Wednesday. Off to Normandy.

The House at St. James

So it was time to say goodbye to Finestere and say hello to Normandy. It would be a fair drive, so we fired up "Declan" the sat nav and made an early start.
We were to meet the immobilier in a small place called St. James, which was also the location of the first property of the day.
Now St James turned out to be a quite beautiful little town, with narrow streets and many nice shops, of which we saw a good deal of as we went round and round the one way system trying to find the spot where we to meet our guide.

Neglected Garden

A reminder of home

In the end we gave up on that plan, found the first available parking space and phoned the lady and said she would have to come and find us. Which she duly did, bless her.
The house was but two minutes drive out of the town centre and was in a wonderful location.The view across the valley to the neighbouring  chateau was lovely. It would quite obviously make a splendid B&B, but only for some-one with a larger bank balance than we could muster. It was crying out for lots of money to be spent on it. Apparently the current English owners had bought it some four years ago and never come back once, very strange. 
So after a good look round, (the cellar was pretty spooky), we made our way back to the car taking in the view one last time.

Just to show your real life is never far away, as we were heading back to the car a Brake Bros; lorry sped by. Karen was most pleased to be reminded of her current employer whilst in the depth  or rural France. Me I saw no-one from the job centre once.

Montreuil Poulay

Extra Cottage

The final property of our trip was about 1 1/2 hours away at Montreuil Poulay, a small village in the Pays de la Loire. Now this place got me very excited.
It consisted of a large stone built house facing straight on to the village square and the church. There are only two bedrooms at present but even if the larger one was split into two, it would still be more than big enough for purpose.
Also, the loft, already divided into two parts would make a good bedroom and bathroom.
The rear of the house also ticked many boxes.

Home for chickens

I was very taken with the presence of a large chicken area with a very nice walnut tree at it's heart. There was also a decent vegetable patch and parking. Not that that would be an issue as the square at the front was mostly empty.
The other aspect of this property was the self contained cottage next door. (Seen to the left in the main photo). Which was in with the price.
Access at present is through the garage at the rear. Opening this proved a slight problem, so after I managed to break off the handle off we had to call the owners son who duly arrived and showed us our error....we'd been pushing it the wrong way. Oooops.
Anyway it turned out my little mishap wasn't a problem and he showed us around.
It consisted of one extremely large downstairs and an equally large upstairs. And it didn't look although it had been used since d'artagnan and his mates were at large.
If we sold our house in England for a good price, and managed to knock the owners of this place down a little, it could be a goer. But we'd have to be very sure of ourselves and more than a tad brave.
Plenty to think on for our trip back to Blighty in the 'morrow.