OK, so the plan to travel through France staying a night at each place was quite obviously a flawed one. It is exhausting – even when you have your own car. After Carcassonne we were fortunate enough to be able to extend our next stay to four nights at Cordes Sur Ciel. Actually, we had a bit of a hidden agenda because we’ve been looking for a property to buy in France and this area was on our hit list.

Only €200k and this could be yours…

We had also found a place we liked so arranged an inspection with a real estate agent, but holy crap was there a lot of work to be done! I was going to freak Emma out by sending her the picture and saying this is where we were going to live, but it freaked me out too much to do that. No, we’d like to buy somewhere like the place we stayed: Laborie Grande (but smaller). I’m still not convinced of the plan for me to make jam and yoghurt in rural France, but maybe the time’s right for a sea change?* (my family are just falling off their chairs laughing at that… in fact anybody who knows me probably is!).

Mind you, there’s still a lot of France to see and we’re not going to impulse-buy a country house no matter how much I like shopping. Just keeping our options open… and who doesn’t want to know someone who has a house in France where they can stay for free reduced rates?

*btw, if there’s no internet access it’s just not happening.