Moving to the Dordogne, buying property in the Dordogne, life and living in the Dordogne in south west France is not the bed of roses you may believe it to be

One fatal decision, a number of subsequent mistakes, the property crash of the nineties and suing the bank that had bought my company (never a good idea to sue a bank) and everything I had built up over fifteen years slipped through my fingers. All that is except my property in the Dordogne and after eighteen months of anguish we found ourselves moving to the Dordogne.

Start of article about property in the Dordogne France.

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Or rather, we ended up moving ourselves to the Dordogne in an old Sherpa van and a large exhibition trailer. The bank I sued also happened to hold the mortgages on my UK properties and did everything in their power to ensure I couldn't find work in England. I won't bore you with the details but needless to say, due to rash errors of judgement, arrogance on both sides and property prices crashing round my ears, there was little I could do to salvage our situation.

When I say I lost everything, I mean everything of financial value but nothing as it turns out of any real worth. My wife stood by me; in fact it was her idea to move to the Dordogne despite her previous misgivings. From being worth a couple of million pounds, and having sold virtually everything I could to continue fighting the case, I found myself moving my wife and three children to a tumble down farmhouse with £700 (7,000 Francs) in my pocket. Back then, 2 million pounds was considered a lot of money and seven hundred pounds; well you wouldn't have got much change out of a weeks holiday; and here I was starting a new life in France with no means of support and no grasp of the language.

People have since said to me that it was a brave decision and one they wouldn't have had the courage to make. It wasn't, it was a decision made out of desperation and by a man who had been broken and whilst I didn't have a mental breakdown can honestly admit that I was not thinking straight. No one in their right mind would move his wife and three young children to a foreign country with no money, no job prospects and no idea on how to survive. I was simply running as far away as possible from everything and everyone and if I thought I was leaving my problems behind; they were nothing to what I was going to have to face over the next three years.

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• 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

THE JOURNEY TO THE DORDOGNE

We packed as much of what we still owned into the van, the trailer and the Fiat Uno I had originally provided my PA and set off in a mini-convoy. Every spare cubic inch had been packed with our belongings, weighing far more than the van could comfortably pull and restricting our speed to a maximum of forty miles an hour on the flat. To be honest, I had my doubts as to whether we would actually complete the four hundred mile journey.

The first hill out of Saltdean on the way to Newhaven to catch the ferry was going to be our first test. Friends and neighbours had gathered outside to wave us off and I set off the long way round to ensure we had a good run at the hill. I remember sitting at the roundabout at the entrance to the coast road and surveying the long hill ahead. I had visions of us failing to make the hill and having to unhitch the trailer and turning round and giving up at the first obstacle. Furthermore, having made the journey to the Dordogne in previous weeks to organise things like electricity and water; I knew there were longer and steeper hills to deal with.

I waited until the road was very clear before pulling out and putting my foot to the floor, the van took time to respond and build up speed as I raced at about thirty five miles an hour to the gradient. As I passed my own turning, I could see friends and family waving encouragingly from outside what used to be our home. Fourth gear became third and very quickly second as the van struggled up the hill and I was relieved to reach the top and feel the engine almost give a sigh of relief as we coasted down the other side and reached the port without incident.

Passports checked, we were waived through and after the usual wait were finally directed onto the ferry. As we pulled onto the ramp, the ferry employee directing the traffic waived me forward and pointed to the steep ramp where cars were being driven to be parked on the upper parking deck. I waved frantically at him to try and get his attention to say I didn't think we would make it but to no avail. So keeping my fingers crossed, I accelerated forward having given the car in front time to give me some distance. Then, just as I though I was going to make it, the driver in front stalled his engine and came to sudden halt leaving me no choice other than to ram him up his arse or to stop as well. Having restarted his engine, he disappeared round the deck leaving me burning rubber and clutch as I eased the van and trailer forward inch by inch, eventually reaching the top with my heart in my mouth. This journey was going to be tougher than even I had imagined.

The ferry journey was uneventful and having passed through French customs, tackled the steep hill out of Dieppe. Second gear was the highest I could manage and I could see a stream of lorries and cars held up behind me as we laboured up the hill. At the first lay by on a flat piece of road; I pulled over; to let them pass; I couldn't risk stopping on a hill. The rest of the journey was made at no faster than forty miles an hour and normally far less and I would like to apologise to everyone who spent hours caught up behind us although I did pull over at every opportunity to let them pass.

In Normandy, between Rouen and Le Mans, there are two steep valleys that are now crossed by viaducts on the Route Nationale, when I was making the journey to the Dordogne, I had to traverse these valleys by driving down one side and up the other. I was dreading these valleys because I knew I had to control my speed going down whilst getting up enough pace to get up the other side. At the bottom of one of these valleys is a steep bend to the left before the incline begins. As I neared the bottom of the valley, I started to accelerate to gather the pace I needed but had forgotten how steep the bend was and as I entered the bend I could feel the van rising on two wheels and the trailer beginning to sway and tip over. I am not a religious man in any shape or form but someone was looking over me that day; just as well I thought because they had been on strike for the previous two years.

• 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

How and why I didn't end up in the ditch I couldn't say. Julia who was following in the Fiat with the children said later that the trailer was almost on its side before it finally righted itself. I thought at this point that my run of bad luck might be coming to an end but I thought too soon. Throughout the journey, I had stayed away from auto routes to avoid paying tolls. However, at Tours, we had to join the auto route to cross the Loire and just when I was thinking we had completed half our journey, the trailer suffered a puncture and I had to more or less drag the trailer to a garage.

The tyre happened to be a special size that the garage didn't stock but assured me they could order one in and get it replaced by that afternoon. It was a set back and cost that I could ill afford but we were going nowhere without it and as I feared, like all motorway service stations, they were not going to let us off lightly. Four hours later and 1,470 Francs (about 22% of our survival pot) lighter we were back en route, holding up the traffic and wondering what other disasters were likely to befall us.

Twenty years ago, the journey from Dieppe to our house in the Dordogne usually took about nine hours. The journey through brilliant sunshine and heavy rain, getting heavy as we neared the Dordogne, with stops and disasters had taken us twenty seven hours.

Arriving in the Dordogne.