23rd April 2009 - A very important day

Not only is it my birthday, but it's the day we will sign the final contract to buy Fig Tree Farmhouse.  We need to decide at some point whether we are going to keep that as a name, or be really clever and think up something else.  Problem with its current name, as far as a business and visitors are concerned, they may think that there will be animals and acres of land.  I think that over the years, the surrounding land has been sold off to what are now neighbours, as their properties are post war, so not original farm buildings.  Plus the old guy opposite has land which wraps itself around our land in an L shape and as it is not connected to his land by any stretch of the imagination, I think it's fair to say that it probably belonged to Fig Tree in the past.

We have arranged to meet with an English architect on the Friday together with a builder who recommended him.  Also meeting with another builder in the morning, who is bringing a French architect with him.  Apparently, we are going to be over a magical number of 170 m2 of habitable space when the conversions are done, so this will require us to have the architect, adding a mere 4K Euro to the costs.  We hope that they will create a 'shopping list' of what the builder will have to do, because it's beyond DIY skills, and a list of things we can do.  I'm sure that as time goes on, our skills will grow.  I know from experience of renovation the cottage in '79/'80 that it is amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

By the way - above is not just a pretty picture, it's the Puy de Dome, which is a little over an hour from us and as you drive down the A71 to Clermont Ferrand, they are the most fantastic sight.  It's also probably a good vantage point, because once you go through Clermont and out onto the road for the Puy, then you start to loose the breathtaking image, as you climb up the landscape to the Dome......  Another reason for buying in this area, a great visitor experience.  There is a restaurant on the top of one of them (It's been dormant for over 10,000 years.)  We are also only 20km from Volvic and on our first visit, be had to go and search it out.  The bottling factory is enormous!!