We crossed the flat land between the mountains and the Mediterranean sea, mainly on long straight plane tree lined roads. The lines of trees broke every three or four kilometres to accommodate sleepy villages, whose older inhabitants sat on road side benches, basking in the afternoon sun.
As we passed our first vineyard, I decided to keep Sarah amused, by telling her to shout ‘grapes’, each time she spotted a vine. This turned out to be a big mistake, since the Languedoc plain turned out to be full of vines. ‘Grapes, grapes, grapes …’, she continued to shout through the rest of our journey.
Nearing the coast we headed West to Sete, which was crowded with holiday makers. We then turned East and followed the road on the sand bar which joins Sete and Agde. We had the blue Mediterranean on our left side and the huge sea water lagoon, called the Basin de Thau, on our right. The Basin de Thau was crowded with the wooden frames on which oysters are cultivated.
We eventually found a room with a sea view in a hotel at Marseillan Plage not far from Bezier. Even though it was someway from our initial appointments with estate agents, we had wanted to inspect the coast line first.
The accommodation was not impressive, but the meal in the restaurant was. The food was distinctively Southern, quite different to the creamier, richer food, which I had got used to on visits to the Loire and the Bourgogne during previous holidays. The dishes which incorporated colourful peppers, tomatoes, olives and other local produce, were well complemented by the chilled rose wine which was served as an inclusive part of the menu. French children are amazingly well behaved in restaurants, but Sarah while very good by most other standards was beginning to get irritable by the second course. ‘I’ll buy you a good girl present, if you sit straight and don’t moan, for the rest of the meal’ I said. She behaved like an angel and the next day got her present. Of course she knew when she was onto a good thing, every restaurant meal from then on, resulted in me buying her a ‘good girl’ present.
On Sunday we made our way across country to Mazamet, where we booked into another hotel in preparation for our first appointment with an estate agent on Monday. Here the landscape was quite different to the Languedoc plain. Gone were the vast expanses of vineyard, replaced by steep hills covered with woodland and fields with cows in them. Apart from the style of the occasional buildings we encountered, we could almost have been back in the U.K.
The agent was an Englishman who had married a French lady. His main occupation was teaching, but in his spare time he was helping the locals dispose of their unwanted properties, to British holiday home seekers.
We met him at his very nice house and were dispatched with a local Frenchman into the forested mountains “Noire” to view the “gamekeepers cottage”, which we had read about in the brochure he had sent to us in England.
The cottage turned out to be a massive barn of a building, with a large fireplace and an overgrown piece of land behind it. The front door was a meter from the road which passed the front of the ‘cottage’ and was only a few meters from what appeared to be a small electrical sub station.
The fact that the mist had still not lifted from the area by midday, added to the humming sound being emitted by the sub station, convinced us that this was not quite the property for us, despite the fact that our French guide’s brother, had apparently shot a wild boar nearby, only two days before.
As we returned to the agent’s house, our guide continued to impress on us the merits of being up in the cool air of the mountains, while others sweated it out, down on the plains. Having spent the great majority of my life in the cool air of England, the sweating sounded good to me.
It was two o’clock as we approached Beziers and all we had seen since nine o’clock that morning, was one unsuitable property.
During the rest of the day however, our agent managed to show us another six properties. Two backed onto a busy main road in Beziers itself. I was put off by the proximity of the main road, the plethora of television aerials which sprouted from nearby roofs and a huge construction, in an adjacent garden, which looked like an electricity pylon, but which I was assured was the aerial of an enthusiastic local radio ham.
We then drove West to Capestang which seemed like an ideal location. It is on the edge of the Canal du Midi, which looked very attractive with it’s brightly coloured canal boats, moving slowly up and down between the plane tree lined banks.
The Church in Capestang
In the central square were a couple of bars, which served snacks and a very interesting church, which sprouted grotesque gargoyles. Unfortunately there was only one property on offer here. It had no garden and not much of a roof. It would clearly cost more to restore this house than it would to buy it. The main attraction of this property, other than it’s location in Capestang, was a huge wooden wine vat inside one of the outhouses. This vat could have been made into a room in itself, if someone were to cut a doorway into it.
I was quite taken with the place until Jane said “Sure we can buy this one, if you want to spend all your vacations for the next 10 years sleeping on a camp bed and mixing concrete, while Sarah and I stay in a hotel and relax on the beach”.
We then continued West to Homps, where we viewed another wonderful house, covered with creeping honeysuckle right next to the Canal du Midi. Unfortunately the asking price was twice as much as we had budgeted. I was furious with our agent for tempting me with a property I could not afford.
We continued in the direction of the afternoon sun. We were now getting back into the low hills, which would eventually become the mountains ‘Noire’, where we had started our day. We followed a winding road up a valley, which tracked the path of the river Orbiel, which was on our right hand side.
We eventually stopped on the outskirts of a village, where we viewed a recently renovated house, the rear of which balanced precariously on beams, which extended over the river. ‘This is an ideal home if you like fishing’ our agent informed us. I could imagine lifting a trap door in the living room floor and lowering my fishing line into the river below. No doubt I would be landing fresh trout, faster than they could be eaten. We returned to the car to continue our search.
Finally we pulled over to the left and viewed a very nice house, whose rear wall was the side of a mountain. The house was large and in good condition but was fronted by the road we had been following.
The owner proudly opened a cupboard in an upstairs bedroom, which revealed the rough hewn mountain side, which was the back of the cupboard.
We were then lead over the road at the front and down some steep steps to the garden, which appeared to be on the river bed. In September the Orbiel was not much more than a stream. I wondered how much of the garden would be above water when the winter rains were at their peak.
Our agent enthusiastically pointed out the almond trees, which would soon be ours, if we bought this exceptional character property. ‘Trout with almonds”, I thought. I asked how long it would take for us to reach the coast from this idyllic location. ‘slightly over 30 minutes’ was the reply.
We promised to go away and think about it. I then drove like a bat out of hell towards the coast, which we reached some seventy minutes later. ‘Well, may be if we buy a Ferrari and the government build a new motorway directly from our house to the coast, his estimate could be plausible’, I said to Jane.
That night we were all crushed by a stray bolder, which had come crashing down the mountain side and then through the bedroom roof of our dream home. The house was then washed downstream after collapsing into the river because the supporting beams had rotted away. I awoke perspiring heavily, relieved to find it had just been a dream. I mentally rejected the two properties, which had contributed to my disturbed sleep.
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