Moving to the Dordogne, living in the Dordogne, arriving at our house in the Dordogne the wife and children decide they want to turn round and go back home

"Are we nearly there yet?" had been a question my eldest boy, who had joined me in the cab of the van at Tours, to stop the squabbles with his siblings must have asked me a hundred times; at least it felt like it. So when we finally neared our house in the Dordogne after almost twenty seven hours of travelling, I was relieved to answer in the affirmative.

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I had hoped to arrive in the Dordogne in daylight but when I pulled up outside the property it was 11.30 at night, pitch black and raining hard. I had asked the chap who had organised the little building work to get our grass cut but it was obvious nothing had been done. I climbed out of the cab and waded through the long grass and groped around for the key which was supposed to be under a pot by the door; it wasn't.

I'm sure we all have moments in our lives when we can remember feelings of absolute euphoria, defining moments that changed our lives and moments when desperation and grief are so powerfully overcoming we just shut our eyes and hope that somehow a miracle will happen and everything will be resolved when we open our eyes. I just stood there in the pouring rain and closed my eyes but no miracle, no bolt of lightning; although we got struck a couple of times later; no voice from above came; just the voices of my children and wife, crying from exhaustion and all claiming they wanted to go home.

• Buying property in France
  
  
• Moving to the Dordogne in France
  
  
• Buying property in the Dordogne
  
  
• Living in the Dordogne
  
  
• Investing in property in the Dordogne
  
  
• Setting up a Gites business

I turned and shouldered the front door with all the power my body could muster and felt the lock give way; a second shoulder charge splintered the frame around the lock and found myself in the kitchen which was awash with rain pouring through the ceiling. It was obvious that the repairs to the roof had either not been done or done very badly. I groped for the light switch but nothing came on so I splashed my way over to the electricity box and felt for the main switch and pulled it down. The flash and jolt through my body as I was thrown across the room confirmed we at least had electricity; at which point Julia appeared with a torch and shone it on me as I lay on the floor. Our children appeared in the doorway behind her looking at their dishevelled and shaken father.

The children were still crying that they wanted to go home as Julia asked me what had happened. "The bastard missed me." I said looking up at an imaginary heaven and brushed myself down. Frankly, at that moment I wanted to go home too but we no longer had a home in the UK and this I explained to my children was their new home.

Julia shone the light around the kitchen and then through the double doors into the small lounge; there weren't any light bulbs just puddles of water everywhere. Luckily, the two bedrooms appeared to be waterproof. With the aid of the children holding torches, Julia and I manage to manhandle a couple of mattresses and some bedding into the largest bedroom and we all cuddled up and she and the children soon fell asleep. Exhausted as I was, I lay there for some time wondering about what I had done, had I done the right thing and whether or not we should just pack our things back up in the morning and go back to the UK.

• Self-catering accommodation in the Dordogne
  
  
• Dordogne Estate agents
  
  
• Bed and breakfast accommodation in France
  
  
• Cheap car hire in France
  
  
• Property for sale in France
  
  
• Low cost ferries to France
  
  
• Cheap removals to France
  
  
• Furniture storage in the Dordogne
  
  
• Cheap Euro mortgages
  
  
• Discount airport parking
  
  
• Travel insurance
  
  
• Best currency exchange rates

I questioned my sanity then and I was to question it many times over the following months and years that followed. I now had a little of five hundred pounds to survive on; limited French, no job and no prospects and I had brought my family to the Dordogne with no real plans other than to run away from my problems. However, like everyone else who runs away from their problems; they never escape them because they are the problem and I was no exception.

I never, no matter how tough things got ever allowed my family to see me in anything but a positive frame of mind. Always the optimist, I always showed a brave face and never allowed the children to see I was worried no matter how scared I felt myself.

I fell asleep listening to the rain beating relentlessly against the shutters, drumming on the roof and the splish-splash of rain gathering in puddles on the lounge floor. Before I fell asleep I made myself the promise; not to allow my children to suffer or be frightened of anything that was likely to befall us; we had been through what I considered to be the worse and things could only get better. Tomorrow we would all see things in a different light and we would be starting a new life in the Dordogne.