finding the dream
“We searched for hours and hours online making long lists, then short listed those lists until we had a selection of houses we wanted to view” Marcus says. In the end, they had 50 properties that were potential for their home/business goal. It took them a month to view them all until they saw “the one” close to the lovely town of Saint Antonin Noble Val.
Their house is a large, Quercy style farmhouse with the date of 1786 above the door. It sits in six acres with its own woodland and surrounding meadows. The main house was mostly renovated so they were able to move in straightaway allowing them to concentrate their efforts on renovating the barn and creating cabin accommodation for their cycling business.
“We also had to claw back the gardens from a very wet spring which had led to the grass growing six feet high! We spent a lot of those early days, weeding, strimming and mowing!” they say.
Soon after they arrived, they were invited to take part in the Channel 4 TV series, A New Life in the Sun. “The camera crew captured some great footage of our ‘before and after’ transformation which has given us a fantastic record of our achievements but did occasionally distract us from making progress” says Jim.
Starting a cycling business in France
The couple say they knew it wasn’t going to be easy to set up their new business in France. “We had no problems sorting out the sale of our houses in the UK, buying the property in France, finances, setting up websites etc but when it came to the official paperwork we didn’t want to risk getting it wrong” Marcus says. They hired an English-speaking company in France that helps expats resettle, set up business and sort out life in France. Not having to worry about paperwork freed them up to work on making their company exactly what they dreamed of.