Département de la Vienne

Waking up feeling rough with ‘Man Flu’ was not how I wanted to feel on the day of the mega viewing session. What had been six viewings lined up had happily dropped to five before we set off, as one house was now under offer.
We met Kate (who we had met back in April when we did some house hunting with the Hollywoods) at the church in Genouillé. Off we went to a property at Les Mauvoisins which on arrival was situated on a small lane next to what looked like a travellers camp.
The house was ok but on entering, immediately due to the rain again today, we found water dropping from the ceiling in the lounge. The house was small but had access to an adjoining barn which had extension possibilities - but fairly quickly Tre and I had decided it was certainly not for us.
We left Kate and drove to Civray to grab some food, stopping in a small boulangerie pâtisserie on the outskirts of the town. We had the best quiche I think I personally have ever had. Everything was baked on site and we will defo be going back. We stayed a little longer than expected as the rain hammered it down for a short period, Teresa and I laughing at customers running in looking like drowned rats, most of them cursing - in French, but I got the idea of what they were saying.
We grabbed some fuel across the road and then set off to Chaunay to meet another Nathalie - the one who had shown us the Hank house a couple of weeks ago.
The house at Chaunay was in a small hamlet just outside called Les Fants (initially given to us on an email spelt Les Farts, which made Teresa comment that we were never living there!). A very rural location and very quiet despite the N10 across some fields out of sight. The house oozed being looked after and loved, with a barn half way down the lovely lawned garden, which you could walk through to the second lawned section. The house was immaculate with lovely heavyweight oak furniture and heavy wooden doors. Teresa and I only had one real issue - it was too finished, to well maintained a finished house - nothing for Tre and I to actually do which was never our plan for coming here. It seemed the strangest reason to not want somewhere. So after a shortish viewing we departed in convoy with Nathalie to the second house she was showing us. We had also at this point decided to cut four viewings to three for the afternoon.
We drove back basically from the north of Deux Sèvres to the southern most part to a house in Souvigné - again!
This house in comparison the the last, needed a whole host of work and had multiple rooms, so the work was to be honest daunting. Not only that it came with a smaller accompanying house which actually was a wreck. At one point Nathalie looked towards me and I simply said ‘No’. It didn’t take long to close the house up and we were off again to the last one for the day.
Travelling east we crossed over the N10 yet again to a distance east of it roughly the same that Souvigné was to the west of it. We stopped in a hamlet not far from Nanteuil-en-Vallée at a property that felt distinctly Mediterranean. The property currently has no kitchen but a room suitable for one. Two large ish bedrooms and one smaller. An attached barn and about an acre of land on a slope. I immediately sensed Teresa was in excited happy mode and to be fair I felt the same. The views from the top of the field were spectacular as the sun began to set. There was quite a lot of work to get on with but not so much that it made the project seem impossible. Weirdly I didn’t take as many photos as normal which probably meant I was concentrating on the property more this time. We said our goodbyes to Nathalie and then drove and stopped at the top of the land around the property, this is when we saw the views - jaw dropping.
Both of us were quite quiet on the drive home, both thinking over all the houses we had seen today but primarily the last one.
Home an hour ish later we had some of the chilli from the other evening with loads of bread - we were both starving. Then it was straight to bed as we are getting up early for the airport in the morning - Munch is back!Læs mere