Gramat, Thégra - the Lot

August 2010
Window searching les Immobiliers in Gramat was tantalising, but it was only when we took the plunge and walked into one of their offices that things started to get interesting.

We waited patiently for the afternoon lunch break to be over, and when Monsieur l'Immobilier arrived to unlock the door, holding a tiny cup and saucer in his hand, we hesitated a moment before following him inside.

Clearly the hordes of Brits holidaying in France during the summer add "House Hunting" to their must-do list, as Mr l'Immobilier was superbly and - it has to be said - magnificently laconic and indifferent to G's stumbled enquiries. Effortlessly channelling Gerard Depardieu, Monsieur was a French caricature. His large frame was a shambles in crushed linen; his long, untidy hair fell across the forehead of a face with unruly Gallic features; he wore noisy clogs on his large feet; and when he drank, he cradled a doll's cup in a giant hand. Cordial, without being friendly, and shall we say restrained in his enthusiasm for our request, he nevertheless provided us with a few pages with the approximate location of several barns for sale in the area.

If we were interested in a formal visit, then by all means, we should return, but in the meantime, have a look and see if any were of interest. He could not give us specific addresses - it was the law in France...

Instead he helpfully showed us (with sweeping gestures of his pencil over the large map of the region on his wall, me desperately noting down names and major routes), the approximate location of the properties before going back to the hectic bustle of his afternoon. Not.

We spent a fruitless couple of hours trying to find the cheapest barn - our directions were simply too vague - and anyway, we calculated that it was no bigger than a double bed on two levels (truly a stone 'tent'). The second barn was more like a half-collapsed and overgrown stone shed, and was situated on the Causse de Gramat, a rocky plateau area which G and I find a little bleak.

Barn #2

Thégra was a delight. We loved the village, with its attractive buildings, winding lanes and beautiful surrounding countryside. We mooched about, trying to spot the third barn and eventually parked next to what we assumed was the barn in question. G got out to ask a neighbour for information and was told that we should speak to the man next door. I sat in the car, watching while G knocked and  then began to speak with the man who answered the door. After some discussion, G gestured for me to join him.

Apparently it had taken a few minutes before the two men had realised that they both spoke English! Ken was an ex-South African, who divided his time between the UK, Portugal and France.  He kindly invited us into his beautifully restored barn and we spent a while chatting and exchanging enthusiasm for this turning-barn-into-home folly that we had in common. He had managed to turn half of his barn into a gite, which provided a steady income from May to September each year. Ken was full of information regarding the burdensome bureaucracy in France, specifically the potential Batiment de France hurdles that would need to be cleared if we chose a building near a building of significance or a village, such as Thégra, of heritage status. He also pointed out the advantages of being part of a village from the sewage, as well as the social, point of view, since there would be no need for that medieval bastion of rural France, la fosse septique (septic tank).

Ken was curious about what had brought us to this corner of France, and when we referred to Darnis, surprised us by saying he knew the Stuckes and that sadly, Henry had recently passed away. He also said that there were a couple of Mites who had returned to France and were now living in the area! Clearly l'Auberge de Darnis had made an impression on others too...

Leaving Ken, we eventually found the third barn on the silent outskirts of the village. It was a good size, and not too dilapidated. While I kept watch and held back a swinging shutter, G climbed through a window and crept around in the junk taking photos. He even managed to climb up a ladder to the top floor. Pros: good size; in reasonable shape; in a great village and area. Cons: In a Batiment de France heritage village therefore difficult, maybe impossible, to get planning permission for new penetrations; facing the road and not the fields; communal bins right next door;  expensive (probably because it was in a sought-after village).

Barn #3, Thégra

Communal poubelles with barn at left

After a picnic of bread and camembert (our idyll interrupted by the arrival of a tractor, which seemed especially large from ground level), we explored the village further. We passed another À Vendre sign on the left, just before leaving the village. A lovely but faintly ramshackled house was separated from a tiny but pretty stone barn by a vine-covered pergola. The barn instantly spoke to us, and we sat in the car while G summoned the courage to ring the number. He spoke to the owner and managed to glean that she was not interested in selling only the barn. A little stillborn dream.

