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Where did May go? We had a weekend and a few days off this week with the house and garden to ourselves which has been great for a change of pace, but we’re about to get very busy until bookings quieten down in September.

I’m feeling a lot more relaxed about the Chambres d’Hôtes now that we have some experience under our belt and with the feedback we’ve had so far. It’s been lovely having people enjoying the house and garden and what Eymet has to offer, so we’re feeling really positive about the coming few months.

Picking up my from my post about getting ready to move over, with a combination of lots of planning and preparation, plenty of good fortune and chance, we had everything lined up to leave the UK on 22/7/21.

Leading up to the big day we packed everything away that we weren’t going to squeeze into the car updating the customs inventory as we did so and over the two days of 19^th & 20^th July Revells moved everything into storage.

On the 20^th July after they had left, while Tom was at work and later enjoying his last day of term party, I cleaned the house, packed the car for the journey, said goodbye to the neighbours, checked into a nearby Premier Inn and waited for the call from Tom to say I should pick him up from the party. I was exhausted!

On the 21^st we headed down to Dover and checked to another Premier Inn all ready for Ferry Crossing the next day. I was feeling really anxious about it all, and on the 22^nd I confess I was a nervous wreck as we approached customs. In my mind there was so much that could go wrong – COVID restrictions, customs forms, BREXIT implications, no house to go back to, no jobs etc etc. I knew I was over analysing but I do get stressed in new situations…anyway we had all our paperwork to hand (and more than was needed of course), Tom was calm and relaxed and he drove us through customs without a hitch. After a brief wait / coffee we were on the ferry.

It had been such a mad few days / weeks leading up to it, that it was then it really started to feel real. I love the ferry across to France, I always have, but this one was a bit special. It was actually happening…

I’d reserved a cheap and cheerful motel in France on the way down near Le Mans and actually it was perfect. Safe parking for the car with all our stuff in plus the bikes on top, cheap and clean bed / room for night, a lovely bistro a short walk away, just off the A28 and about 6 hours drive from our home for the next 3 months inRazac d’Eymet. 

That was just over 10 months ago, and we’ve since bought a house just 5km from there. We’ve been working on our accommodation at the back of house this week, starting to add an ensuite and generally bringing it up to date a bit. Of course, our priority up until now has been the guest accommodation, but now that looks great, we’ve got plenty of background projects for the summer when we have time and it’s not too hot!

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!

Summer has certainly arrived in Southwest France. I’m so glad we got the ‘heavy lifting’ to get our B&B ready during the winter and early spring because it has been sooo hot for the last few weeks that by early afternoon it is just too much to work outside. It’s been great for our guests though, the pool has warmed up nicely so people have been enjoying that and we’ve able to serve breakfast on the terrace as well as in our dining room. We’ve come such a long way since we arrived in France last July, it is quite difficult to take it all in sometimes.

I was a project manager at BT and in Openreach for a long time, with a focus on risk management, so having made up our minds to move out here, it wasn’t long until we had a plan in place and were getting into the detail of what was going to be involved with visas, customs, taxes etc

Looking back at my plan now it started in 2020, but it really ‘kicked-in’ at the start of 2021 with some scary milestones like handing in our notices at work, putting the house on the market and booking a one-way ferry from Dover to Calais. This was against a backdrop of COVID lockdowns, travel bans and the BREXIT withdrawal agreement.

We toyed with the idea of rushing things through to get an address in France before the end of 2020 to avoid some of the biggest BREXIT impacts, but I was being cautious as usual, so we set a date of 22^nd July 2021 to make the move.

The key ‘boxes to tick’ moving towards that date (I’ll write a post on each over the coming weeks) were: 

• Post BREXIT visas needed to stay in the EU more than 90 consecutive days and more than 180 days per year.
• COVID vaccinations – it was clear we were going to need two jabs each before we could enter the EU.
• Private health insurance needed until we could join the French healthcare system.
• A French bank account.
• Importing (or selling) our cars/motorhome as part of the move and getting them insured, ‘MOT’ equivalent and registered with French number plates.
• Selling our house in the UK and finding somewhere to rent in France.
• Moving all our furniture and belongings into storage and subsequently arranging shipment to France along with all the necessary customs declarations.
• Unpicking our accounts and services in the UK under the new post-BREXIT financial laws.
• Significantly improving my grasp of the language.

In 2020 I was running the office at a high school, part of the Seckford Education Trust, and Tom was a Maths teacher at another high school in Suffolk. We struck it lucky in summer 2020 with COVID restrictions lifting in time for us to spend 6 weeks in France in the MoHo with, for the first time, a plan in place to move over. We lingered around Villeneuve Sur Lot and Pujols for quite a while as this was the region we were most interested in moving to. In fact, we are now a little further north just across the border in Dordogne, but that is another story to pick up in future posts. We returned from France just in time for the 2^nd big COVID wave more convinced than ever that we were doing the right thing so over the winter COVID lockdowns, our plans firmed up. I think I told my boss in November 2020 that I would be leaving in February 2021 so she could start planning for my replacement and so it would feel more real to me. It was also beginning sink in with family and friends that we were really going to go through with it this time.

We signed the acte de vente and picked up the keys for our new house on 8^th December 2021 and from 1^st May 2022 we are open for business. It has been a lot of hard work but hugely rewarding and we are really excited to start welcoming guests for Bed and Breakfast as we start the next chapter in our lives.

This time last year, Tom was still a maths teacher and I had not long quit my job as a school administrator.

Time permitting I’ll be updating this blog on a weekly basis looking back over the last year on how we got to where we are today, and, moving forward, reflecting on life running a Chambres d’Hôtes in south west France.