Land of milk and horses

If you seek an affordable rural property with lots of land, then Mayenne may be for you, especially if you’re an equestrian, says Melissa Raton

- Melissa Raton

Pourquoi la Mayenne?” was the first question our new neighbours asked us when they came to our home for introductory drinks. Not being fluent in French, I looked towards my husband Charles to find out what these words meant. When he told me they were asking us “Why Mayenne?”, we shrugged before answering: “Why not!”

The Mayenne department of France is largely undiscovered, not only by expats but by French people too. So our French neighbours were surprised to hear that we had bought our first and forever home here, without having any family or work connections in the area.

ROOM TO BREATHE

What drew my husband and I here is very simple: we could afford to buy the space that we craved, in a well-connected region with an agricultural heart, similar to where I grew up in Fife, Scotland. Our house looks like an elegant old townhouse when you first see it on the main street of our village. But once you drive through the entrance archway you become part of a magical world that is for our eyes only.

We have the best of both worlds with our house. We are in the centre of a village that has an artisan bakery (which bakes its bread in a traditional wood-burning oven), church, library, nursery school and hairdressers, but we also have the privacy of a detached home in the countryside. The back of our property is all about space. We have a courtyard surrounded by large stone barns, a second house, a vegetable garden, a walled orchard and nearly four hectares of grazing land. We purchased our property in 2018 for €140,000 – a figure we could never have replicated in the UK for a property of this size and in a well-connected location.

FARMING TRADITIONS