Le Moulin: Our Paradise

Copyright © 2013 by Jeign Craig. 307218-CRAI

Illustrations, Charlotte Craig. Copyright

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4836-9407-8

             Ebook       978-1-4836-9408-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 12/03/2013

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Where and How

Chapter Two: The Purchase

Chapter Three: A Telephone . . . Please

Chapter Four: Heat, Damned Heat . . . and Oh, So Cold . . .

Chapter Five: Flora, Fauna, and Assorted Pets

Chapter Six: The Disappearing Lake

Chapter Seven: Coming Home for Christmas (2010)

Chapter Eight: The Flood

Chapter Nine: Five Long Weeks

Chapter Ten: Soundscape

Chapter Eleven: So Here We Are!

Introduction

Le Moulin is the account of how we found, purchased, and finally moved permanently to our French home, and the joys and trials of those early days before we became used to our surroundings. Initially, I kept notes which, on reading back, really helped to recall the wonder and frustration of it all. So this is our story of Le Moulin and how we made it our home.

We purchased Le Moulin whilst I was working full-time, and, unknown to us, when we did so, subsequent events meant that it was less than a year after the purchase that we moved into Le Moulin permanently and it became our new family home.

The move-in was fairly sudden because the final decision was made at the end of May and we moved in July!

My full-time work in education was completed when the college closed for the summer vacation on Friday, 9 July. There then followed a whirlwind of packing, the removers, several wonderful farewell dinners, a surprise retirement celebration, and finally the journey: the night ferry and long drive to the south of France. All of this is now a hazy memory of six exhausting days.

We arrived at Le Moulin on Wednesday, 14 July; in France, it is known as Bastille Day and is a French National Holiday, traditionally marking the start of the summer vacation, and there are celebrations and fireworks everywhere in France!

It could not have been a more memorable start to our adventure with Le Moulin . . .

Chapter One: Where and How

A few years earlier we had bought our first house in France. Finding this holiday home took us two years of careful research, long summers touring in our camper van, and numerous winter evenings at home in England on the internet. Our explorations took us through our chosen areas of France, the west coast and the south of France. Eventually we found ourselves in Beziers and fell in love with this city.

Our little town house is conveniently in the centre – albeit in an insalubrious backstreet with on-road parking, which is not always close by.

Beziers is a great historical (and now cosmopolitan) city in the south of France, with Cathar heritage, Catalan influence, and Occitan culture. We have enjoyed all our holidays here since 2005. We have read about the whole area and visited it, and we adore all of it!

Family and friends have stayed with us during every summer and some Easter holidays. One of our friends fell equally in love with Beziers, and after three summer holidays with us, they bought their own family holiday house here.

After diligently searching to find a house that we could afford in a place we love, it was hard to stop looking in the windows of local immobiliers and free papers – much to the annoyance of our daughter, who was forever commenting: ‘You have bought a house so why do you still keep on looking?’ Well, it was habit, I suppose.

My husband was fascinated by a property advertised in one of the estate agents’ window; it was a mill, a water mill by a river, but we were unsure where it was situated. In any case, it seemed to be too remote for me and I dismissed any discussion. The following year, the advertisement was still there, and my husband gazed longingly at the now-faded photograph every time we passed the agent’s office and sometimes he detoured just to look. Finally, after two years, he persuaded me to go and collect some details (as his French was almost non-existent.) Inside the office I enquired about the mill and was emphatically told, ‘You wouldn’t like it. It is very far away, and it has a different climate – it is not the Mediterranean!’ Well, that was enough for me – so many years to finally find our holiday place, our chosen life on the Mediterranean; I was not going to entertain a change. Needless to say, my husband was not pleased when I emerged from the office with no details at all!

We had, by this time, decided that we would probably like to move to France permanently when I retired in two or three years’ time; obviously, our little town house, which was fine for holidays, would not be big enough to live in the long term; especially with our two Border Collies, and there was no garden.

Another year passed, and we had begun looking at larger properties and discussing how we could finance a move, what our daughter might do, and should or could we retain a small property in England – or, more precisely, near our home in Exeter.

We experienced three consecutive summers in Beziers when temperatures were in the high