Number 6 Reno - When Will We Learn?

Well, heading into our last full week in Céret things were pretty quiet. Some meals with friends and some short walks. This was soon all to change!

As per normal, John had been trolling the local real estate websites to see if our dream house had come in. We had spied a few ads we wanted to follow up so called in at one of the agents (Valerie) to find out more. These weren't suitable, as it turned out they weren't in central Céret. However a day or two later Valerie spied us outside the office and said she had a friend from the DGSE, France's Secret Service, from Paris who she thought would be very interested in our apartment. Last year we had her through to give an estimate of its value with or without a terrace and second bedroom. Anyway, to cut to the chase, the boyfriend was coming to Céret to spend the weekend with her and we organised for them to have a look through on Friday morning. She said he 'had plenty of money' and the silly price we mentioned didn't appear to be an issue. The opportunity to sell at a premium merited some hard thinking, with tax changes making an earlier sale attractive. We were even offered the possibility that some of the purchase price could come in the form of a paper bag of cash, so we could further reduce our capital gains tax. We thought about this option, but not for long, as how could we dispose of cash? We can't bank it in France without declaring its provenance, we can't take that much cash into New Zealand for similar reasons, and we couldn't see ourselves using it for every single purchase in Europe until it was all gone.

This sounded promising but threw us into all sorts of dilemmas about selling now versus later, finding somewhere else to buy, possibly needing to rent, storing furniture, capital gains tax, and so on. We ended up by revisiting one of the apartments we had considered before, and had previously decided against mainly because it can't have a terrace and was a load of work. However it is in an even nicer location than where we are now, above the main square, Place des Neuf Jets. We have since been back to it twice, burned the midnight oil on several nights drawing up 3D plans for it, discussed it in depth with our builder, discussed it with friends who know Céret well, and have done a whole lot of number crunching. It looks like the numbers stack up pretty well, and it would be very nice.

Wednesday afternoon we made an offer! Thursday evening it was rejected, but with a new vastly more acceptable asking price. With a little final negotiation we agreed to her price Saturday morning! It is subject to our satisfaction with the mandatory inspection for termites, lead paint, electricity and energy conservation. We also have a 7 day grace period from the formal signing when we can pull out at no cost to us. Scary but we are very excited. 

The project is much bigger than doing up Place de L'Eglise. It is the top floor of a four-story maison du village, and had been completely stripped out to replace the roof. It has electricity and water on, but no internal walls or much of anything else. With a lot of new building work and expense it will give us sunlight, two bedrooms, a good mezzanine, a much more generous and very light and airy living area, high ceilings and much more. It is on the top floor of Place des Neuf Jets, the most beautiful square in Céret. This square is lined with restaurants and is a buzz of activity, not in winter so much, but certainly from May onwards and with the trees in full leaf.

Place des Neuf Jets

So, if all goes well and the sale is confirmed, this will be our 6th turn-of-last-century doer-upper that we have tackled (counting both NZ and France). This one is in fact a tad older - 1867. Maybe we should have been property developers instead of our chosen professions. We don't tire of taking on the work, challenge and risk of starting from scratch with each project and seeing where we can take it. It looks like the rest of this year will be back to the grind of scrubbing, sanding and painting, but this time with the added thrill of plastering all the walls and ceilings and laying floor tiles throughout. Our builder will be constructing all the walls and a mezzanine, but we will do as much of everything else as we can.

View out into Place des Neuf Jets. There is just a little work to do ..........

To continue the story, Valerie and her Parisian 'friend' turned up Friday morning. Valerie told us it wouldn't be before 11:30am because they 'wouldn't be getting up early'. What a laugh! We had given the apartment a supreme clean, including polishing the floors once more so it was looking pretty chipper. Anyway, said friend very much likes the place and we have semi-agreed on a brilliant price subject to us getting the copropriété's consent to allowing us to use the attic space,which is not at all certain, so who knows what value the agreement is!

With one thing and another, our last week here has been full of drama, stress, sleepless nights, endless mathematical workings, and layout designing. We have already chosen the type of door handles we want in the new place! Somehow I don't think we will be arriving in Melbourne is a relaxed mode next week, but maybe we will sleep really well on the plane?

It's now Monday, and most surprisingly, the compromis de vente on our new apartment is in our hot little hands, all signed and sealed. We still have 7 days cool-off period, which we will use to check the documents and most importantly, get an acceptable quote from the builder. We went in to the agent this morning to sign our final offer, and not long after got a call to say it had been accepted and the papers would be forwarded to the notaire. We'd already made an appointment with the notaire to discuss the issues of selling our current apartment, and much to our surprise when we turned up, the vendor was on her way and our meeting turned into a sale, a week before expected. Remember that all this is taking place on the Monday before we leave town for 3 months.

From left, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, spare bedroom.
Paint perhaps needs just a touch-up here and there.

View to the rear, one bedroom each side. Note the sun, something we lack now.

Proposed layout. Mezzanine with Veluxes sits over the stairwell, hall, kitchen and bathroom.
Bedrooms and living room will have ceilings following the sloping roof line.

Health, Heights & History

We are now, finally, over our colds. Phew. Last week was a pretty quiet week, but we ended on a real high - literally. We planned to do a shortish walk, around 8km, to test if we were back up to proper walking mode after our lurgies. John checked out a few walking options on the net and we chose one that looked suitable and was a loop setting off from a nearby village. Unfortunately, while the profile of the walk looked reasonable, we didn't look closely enough at the X and Y scales, i.e. distance and height of climb. 

