Le Clos des Chênes

On the evening of the 2^nd October we arrived in a state of nervous excitement at the offices of the Notaire in Montbron who had been selected by both parties to handle all the legalities associated with buying a house in France. Unlike the UK where each party chooses its own solicitor to carry out the conveyancing process, it is quite common in France for the same notaire to act for both the buyer and the seller. Their role is to ensure that all the relevant checks and searches have been conducted and that all the relevant legal paperwork has been completed to ensure that the purchase is properly registered.

It is worth remembering that unless you ask for it, the notaire is not obliged to initiate a private consultation to provide you with tailored advice about your own particular circumstances. It is not their job to hold your hand throughout the process in the manner that might be the case with a conveyancing solicitor in the UK. We were fortunate in that there were no contentious issues between our vendors and ourselves – primarily this was because we all got very drunk together one evening and sorted everything out!

The Notaire in Montbron had been selected because he spoke good English and would therefore be in a position to ensure that we fully understood what we were signing. However, we were greeted with the news that he had been unavoidably delayed on another appointment and would not be able to meet us that evening. The look of utter disappointment on our faces must have been obvious – we weren’t going to become property owners quite as soon as we had hoped.

The day was saved though by one of the Notaire’s colleagues who offered to stand in and conduct the meeting – in French! She spoke very little English and my French is hardly good enough for a conversation involving legal jargon but we decided to give it a go on the basis that if we were really unhappy, we need not sign anything.

As it turned out, between us we worked everything out and by the end of the meeting we had signed umpteen pieces of paper and the words we were anxiously awaiting were duly spoken: “Vous êtes propriétaires”. Not since we were declared Man and Wife had anything sounded as satisfying as being declared the owners of our own piece of French paradise.

We had even come up with a name for our new home – ‘Le Clos des Chênes’. It means something along the lines of ‘the oak enclosure’ and reflects the fact that the house sits in the middle of a wooded field, the majority of the trees being oaks.

We had the lease on the rented property until the end of October so we now had a good four weeks to get moved in – quite a luxury compared to every other house move I have ever done. We set ourselves a target date of 24^th October to be living in the new house so that we then had time to clean the rental property thoroughly before handing back the keys.

Good plan I thought. The problem was that the day after the signing was our wedding anniversary – not a problem in itself except that we spent that evening sat on the covered deck, eating a huge steak cooked on the barbecue and drinking far too much wine as we watched the sun go down. Sod the plan - we knew we wanted to be living there just as soon as we could.

The next morning we started loading up the car and ferrying our belongings across in small batches. Our lovely neighbour Nadine took pity on us and offered her the use of her husband’s old Citroen van. This was a Godsend as it meant we could not only move larger batches but we could also move the larger pieces of furniture (Nikki had not been happy at my earlier suggestion that she take one end of the sofa, I take the other and we just carry it the 300 meters to the new house!).

We unpacked as we went, feeling like kids at Christmas as we opened up boxes containing all those little things you take for granted and miss so much when you’re without them for so long. Sharp knives – oh, how I had missed my sharp kitchen knives!

We were all done by the 13^th October – eleven days ahead of schedule! That night was a cold one but we lit the wood burning stove and basked in its warm glow.

We were totally, utterly, at home.