I caught up with Tim and Ingrid just as the magnitude of what they’d done was dawning on them.
An Auberge in the Auvergne
Plans evolved, were re-shaped, re-born, rejected, re-invented, knocked about a bit, re-worked and either given up on, or applied with an eye to taste and quality that can only come from long years in the hotel service industry... and it shows. It almost goes without saying that whatever funds they had when the brainchild was born, were soon metamorphosed into bricks, mortar, furniture, bedding, linen and sundry other furnishings and tasteful bits. Never mind the bank balance; look at the auberge!
Tim, in a moment of reflection told me: ‘It was always going to take something really quite special to tempt me away from the green, lush, dramatic land that I’ve been proud to call home for so long’.
What did it for him was the relatively unknown volcanic region of France called the Auvergne. It may even have been me that told Tim about the Auvergne, as I’ve been coming here for years... then again it might be because Ingrid’s parents had recently retired to ‘nearby’ Languedoc, and after 20 years in the UK, for Ingrid the Auvergne was a case of finally going home. Either way, it was a new beginning.
As is so often the case these days, English Tim and French Ingrid met by online dating, and I have to say...Tim did very well out of the digital coup de foudre. They now have a son, Lorenzo, who in a year or so should be good for dishwashing, and a short while after that, waiting on, preparing meals, and