King and Queen of the castle

Dick Strawbridge and his wife Angel Adoree swapped their east London flat for a romantic château in the Loire Valley. But bringing the 18th-century property into the 21st century wasn’t always the fairy-tale story it would seem, as Catriona Burns discovers.

- Catriona Burns

Once upon a time, in a land just across the Channel, a newly engaged couple called Dick and Angel scoured the French countryside in search of their dream family home. They imagined that their £300,000 budget could afford them a cute country cottage, a renovated farmhouse or even a seaside villa but when they discovered that it could buy them a grand château in the Loire Valley, all of their wildest dreams came true…

“Every night, we sit on our steps with a glass of something and smile for 10 minutes,” Dick says of the pair’s rather enviable night- time routine.

It’s little wonder the couple are keen to toast their success – they’ve certainly earned it. At £280,000 the château may have been a bargain, especially compared to UK prices, but it came with quite a considerable catch. Having been abandoned for 40 years, the property was without electricity, heating or running water and so the couple embarked on a monumental restoration project to bring it back to its former glory, all of which was documented in the Channel 4 series, Escape to the Château. “She’s found the one she wants,” Dick shouts in the opening episode on their first visit to the property. “We’re in trouble.”

In the months that followed, the couple moved out of their east London flat to France where they got to work on the renovation process, giving themselves an autumn deadline in time to host their planned wedding celebrations at the venue. In the depths of winter and with two young children to care for, the process took its toll at times, especially when Dick had to leave Angel, or Angela as he likes to call her, for work to finance the cost of the restoration. “I moved my family to a building site and then I had to leave to work in America for two months,” Dick recalls. “It was very hard for Angela and I felt very far away.”