minorca, in 2007 we had a few drinks one evening (many of our stories start like this eg Las Vegas) and got to chatting about how rubbish work was and that we weren't enjoying living in London as much as we used to when we were young. We came to the conclusion that work was rubbish because work is rubbish and that we weren't enjoying London as much because we spent so much time travelling outside London to do things like sailing, skiing and horse riding. In addition the noise at night and having neighbors so close was starting to bother us in our old age.

We decided there and then that we would GO!!
But where??