House hunter Fran was lower than impressed by the number of doable houses chosen for her by the specialists on BBC property programme, Escape to the Country. So she discovered her personal, however not with out penalties. It was in 2014 when presenter Alistair Appleton headed out with Fran from Yorkshire to seek out her dream home.
Rather than within the UK, the duo have been within the gorgeous space known as Midi-Pyrenees, within the south west of France, however Fran finally discovered her personal place within the Dordogne.. This was not the top of the story nevertheless, as Fran discovered she was removed from alone in her new home.
The divorcee had been hoping for a extra relaxed way of life within the French countryside. She was looking out for a characterful property with three bedrooms, a doable vacation let potential, a swimming pool and exquisite outdoors area. Her funds was £400,000. Sign up for the North Wales Live e-newsletter despatched twice day by day to your inbox
Together along with her sister she and the BBC crew visited two properties initially, one for £354,000, which she almost purchased on the spot, and a second priced at £300,000, which seemed charming from the surface, with views, two lakes and a surprising swimming pool, however lacked character inside.
A 3rd was up for £412,500 and was a standard French dovecote with tower and veranda, and got here with a transformed barn within the backyard. Then got here the thriller home – an enormous property with an empty retail unit, a 5 mattress backpackers hostel and a one-bed house.
It was good worth at £375,000, however, regardless of the potential to show it into ‘Fran’s tea store’, it was rejected. And that was the final we heard of Fran till almost ten years later, in 2023, when presenter Alistair headed again to France to see what had occurred in her search. He heard how Fran had missed out on the primary property because it was bought simply the day earlier than she wished to return. The North Wales Live Whatsapp neighborhood for prime tales and breaking information is stay now – right here’s how to enroll
Instead, she discovered a gorgeous property accidentally on a non-public web site. Buying the home within the Dordogne area in 2019 was the simple little bit of the journey, however due to Brexit after which the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, Fran did not really transfer to France till August 2020.
But the primary few days at her new French home have been memorable, she stated. “Let’s discuss in regards to the first evening, we could? We have been sitting within the kitchen and my sister-in-law stated to me out of the blue, ‘why is the ground transferring?!’ and I seemed down and there was a military of crickets marching throughout the ground. I’m speaking hundreds of crickets, it seemed like the ground was transferring. We picked our toes up and I had a little bit look, then we simply swept them up and chucked them out.
“Next morning it was a hornets’ nest hanging contained in the entrance door so we very calmly drew the curtain throughout and opened the entrance door and off they went. And then that left the wildlife within the roof area. We thought at first it was polecats as a result of it sounded very, very heavy, seemed like clog dancing each evening.
“But we’re informed it was loir, that are slightly fairly little rat-sized issues that breed prolifically and so they get in below the tiles. I may really see shadows of them if I seemed up on the ceiling. That was adopted by the snake within the backyard.”
Asked in regards to the snakes, Fran replied: “We get whip snakes, that are a kind of grass snake, however the first one we had was about two metres and it was solely a metre away from us, in order that was a little bit little bit of a furry second, we weren’t fairly so courageous with that one.”
Fran, nevertheless, informed the presenter that she was very comfortable that she had escaped to a very completely different nation and she or he would not change a factor.
This story was featured on I Escaped to the Country collection eight, episode 10, presently available to view on BBC iPlayer.
