High On Life

Leslie Rayney and Teo Leyssen enjoy a serene, rural lifestyle in the Ardèche mountains with their goats, bees and newly adopted donkey. Theirs isn’t the obvious option for a new life in France, and it hasn’t always been easy, but they wouldn’t have it any other way, as Kate McNally discovers.

- Kate McNally

When an English lawyer based in London and a Belgian whale watcher, who has spent the previous seven years on a boat in the Hebrides, met on holiday in Mexico and fell in love, they had to find a middle ground fairly quickly for their future life together. For Leslie Rayney and Teo Leyssen, it turned out to be a tiny hamlet in the rural village of Albon in Ardèche. It could have easily been Somerset, although the house prices were very expensive, or Scotland where Teo was offered a job at the university. But then they went on holiday to Ardèche where Leslie had spent two idyllic summers as a child, and their thoughts turned towards a new life in France.

“I spent two summers with my mother and brother in a village called Sceautres, just opposite Alba-la-Romaine,” says Leslie. “The house we stayed in was completely dilapidated, next door to the bell tower. It belonged to a friend of my mother who lived down the road from us in Oxford – it had been her grandfather’s house. We drove down, met them here and spent two months just running around the fields and mountains, totally free, getting the milk from the farm every morning. I loved it! That’s why I wanted to come back for a holiday.”

Teo admits he didn’t even know Ardèche existed before his first visit, and even though they spent two slightly chilly weeks camping in March, he was equally charmed by the region. So, they returned with a map of Ardèche divided up into quarters and set about discovering each area to see where they wanted to live. Soon, they spied a house for sale in a brochure picked up in a bakery, arranged a visit and bought it. That was in November 2003. They moved to France in May 2004.