Thégra cutie - barn #4

No visit to the area would be complete without a detour to Darnis. This was our second visit since leaving in 1988. In the summer of 1992, G and I (with our baby daughter and my parents) paid Darnis a visit. Although outwardly not much had changed, it seemed that the renovations had been completed: Lawrence Stucke and his girlfriend were running it as a Michelin-rated restaurant and auberge.

This time, despite it being high summer, the place was deserted and the Michelin sign faded.

Darnis 2010

Note the Michelin sign 

Barn #5 was a magnificent structure that nestled in a sleepy hamlet and presided over a small piece of land bounded by fields below,  an orchard on one side...and a really ugly, in-your-face house right next door. It was also beyond our price range.

Barn #5

While camping nearby at Padirac, the day before our return to Sydney, we heard about a barn for sale  in the area and went on a madcap search for it. We'll never know if the barn we found down a tree-lined lane, with views over the sheep-dotted fields, was the one. It was in the process of being renovated, and perhaps the owner had run out of money or steam, since it was deserted the day we saw it.

Barn #6 at the foot of the lane, near Padirac

Whatever the circumstances, it fanned the flame of our barn passion, and when we returned on the train to Paris the next day, we were already plotting our next move. We wanted a piece of French countryside so badly we could taste it.

Darnis

If we were to buy a property in France, it made sense to buy it in an area that we knew and loved. But there's a tale to tell...

August/September 1988
Twenty-something years ago (1988 to be exact), we cycled through France, from St Malo in Brittany to the Lot department, south of the the Dordogne river. There, in a tiny hamlet known as Darnis, and in return for board and lodging, we helped with the ongoing renovation project of a 17th Century farmhouse, owned by Christine and Henry Stucke - L'Ancienne Auberge de Darnis.

Darnis 1988

They had put the call out for willing hands to help and when we cycled up to the place one baking afternoon in August, we found a settlement of young people from all over the globe inhabiting every spare corner of the dilapidated farmhouse. At the helm, Christine and Henry ran a tight ship: a good honest day's labour and GBP1 in exchange for a bed, a roof and three square meals a day, made by cordon-bleu Lawrence Stucke, their elder son.

Henry called we itinerant workers the "Mites", as in stalagmites, or "might work; might not"; we called ourselves the "Darnisites".

After weeks of cycling and camping, a change of routine and an excuse to stay still for a while and not spend money was what attracted us in the first place. Also the chance to get to know a little corner of France on an intimate level. What kept us there for 3 weeks was all of this, and more.

We met good, lifelong friends (Martin and Gail) over the huge dining table; we experienced both the satisfaction and mind-numbing boredom of manual labour. We worked hard, listened to loud music (Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car", "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" and Roxy Music's "Avalon"), got our hands callused and dirty and tanned our limbs golden without meaning to. G was on planing-ancient-oak-beams fatigues; I revarnished a wooden kayak before joining G in the workshop to repair knots on the planks G had planed smooth. Despite rudimentary safety gear, we had sawdust in our eyes, up our noses and in our hair day and night. Hot water didn't exist, so waiting for the shower felt like a punishment. At night, our backs ached and we ate like we were on Death Row. Everything seemed funnier than it really was.

Lunch break

The evening of G's 28th birthday, we whiled away a mellow evening in the upstairs sitting room, with its stone walls and roaring fire. Gale and I made birthday cards for G; he has them still.

Sometimes everyone had to down tools to assist in a major operation, such as the throwing of the vermiculite floor in the upstairs bathroom-to-be. I say "upstairs": in fact, the stairs were unsafe and we learned quickly that treads one through three and eight and ten were rotten through and best avoided. They certainly couldn't take the strain of a chain gang with heavy buckets of wet vermiculite. So we set up a pulley and those at the bottom, in the hall, took turns shovelling vermiculite into the large bucket and hauling it up to those waiting at the top, whose job it was to spread it on the floor. Exhausting, but satisfying.

