Nine years ago, on this day (well actually on 14th August 2006) we saw our future home, Le Presbytere, for the first time. When we got back to the world of internet connection again I put up there pictures of the first impressions and which I had stored long hand (we have come a long way !)

Blog from the end of August 2006

Well well well, home again after the longest and most significant holiday ever.
47 days of holiday, nearly seven weeks during which we drove over 5000 miles,
visited whole loads of France and Spain and the significant bit is that, if all goes well, we have also started the process of buying our house in France.
As a true and dedicated blogger I kept a longhand journal of the whole epic, I filled most of a large foolscap copy with my ramblings, I also managed to take a few snaps, over 500 (and that only with merciless pruning).

Now begins the process of trying to transcribe all of that into edible “words” pieces.

But first things first.
The French house.

The house is an 19th century Presbytery in the village of Thézan-les-Béziers.
The village is in Herault, in the Languedoc, about 15 minutes from Béziers, and about half an hour from the Mediterranean.

The house is big,they say 195 sq metres, (about 2000 sq feet) but this omits the attic and the cellar. In Ireland we would call it closer to 3000 sq feet.
It has six bedrooms, a living room, a huge kitchen which leads out on to big terrace with great views down to the Pyrenees, a court yard and a little garden
(100 sq metres) which has a huge tree growing in it.

It is very ratty at the moment,dirty and unloved with wallpaper and carpets from the sixties but has some beautiful features, two marble fireplaces, some terrific plasterwork, and some great tiles on the floors.
It was last lived in by some nuns attached to the church, and it is from the parish council of Montpellier that we are buying the property.

Here are some pictures.

This is the front door, it looks hundreds of years old,
note the boot scrapers on each side.

The terrace.

Marble fireplace in one of the bedrooms
with beautiful plasterwork over.

Looking out of the kitchen on the terrace and the tree.
(and the Pyrenees in the distance)

In the courtyard we found a life sized Lady of Lourdes.

Our bid has been accepted and now we await the process of purchase which will take about three months.
You may await further developments.