Eight years ago Sue and Terry George decided to buy a holiday house deep in the Deux-Sèvres countryside. Terry wanted a renovation project and Francophile Sue wanted to give their two children, Daniel and Philippa, a taste of France. Moving there for good wasn’t part of the original plan but they fell in love with the landscape, the lifestyle and the people, and now their one-time Gâtine holiday retreat is their permanent family home.
‘Originally we were looking for a stone house to renovate because we couldn’t afford a lovely stone house in Hampshire,’ says Sue. ‘Terry isn’t very good at holidays and I love France and wanted the children to enjoy France too. We were actually looking for a small place but we found the house we live in now which is much larger than we originally planned.’
They bought the house in La Villette – a hamlet about 5km outside the village of L’Absie – in December 2000, when Daniel was nine and Philippa, three, and spent the next three-and-a-half years holidaying there whenever they could.
‘We camped in it because it was very basic and it needed a lot of work,’ says Sue, laughing at the memory of the early days. ‘It was an adventure. The children would play in the jungle that was the garden and I would sit in the sunshine cleaning and Terry would work on the property. We came over every holiday and we gradually fell in love with it more than we expected.’
To begin with it was never their intention to sell up and leave their home in Hedge End, near Portsmouth, but gradually the pull from the other side of the Channel became too hard to resist.
‘I was in banking and was very level-headed and career-minded,’ says Sue. ‘There was no way I was going to move to a foreign country and not have a steady income. It’s not that we weren’t happy with Britain but it’s just so lovely here – the pace of life, the lifestyle, how children are treated…’
As is often the way with these things, a twist of fate in the summer of 2004 helped the family make a ‘now or never’ decision. Sue was made redundant and rather than look for another job, they decided to make
the leap.
Social network
‘We used to find that every time we left, we felt more at home and at peace here and so when it came down to it, it wasn’t as big a decision as it might have been. We knew people in the village and we used to go to village functions; there was a Parisian family who still holiday here and our children were the same age as their children. We were moving into a network of friends and neighbours who we knew and who knew us and that made it so much easier.’
The children were now 13 and rising 7 and had to take the big step into French school – Daniel went into 5ème in collège (UK year 8) while Philippa started primaire in CE1 (UK year 3). To give him time to learn French before he sat his brevet examination at the end of collège, Daniel was advised to redouble.
‘He repeated 5ème to give him one year to learn the language and then two years to study for his brevet,’ says Sue. ‘Those two years count before the brevet and because he was a summer birthday, it didn’t really make a lot of difference anyway.
‘I expected Daniel to find it harder than Philippa but he just flew. He was a sponge and really put his mind to it. He had basic French but he absolutely made it his mission that he was going to make this a success. Within a year he was catching up with the class and he’s at lycée now. ‘There are English children studying at lycée who’ve been here since a very young age but he only had three years so to be studying at Baccalauréat level now…we’re really proud of him.’
For Philippa, the transition to school was trickier. There wasn’t the same language support at primaire as there was at collège – Daniel got two hours a week of extra French – and fewer teachers spoke English. ‘It was our daughter who found it harder at the beginning,’ says Sue. ‘She’s totally French now when it comes to school but it took her longer to settle in. It wasn’t easy for her because she just had to muddle through.’
Now, nearly four years on, the children are bilingual and completely integrated into French culture. Philippa’s accent is such that she’s had teachers who have taught her for six months before they’ve realised she’s English.
‘They are both happy and totally accepted. They go to parties; my son has friends from collège as well as ones he’s made at lycée – he’s just one of the lads. He’s 16 now and he’s got a moped. I can see why they have them here at such a young age; it frees up the parents. I was driving him all over the place for the first year but once he passed his test he could go on his own. It gives teenagers some independence.’
Mental stimulation
As a family they can see nothing but advantages in their move to France. ‘I thought I’d miss my career but I didn’t,’ says Sue. ‘We threw ourselves into what we were doing so much so that we had a lot of mental stimulation – learning a new language, getting the children settled in school, getting into the health system, getting Terry registered as a self-employed builder. The challenge continues so you don’t get mentally bored.’