Some other Mites' names come to mind when I see the old photos: David, Jeandré, Kevin, Bronwyn. And of course, there were the other grown Stucke children - Willem, and Sally, as I recall - who came on brief holidays...

On weekends we got a lift to the market in nearby Gramat, where we could browse the laden stalls, observe locals-with-pastis and scritch the bony heads of goats. G made the uncomfortable connection between the goat-scent on his hand and last night's casserole...We walked home from the market in a noisy, carefree group, the hedgerows tall with wild flowers on either side of the deserted lanes. On Sundays we were given the keys to the Kombi and a vague set of directions to the river - La Dordogne - where we picnicked and swam against the surprising tug of the current to the gravelly opposite shore.

Motley crew

Christine and Henry assigned us each a household chore to do in addition to the renovation work. I loaded the dishwasher from the first meal, and, with Henry, it had to be right! Later, I would be on laundry and kitchen duties. Christine was militant about certain things, and one of them was waste - she would not tolerate it. Under her direction I cut the bruised bits from fruit I would otherwise have spurned and she made jars and jars of jam from it. She could be intimidating, but she made me step out of my comfort zone and she left a lasting impression on me.

Christine insisted on our doing the walk up the river valley to the base of Rocamadour - the famed ancient city built on the steep walls of a gorge on a tributary of La Dordogne and home to the Black Madonna. A group of us did the hike one hot day, very grateful for the shade provided by the overhanging trees and overgrown undergrowth that impeded our path. It was exhausting and much longer than we had anticipated. We didn't carry water (people didn't go everywhere with a bottle of water as they do now) and the going was tough. Much scrambling and climbing as we negotiated the old river bed and the sites of old mills, and I remember the colourful language of certain members of the party when we came across a non-negotiable sheer drop! Arriving at the very base of the Rocamadour cliff, we joined the tourist hordes and plodded upwards to the church of Notre Dame, built in 1479. Unlike the early pilgrims, we declined to make the ascent on our knees.

Rocamadour

The local postman stopped his yellow van in the lane every weekday, mail or shine. He would always have time for a pastis and a chat with Henry in the cool gloom of the dining room before heading off on his rounds. He was the local speleologist and spent his leisure time exploring the labyrinthine limestone caves in the area. Some of the Mites took up the challenge, and returned with hair-raising descriptions of crawling through narrow gaps and wading in thigh-high icy water through subterranean lakes. Not for me.

Although most Mites slept in the attic dormitory, G and I started out sleeping in a private room next to the stairs, above the dining room. Private in the sense that there was a door and no other beds, but there were holes in the floorboards through which we could observe the activity in the room below. After weeks in a tent, a mattress on the floor was bliss. Soon after, perhaps to make room for family members, we were moved to another spot, behind a curtain and closer to the only bathroom, shared by all.

Lawrence did us proud, food-wise, and meals were sumptuous if at times challenging. One memorable night it was calf liver and onions or Cèpe mushroom omelette. (Cèpes - or Porcini mushrooms - are those dinner-plate sized mushrooms that grow beneath the pine needles of the forest floor - a delicacy often sold dried for reconstitution). The quiet stampede of feet to the omelette was matched after midnight by the less quiet stampede of those same feet outside into the night, when the single toilet was quickly overwhelmed by its own popularity and the vomitous were forced to commune with the bushes along the driveway. G and I woke to the distinctive sounds of people throwing up and watched bewildered from the window as figures lined up in the moonlight, Henry among them. One by one, members of the household became violently ill, and only those with little regard for baby cows remained standing. Henry's aged mother were among the fallen, as were most of the Mites. I was fine; G was almost fine as he had eaten only a morsel of omelette. You could say that those who had chosen only the omelette had, well, hedged their bets!

