Renovation Project - Goodbye Huelgoat. We are leaving France

Renovation Project - Goodbye Huelgoat. We are leaving France

We wake and feel a little strange, this is it, we are leaving Huelgoat and this time it’s likely to be for good. There is so much going on in my head. I love this village and the area and the friends that we have made here, but now we have to make the decision of where we will be going to live and gain citizenship and at the moment Portugal is the place.

However that has not been all plain sailing, we had a selection of houses that we wanted to view, but they were all in the forest, which was so beautiful, but it was the forest where there have been lots of fires and we had to sit down and seriously think about whether we wanted to live in a place with this risk, we know that the risk is there in any country that is hot and has forests but we will be putting everything we have in to this project so very recently we have made the decision to look by the coast. There are properties available but the price is much higher.

We had got our list down to 3 main contenders, but one sold a couple of days ago, so now we have a much smaller selection and only 2 months in the rented house that we have. So our time in Portugal could be quite exciting, 2 months to search, buy and move! But first things first, we actually have to sell.

We meet our buyers at the house and go through the property explaining how everything works and where everything is. The couple who have bought the house are so nice, we are happy to be passing it over to them. We take a final photo of us with the house and then we all go to the notaires.

This is such a different experience to the one we have just had in the UK, there is no daily contact, no unreturned calls or e-mails and now on the day of signing we all sit with the Notaire and he reads through the contract.

The buyers notice a mistake in the spelling of the name, so the contract is immediately changed and updated.

The contract is on a large screen and once he has read it and ensured that the buyers understand, we all sign electronically and then the big moment, we hand the keys over.

This is such a civilised way of buying and selling a house, and so much less stress than the UK way.

But for now it will be one of the final formal things we do in France.

We all shake hands, hug and kiss each other, these people are not just the buyers of our house these people are going to become lifelong friends.

We call at the bank to make sure everything is in place for our trip and then we head back to our friends for the car and sit and have our very last meal here.

Au revoir Huelgoat, we are on our way