Our Chambres d’Hôtes has been open for 3 weeks and we’ve had 3 ‘waves’ of paying guests staying with us. I hope this time is indicative of the season ahead because we’ve met some lovely people and had some great feedback, so I am feeling very positive. The heat wave that started a couple of weeks ago has seen temperatures up in the 30s every day which has taken some getting used to, but our big stone house which was so expensive to heat in the winter is now keeping us lovely and cool + the insulation I bought from Tridome to put in the loft space is already paying dividends! The pool is great now too!!
Picking up the timeline from my last post, I left my job in February 2021 with very mixed emotions. I loved working at SET Saxmundham school, I felt emotionally attached to the school, staff, pupils and community and I was about to take another big step into the unknown.
With 5 months to go until we moved, I decided to split my time between planning/preparing for the move, learning French and revisiting some of my favourite places in England.
The UK COVID vaccination campaign was accelerating nicely and although we would need ‘an essential need to travel’ to enter France, moving house was included so we were increasingly confident that we’d be able to get over.
Despite BREXIT, we could still import all our belongings into France without paying tax or fees as it was part of a move of our primary residence, but in order to be able to do this I had to create a detailed inventory of absolutely everything we were bringing over, in English and French and each with a value in £ and in €. This, along with the associated customs forms and declarations, was to accompany us, as we travelled over with what we could fit in the car and later, the removals company when they brought everything else over.
During the spring of 2021 our house in Framlingham went on the market with Clarke & Simpson, and after several quotes I booked Revells Removals to move all our stuff into storage mid-July and subsequently ship it to France once we’d found a house. We were doing a lot of ‘decluttering’ in preparation for the move – stuff in the house and garage, but also accounts / memberships / loyalty cards etc etc etc…
We sadly decided to sell Tom’s Audi TT convertible, not being the most practical of our vehicles, and take my boring Audi A4 Estate with us. I discovered we would need French car insurance before we set off because we were moving our residence outside the UK, the usual holiday cover you get could not be used in this case. I ended up phoning AXA in Eymet to arrange the cover. Once I’d explained my situation, they were very helpful in getting that sorted. Once in France I’d have about a month to get the MOT and registration process sorted so that went on my project plan.
As I was sorting car and health insurance out, it was becoming clear life would be a lot easier if I had a French bank account. I managed to open one from England with HSBC France. They allowed me to open the account before I moved over, using the address of the rental property we would be staying at to start off whilst still sending my cards / documents to my UK address, and I was then able to move some money across to start covering the costs of French car and health insurance.
With a heavy heart we decided it was going to be way too complicated and most likely expensive to import our lovely motorhome so that too went up for sale. We got a good price and have tucked the money away in the hope of buying something similar here in the EU.
My French was progressing slowly. But with a combination of Duo Lingo, You Tube videos and a weekly hour-long Skype call with Liz, a lovely lady in Paris that I met through Tandem who really helped to boost my confidence, it was heading in the right direction.
Well having spent most of this afternoon ironing bed linen, I think I’ve earned a glass of wine by the pool this evening!