Tracy and Lee from Greater Manchester had a dream to move to France. They had run a dog-walking business but after also working had for many years as managers for Royal Mail they wanted to retire early. It would be by selling up and then buying a house in France they could do this.
Says Tracy, now 56: “My father passed away at 53. That made me realise that you can’t take anything for granted. We could withdraw money from our pensions at 55 so we decided to make a fresh start.” In 2023, the couple began their search for a home in Lower Normandy (Manche), a place where they’d holidayed many times. It would be easy to reach from the UK, only an hour or so to the ferry at Caen.
With a budget of £90k they sought a two-bedroom property with a garden. You may have seen the couple on the recent series of A Place in the Sun when they paid full asking price of £74,500 for a former pub in Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie.
Two days after filming in September 2023, they sold their house in Rochdale, put their furniture into storage and rented a house for a month while they prepared for their move to France. At the end of November they would get the keys to their new home. “We applied for a long-stay visa for retirees and were just so keen to get started that the moment we grabbed some suitcases and drove straight to the Tunnel,” she says. “We rented a place in nearby Ger for a month until our home was ready. When we got it the first thing we did was put up a Christmas tree. Our furniture arrived on 5th December.”
The next thing they did was to take the bar out of the former pub. Initially they had planned to put the handsome wooden and chrome piece in Lee’s man cave but they couldn’t get it out of the back door so they sold it for €100. The three-bedroom property had originally been an épicerie (grocers) and they found an ancient telephone – the only one in the whole village at the time, and the owner’s son was the telegraph boy, according to the neighbours.
Getting to grips with living in France has been somewhat harder than the actual move. “It’s brilliant but getting to grips with unfamiliar systems and struggling with the language have been the hardest things,” says Tracy, who’s taking French lessons.
She’s been busy getting out and about to meet people: taking the dog for a walk, a pottery course, a gardening group. Getting used to everything being closed on Sunday has taken a while; and having to drive even to go to a bar or an épicerie. “Sadly a bar in the nearby village closed down,” she says. In fact going for a walk to a pub for Sunday lunch is perhaps the thing they’ve missed most about their old life – that and family – Lee’s daughter has over to visit though.
She says the weather hasn’t been great either. “Lee doesn’t like the heat so that’s all bad, plus it’s a lot better than Manchester. It’s lush green and overall, life is brilliant. We renewed our wedding vows in the church across the road and then went off in our new campervan for a month to southern France and Spain. Here the beaches are beautiful, and we can see Mont Saint-Michel from our garden. It’s great not having to work.”
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