Since I was the unofficial Doctor in residence, I had to organise 3 ambulances (using liver-lover Christine as spokesperson on the phone) and then rush between the ill and the iller-still, ministering liquid and advice. Granny Norwood-Young (Nolonger-Young, at 80), was particularly smitten and lay like a crumpled leaf on her bed, all the feistiness gone out of her. When the ambulances arrived, their distinctive Pim-Pom! Pim-Pom! sirens piercing the pre-dawn quiet, Granny, Henry and the most dehydrated were packed away like submissive sardines into tins, and away they went to Hôpital Louis Conte de Gramat for observation and rehydration. For the Mites, it was a blow to their travel budget, since none of us had travel insurance. Martin, though ill as a snake, refused to go to hospital, preferring to ignore the cramps, ride out the vomiting and rehydrate himself on a shoestring.

On se dirait que the Cèpes had been contaminated with a toxic mushroom...There must be a moral in there somewhere, something to do with liver being good for you?

It's funny now; not so funny then.

After three weeks, we packed our panniers and cycled away up the road, looking forward once again to autonomy, the open road, the wind in our faces, and no particular destination. Once more we would be able to stop at lunch time for a picnic lunch of fresh baguette and camembert, saucisson and water, followed by a snooze in the long grass. We could look forward at supper time to making a meal, literally, of our meagre supplies - packet chicken noodle soup with extra vermicelli and left over bread from lunchtime, lashings of blackcurrant jam on doorsteps of bread and mugs of coffee sweetened with a generous dribble of condensed milk for afters. We could spend the late afternoons - once we'd put up the tent and we'd returned from hot showers - poring over the map and marking up the snail trail we had made in blue biro. G would again keep his meticulous records of our expenses and whittled-down finances. I would make stewed apples from windfall and write in my journal, or try to do justice to a bunch of wildflowers with watercolours.

It would be bliss, and we would know it for what it was.

From Darnis, we headed northeast towards the Massif Central, passing through and camping at St Ceré, Siran and Aurillac...


Twenty two years later we began in earnest our property search in Gramat, and spread our net from there.

À Vendre

I'm going about this in all the wrong ways. If I had started when I meant to, I would be well under way by now, but as it turns out, I will have to get you up to speed on the events of the last year or so and then continue from there. A bit like Star Wars, only less intergalactic warfare and fewer SFX.

OK, so scrolling back to August 2010...

While G and I were camping in St Ceré, in the heart of France (where we had camped twenty-odd years ago on our epic two wheeled adventure - another story for another time), we found ourselves one Sunday morning peering at properties advertised in the window of the several high-street Immobilier offices, all closed for the weekend. Not high-end properties, you understand; definitely lowest of the low end. The kind featuring a single poor photograph of a stone barn or shed and a price accompanied by tantalising, though cryptic phrases such as "grange à rénover", "76 m2 au sol" "vues dégagées", "dans un petit hameau"...

We had always dreamed of owning a small place in France; of living there one day. When we lived just across the Channel, in Kent, we'd holidayed with the kids in France almost every year, slowly stoking the flame of our passion for France and all things French. But owning a property remained a pipe dream.

Fast forward to 2010 and once again, G and I were in France on holiday, though alone this time, the kids no longer kids and no longer interested in family holidays. Sniff. And this time, home was not in leafy Kent. We were no longer "Disgruntled" of Tunbridge Wells, but "Chip on the Shoulder" of Sydney. Sydney, Australia, that is. We had had to endure a nightmare flight lasting at least a week which was instantly erased from memory as we dropped our bags in the small rental apartment in the 19th of Paris. We had just a couple of hours to claim our spot on the Champs Elysées for the cycle-past of the Tour de France...    A week in Paris followed by a slow meander through the summer sloth of the Dordogne, Lot and Cantal departments brought us to nostalgic places from past visits.

And so, back to St Ceré, which we'd fondly remembered for its Medieval town centre, its river, its campsite with stream and bobbing ducks. Only, in the intervening years, the town fathers must have redirected the stream and packed up the loudly-complaining ducks, for neither were in evidence in the town campsite. It was still leafy, though.

But I digress.

We were hooked. Doing frantic sums out loud, we decided that we could, it seemed, afford to buy a pile of stones, a heap of French rubble, and start to plan our attack on our French Folly.