In February 2007, John went and saw it too

On his way to the UK for business, John went via Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, caught a train down to La Souterraine, and was picked up at the station by Duncan of Maison Numero Neuf, a Chambre D'Hôte at 9 Rue Serpente, 23300 La Souterraine, Limousin, France.

Duncan and Lisa are an English couple who have a small hotel,which is where most of Andrew's (estate agent) clients stay, prior to catching up with Andrew. A vegetarian three course gourmet meal awaited John!! That coupled with the hot water bottle in his bed, made his stay really special.

The next day, he caught up with Andrew, the builder and the electrician. Measurements were taken, building work discussed. The first priority is to fix the left hand corner of the roof where some tiles are missing and water has got in. I completely missed that bit when I was there. The other thing to do is to render the end wall where we think the chimney had caught on fire and again make that waterproof. We think the fire is the reason that the chimney had fallen in from the inside.

This work is going to happen in May I think. At this moment in time though, the final documents have not been signed, so I am not sure if we can even go ahead with those plans.

In France, you have to agree with the vendor whether you want the house cleared out, which means everything goes, or things left in. There is a rather beautiful wrought iron bed and a lovely free standing wardrobe. However there is also a rather large pile of bricks, rubbish and up in the loft strange "bags" hanging off the rafters, plus one shoe under a box. We decided that we would prefer everything to be cleared out so that we just have the stone box look.

Later on, John met with Francoise from the bank, and arranged a mortgage. We felt this was good option as the rates are so low and means we dont have to be stretched financially. I think that took about 1/2 hour. I arranged a bank account when I was over there at the beginning and that took 25 minutes. I was IMPRESSED.

As I was in Australia when John was looking at the small house, we communicated by text a lot of the time. That night I got a text saying he was too excited to sleep ....thinking about the little house. How sweet is that.

John took loads of pictures .This is one