Moving On.

In February 2005 we bought a house in the Aude region of France .We were beginning to find lambing something of a strain and felt it was time to move on. We lambed in April 2005 and decided that it would be the last. In May 2006 we put our Farm up for sale. We had plenty of viewings last year but no offers, we still had all our ewes so had enough to keep us busy, we just felt unsettled by the uncertainty.

In January viewings started again, we were surprised that people were already looking for property. On the 21st February a couple came to view and they were bowled over by the place, they made an offer that evening[just as we had done 17 years ago]. By Friday we had a deal and the Compromis de Vente was signed on the 1st of March. If all goes according to plan we will sign the Acte de Vente in mid June and we will be turning another page in our book.

As I said in my profile I am giving up my life as a Sheep farmer, it will be quite a wrench to leave here but we are very happy with the house we are moving to and are looking forward to new experiences. We have quite a lot of work to do on the house including building work so we shall be pretty busy for some months, but I am determined to keep my blog going and keep on writing.

Several of our friends have asked for updates on the progress of our move so I thought it would be simple to use my blog, so I intend to make a Sunday post with details of the whole moving event. I think it may get fraught at times so being able to let off steam will be good. The posts during the week will continue to be about sheep and life here in general.

At the moment we are waiting for the Purchasors loan to be approved, once that is through we can start packing up as the deal should go ahead. If the buyers pull out after the loan is agreed then they forfeit their deposit. We shall have about two months to get ourselves organized, I feel as if we could do with a lot longer!!!!!!!!!!!!

As with all aspects of life in France bureaucracy takes centre stage , it is one of the very few aspects of the country which drives us mad at times. We are waiting for planning permission for the work we want to do to the house we are moving to and as usual it is taking longer than anticipated. The plans were submitted in January and we have only just had a request for more details, we are not sure what they want to know but have sent the letter to our Architect asking him to deal with it as quickly as possible. Our original plans were submitted early last year but we then found out that we had to have an Architect so this has already been dragging on for quite some time. We had hoped that the building work would have been completed before we moved in. SOME HOPE!!!!!!!!

Not to worry it can't be any worse than lambing!! Actually it probably will be as we had some controll over lambing whereas I feel this moving business could easily get out of controll.

WATCH THIS SPACE.