As time goes on it’s family and friends that Sue misses most, although some are following in their footsteps – Terry’s parents moved to a house down the road last summer and Sue’s sister and family now live near Niort. The children, however, have to a greater or lesser extent left their English roots behind.
‘Daniel George is a very French name which is very handy because he likes to be French now,’ says Sue. ‘I think both children see themselves as more French than English. When we went back to England to see our family and friends, Daniel didn’t want to come. All his friends are here now so we didn’t insist that he came because there’s nothing there for him.’
Ten-year-old Philippa enjoyed the trip to the UK, rekindling old friendships with ease. She did struggle with the food, however.
‘It was quite funny. We went to a restaurant for lunch and Philippa ordered mussels because she loves moules and she didn’t recognise anything else on the menu,’ laughs Sue. ‘I don’t do tremendously French food but they are quite accustomed to the food here. I have to do their steaks rare whereas ours wouldn’t be.’
Sue and Terry always knew they would have to earn a living in France and have set up two businesses since they arrived. Terry’s building business is thriving and Sue manages the two luxury gîtes they have renovated and now let out to holiday-makers and house hunters.
‘We look at the gîtes as being primarily my work which I can do while being here with the children,’ says Sue. ‘It’s work which you can do around having a family but you have to be realistic. We couldn’t live on the gîtes and I think it’s important that people know that. It’s Terry’s building income that is our main year-round income.’
The gîtes are attracting more visitors every year though. Sue enjoys the customer contact and now has changeover days down to a fine art.
‘The children are very understanding. They know there’s no point talking to me until I’ve finished but I’m there for them and when you look at it like that it’s a nice little income. Wages aren’t very high in this part of France and if I went to work, which would be difficult anyway with my language, I wouldn’t earn much more than I do working full-time probably. I definitely wouldn’t have the flexibility that I have. That’s what I like about it.’
They have found life in France to be very family-orientated which has made it a delightful place to raise children.
‘The shops are all shut on a Sunday so you do a family thing because you can’t do anything else. Daniel will often come out with us on a Sunday because all his mates are with their families even at 16 or 17. He might go out nightclubbing on a Friday night with his friends but on a Sunday they will all be sitting round having lunch with granny and granddad and the rest of the family and that’s really nice. It’s a good place for families definitely.’
Beautiful countryside
So when they spend time together as a family, the Georges often head off for a walk in the beautiful countryside which surrounds their home or transport their bikes 40 minutes south for an afternoon’s biking in the idyllic Marais Poitevin, an intricate network of canals near La Rochelle.
‘This is what makes Sunday so special. I love going anywhere on a Sunday because the minute you get out, there’ll be cyclists coming through, there’ll be horse riders, big groups of walkers. There’s so much going on on a Sunday because people do these things. These are the subtle differences that make life less stressful here because you have to take Sunday off.’
More than anything else Sue believes that the reason it has worked out so well for them is because they knew what they were letting themselves in for.
‘We weren’t wooed by the television programmes and if anything it’s been better than I expected because I thought, ‘this could be quite tough’. It’s important to have realistic expectations. We knew we’d have to work. We knew we’d have to earn a living. You can’t shy away from that. We didn’t come here to sit in the sun and drink wine. We came here because it’s a lovely place to raise a family and a lovely place to work. It’s a nice pace of life and we try and guard ourselves against making our own rat race. It’s quite easy to fall into old habits and end up working all hours again so we do try not to let that happen.’
Maybe that’s why it doesn’t work for everybody…
‘One of the things I’ve found interesting since coming here is how many people go back. I think that almost half the people who come here go back after a couple of years and that’s all age groups as well. They miss the family too much or their friends. It’s not the same story for everybody.’ But happily for la famille George, it seems things have worked out very nicely indeed.