Greener grass of home

Writer Gillian Harvey moved to rural France in search of a quieter life – too quiet, in fact, so the family relocated to a town… and then again to the outskirts of a town! And they’ve never been happier

- Gillian Harvey

Like many, I made the move to France in search of a quieter life. My husband and I worked as teachers, and were suffering from burnout. Our story is a bit of a cliché – we watched one of the property abroad programmes during the summer break of 2008 and decided the grass looked greener across the Channel. A year later, we put a deposit on the house and made the leap to living life French style.

Looking back, it’s not surprising that we selected our first French home for its isolation and rural French charm – it was the type of charming, tumbledown, affordable property that these programmes tend to favour. “We’ll start a B&B!” we said. “We’ll renovate! Perhaps, after a time, we’ll get a few chickens,” we said.

Fast-forward four years, and the charm of complete rural living had started to wear off. Our property was lovely, and although rural life was blissful between March and September, things seemed bleaker during the winter months.

The 5,000m2 garden meant my husband Ray spent more time on his mower than off it during the grass-growing season. We’d also had three children by that time, and wanted to live somewhere with a little more life (and pavements for the pushchair).

In the end, we moved 20km down the road to a small town with just 2,000 inhabitants in 2012. And it suited us down to the ground. We also went for a more manageable property – a terraced house with a garden that we felt confident we could mow without having a complete nervous breakdown.

NEVER AGAIN