Right, let's be honest about this whole adventure.

We've got experience in lakes, hospitality, and running businesses. What we DON'T have: French skills.

 

GETTING TO GENÊTS

Buying a house in France is actually pretty straightforward. Selling one in the UK? Well, we all know that's not so simple!

Trying to organise timings for visas and navigate our first bit of French paperwork proved a challenge. Honestly, we weren't sweating at all when the visa arrived two days before we were due to leave! 😅

Moving was interesting. Coming from England to the EU now means you need to import everything you own - with an inventory and value. Yup! We know!!!

Even the paperwork for Dylan's travel documents was a nightmare. Who knew a vet would ask if a crossbred Bengal was an F1 wild cat needing CITES approval and we would need to end up talking to DEFRA? 😂

Then there was the 8-hour car journey with a very unimpressed feline who had already spent the last month being angry that everything kept moving in the house!

We finally made it to France (oh, and almost ran out of petrol at 3am in the middle of nowhere - how we found a garage, we still don't know!!!) a week before we were due to move in. House in England sold and waiting to complete on Genêts!

We needed to leave time for currency exchange and international payments don't always go quickly. And apparently French banks *sometimes* open on Mondays - so we were technically homeless for a week!

So there we were in our Airbnb with a trapped cat getting more unimpressed by the day, when we get a call - the completion on Genêts could be pushed back a month. Why? Because someone left some furniture in one of the houses in the chain and only one specific person could collect it. Obviously. 🙄

Big thank you to David, our estate agent, for sorting that out. There was honestly zero panic at all while we were wondering where we were going to stay and what the hell we'd do with a truck load of all our stuff for a month and an imprisoned cat! 😉

We did finally end up moving in on time. The furniture arrived. Dylan got upset about being locked in again. But we made it!

And at that point - very mistakenly - we thought, "Well, what else could go wrong?" 😂

 

THE ANSWER: QUITE A LOT

We had three days to get ready for our first guests (read our Emergency Summer Prep blog for that story!) - that was a challenge, but we knew it was coming.

The other curveballs? Well . . . . .  😉

 

THE HITS JUST KEEP COMING

Since then, we've had:

- The cesspit blocking at 10pm the night before guests were due to arrive (James was literally up to his arms in it - absolute hero!)

- New truck on order. A small misunderstanding in translation = order cancelled, after we'd insured it! Would the company reply again? No! When we did find another one that wasn't an 8-hour drive away and insured that one, our car insurance got cancelled because our driving licenses haven't arrived in time. But the driving license office says all applications are taking 9 months. Why? No one seems to know!

- The boiler exploding (it's properly dead now)

- Dylan getting a stick over an inch long stuck up his nose, requiring a 10pm Saturday night vet visit with zero French skills (Google Translate down the phone kinda works! 😉)

Special mention to French admin: endless forms asking for the same thing as the last three forms. What feels like about 4000 different websites to navigate. Processes that get upset by the tiniest things. There's been a lot of bemusement and swearing!

Oh, and the 12-2pm lunch break when EVERYTHING closes and people stop working and actually go for lunch. Whaaaaaaaaat? We have things to do! 😉

And I got sick (stress? What stress?!)

 

BUT WE ALSO HAD A LOT OF UP'S ON THIS ROLLERCOASTER...

We had family visit to pitch in and help get things shipshape. We finally worked out how to navigate the supermarket (before they did the same thing as at home and moved everything around! 😉).

We've had help from lots of people and our wonderful new French neighbours have been so kind and helpful. We've been blown away by their generosity of time and effort, the invites and the patience with, translation apps, chat GPT conversation mode and our very basic and very badly pronounced French! 

Most importantly we've laughed all the way through it (OK most of it! 😂) . We're now just regretting not having GoPros stuck to our heads the whole time - it would've been comedy gold!

 

WHAT'S NEXT

More challenges, probably! We got through the saga of the lake dredging work (check out that blog for the full story), we're finishing the swims, giving the Anglers Clubhouse some TLC, making new plans for our next projects and hopefully staying healthy.

Our guests have been wonderful, we've had brilliant reviews, even a bottle of champagne as a gift and we know it's not just lip service - they're re-booking and we can wait to have them back to fish with us again.

James is in his element doing actual lake work. The fish are looking great. The plans are coming together.

Despite everything? We wouldn't change it.

Well, maybe we'd skip the cesspit incident. And the exploding boiler.

But the rest? This is exactly what we wanted to be doing (and Dylan is living his best life, despite falling in the lake and deciding to go iceskating when the lake froze over this winter!) 

We'll keep you posted!

Liza (& James, who's just grateful I'm doing all the admin)