The Land

Long time no see folks!  Hopping on here now because I realized I completely forgot to post about the piece of land C bought.  He's been talking about being his own terrain literally since our first date, and his boredom at work and lack of existing projects brought that idea back to the forefront last spring.  We put together our wish list - including my criteria of around 1H from Paris and on some kind of body of water - and then spent several weekends in March 2018 looking at different properties.  C had a pretty small budget, so we were mainly looking at 'terrains de loisir' or 'terrains de pêche' - basically plots of land that can't be built on and are used mainly for weekend hobbies like hunting or fishing.

We very quickly realized that there wasn't much available within an hour of Paris, as most of the land had been converted into residential property long ago.  We did find one though that I loved - it was on a river and had a view on castle ruins, plus it was exactly an hour's drive from our place. However it was fairly small and covered by the neighbors tall trees nearly all day long, which wouldn't be great for gardening, ie C's main goal.

We also saw one place that was closer to two hours away - it was gigantic and on the Loire river, and had several homes and structures on it already in various states of decay (including a grown-over boules area).  C loved it, but it was on a cliff so it didn't have easy access to the water and there was a public hiking trail that cut through the land, so I was worried about theft and squatters.

We ended up compromising on a place that was 1.5h from the city, on a river and near a really cute little village.  We officially got the keys last June and C hasn't looked back since!  I swear, he would live out there if he could.  He's already calculating how much time is left on our mortgage and if he can take an early retirement lol.

As for me, the non-fan of camping, I have to laugh though every time I think back to when we visited the first time as owners. We originally saw the place in March, and I hadn't mentally-prepared myself for how much things would have grown by the time June rolled around.  We went there straight from the notaire, and as C excitedly opened up the gate, my initial reaction was "WTF did we just do??".   Three months of lots of rain plus no entretien meant that the land was completely overgrown and I could barely see past my face. There were weeds galore, downed branches, and all kinds of critters who were none too pleased to see their home being disturbed. But C's excitement not diminished in the least, and busted out his knife and swathed his way through as I gingerly followed behind him. 

We finally made our way down to the river, and I looked around and thought "Oh man...I definitely do not see myself coming out here".  Poor C saw my face and to his credit, immediately went out and bought a lawn mower.  And it's true, once the grass was down, it was easier to walk around with him and see the vision he had for the place.

It's actually pretty incredible what he's been able to do with it in the past year; I'll share some pictures in the next post.