Tony and I had always been quite taken with the idea of France - literally that’s what it was - an idea but an idea that took root and led to our subscribing to a number of french property magazines shortly after we were married in 1999. At that time, we were living in the Cayman Islands where I was born and Tony had lived since the early ’90’s. Although France seemed a long way away - both my parents had moved, one to the Isle of Man and one to the UK and Tony’s mother was also in the UK so we knew that we’d want to move closer to the “olds” at some point but neither of us had ever been that taken with the UK so knew it wouldn’t be there.......hmmmm......we needed somewhere close to the old folk but somewhere more attractive to us than the UK - somewhere underpopulated with lots of open countryside....somewhere where one could buy a collection of buildings and some land quite affordably......somewhere easily accessible by friends and family in the UK......somewhere they encouraged you to drink a litre of wine with your lunch........somewhere one might grow some fruit and veg and while away the days pretending to farm............France seemed the obvious choice!
We settled into married life, enjoying the dreams of a life in France one day - peut-etre! We may well have stayed happily plodding along in Cayman had it not been for the arrival of Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004. Hurricane Ivan, a category 5 hurricane (meaning winds in excess of 250 km/h), was the 10th most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded (source: Wikipedia) and certainly the most intense we’d recorded in Cayman - the largest one remembered prior to 2004 was in 1932. At its peak in the Gulf of Mexico, Ivan was the size of the state of Texas (considerably larger than Cayman). Tragically, it also spawned 117 tornadoes across the eastern United States. Ivan caused an estimated US$2 billion damage in the Cayman Islands alone (quite staggering given the size of the Island with a population of only 50,000 people) with 85% of all property damaged to some extent. Much of the Island remained without power, water or sewer services for several months and some of the Island was still without well into 2005.
So....being within the 85% of folks who sustained damage and quite substantial damage to boot, and having spent the better part of 18 hours sitting in water almost waist high in our own living room watching the roof collapse, we decided that this was an excellent opportunity to wander off in search of our forever home with the view of one day realising our dream of becoming pretend farmers!
In 2005, we set off on a tour of France to find our dream farmhouse. I’d already decided I wanted no part of the Dordogne given the large concentration of English folk who’d all settled there - I wasn’t looking for a mini England within France - I wanted to be French!
Suffice it to say and in order to cut a very long journey short, having travelled all over from Normandy to the Loire and on - we arrived in the Dordogne and I realised that there’s a very good reason so many people have relocated here......it’s beautiful!
That was of course 2005 and having found our perfect farmhouse to pretend in, we ran back to Cayman to rebuild our house over there whilst being gainfully employed in order to secure a french mortgage. Fast forward 6 years and we’re back - we’re not sure whether this is the big move yet or not - the property market in Cayman is no better than anywhere else in the world and with a property still over there we’ve still 1 foot in Cayman and 1 foot ever more firmly planted in France.
So here we are in the sunny Dordogne - happily pretending to be farmers for the time being - living and learning as we trundle along.