We were soon to find out however. Donning a small backpack, complete with standard baguette and other picnic items, we set off uphill from Montesquieu. If we had realised at that time that our ultimate destination would be the highest peak on the distant range I'm not sure we would have continued. We proceeded to push our way up a slightly overgrown track and climbed unceasingly and steeply for the next 2½ hours. Wow. After ploughing through bush we ended up trekking through fairly open granite country, up above the clouds and with magnificent views.

A little refuge on the top provided a shelter for those caught out in bad weather but was also a gorgeous place to sit outside in the warm sun and have out picnic lunch at 2.30pm. Since we were on the ridge of the Pyrenees, magnificent views extended into Spain on one side, across the French plains, and back to the peak of Canigou opposite us, up our valley to Céret and east towards the Med. It was absolutely stunning, and just reinforced how much we are enjoying our walks exploring the region.

We were pretty much at our limit by the time we got to the top of the ridge, but were very pleased with how our lungs and stamina held up. Fair proof we are back to full health. Recharged after our lovely picnic we descended by an alternate route, again pretty steep but not quite as bad, but we were certainly reliant on our walking poles for much of the trek. Another 2 hours saw us finally stagger to our car, with very tired legs but we are already talking about doing it again when we return to France, hopefully in Spring when all the plants will be in full flower.

Immediately we set foot in the car we agreed that a cold beer and pizza was in order for dinner. We called in briefly at Le Boulou to say goodbye to our good friend Samir who now works at the bank there. He worked in the Céret branch when we arrived here a few years ago and he was brilliant in getting our bank accounts and other things up and running. Interesting that he has found Le Boulou far worse off than Céret. Much of his time is now spent following up on loan defaults, whereas in Céret it was new business.

After Friday's expedition we continued on with our plans to have a small last tiki-tour before we head home in less than two weeks' time. We had been intending to visit L'Escala and Empuries (in Spain) for quite a while. Friends have told us how great the place is but we wanted to have more than just a day trip to explore, even though it is only 1 hour's drive from Céret.

We had booked a room for Saturday night, and arrived in L'Escala in time to get maps from the tourist office, have a coffee and a good wander around the town. It was previously a centre of anchovy processing, and has been for literally thousands of years as I will explain later. We treated ourselves to a good lunch at La Gruta, recommended by a number of friends. For the same price as an ordinary to good lunch in France, you get a top-class meal and superb service. Thoroughly enjoyable. Being Spain, lunch didn't finish until 4pm. We were still a bit tired from our trek, so after some more wandering and a little shopping it was an early night.

We had expected the highlight of this mini-break would be the Greek and Roman ruins next door to the current town of L'Escala. Sure was! We had little idea that Empuries had such a full set of ruins - a Greek trading town from 500BC complete with outer walls, squares, agora, cisterns, fish salting factory and so on, plus a Roman town which was built next door about 200BC (to prevent the Greeks supplying Hannibal) which was even more extensive - forum, baths, houses, walls, stadium and so on. We were amazed at the extent and clarity of it all, and the whole lot within an hour from home. Excellent descriptive signs throughout, with English for a change, and even a nice little museum.

Roman to the left, Greek centre top, beautiful beaches right

Roman

Greek temple steps and statue

To top off a really superb time there, we had a delicious tasty tapes lunch at a little restaurant at the old Iberian settlement beyond the Greek ruins.

We think this will make a superb guests' day out from Céret. Leave at 9, arrive at 10, visit the ruins until 1, lunch at La Gruta, walk back to the car, have a swim (the beaches are perfect), finish off with tapes and head back home in the evening. It would be hard to imagine a better or more varied day out.

In our case, we finished off having a most enjoyable dinner with friends back in Céret. A pretty damn good weekend.

Xmas and New Year

Well, our plan for experiencing a northern hemisphere Christmas, with all its trimmings, didn't quite go according to plan. Of course one of the hopes was to fluke a snowy Xmas here in Céret, or at least snow close by. Despite a good dump of snow in the ranges in November, and cold temperatures, the weather then warmed up a little and the skies have stayed mostly blue and sunny throughout. No more snow to lowish levels and certainly none in Céret. Not to worry, we could still hit a skifield 2 hours away if we wanted to.

Our Xmas tree and 'warming' fire.
Alastair put out a healthy offering of fruit, chocolate and water for Father Christmas

Another wish was to see lots of Xmas decorations and festivities around about. Unfortunately we didn't get to a bigger centre like Montpellier, and the few days we spent in Barcelona just before Xmas didn't provide a lot in the way of Xmas fare. However, Céret put on quite a good show itself, including lots of decorations inside and outside shops, Xmas lights over the streets, hot chocolate on market days, some group carol singing, dancing and even (dreadful) carols over the public loud speaker system during the day. 

One of the things that has impressed us is the children's activities that have been set up around the town (dodgems, Zorbs on water, trampolining on safety harnesses and so on) that are free for everyone. They've been popular all through the festive season. We imagine they are paid for by council, as are various occasions when there is free wine and cookies on offer. Did I mention the large (polystyrene) animals council has placed strategically around town? Turn a corner and you will come across a host of penguins standing in a park, a bunch of foxes, the odd seal or walrus nestled amongst ripples of polyester wool, or the odd stray deer parked beside the post office. Not to be outdone, one of the local storekeepers has placed a full sized electric bear outside her shop, which, when you wave your foot in front of it, comes to life, wiggles and jiggles and sings a Xmas song. All good fun, if slightly wacky.

The highlight of our Xmas season was of course having Alastair to stay for 12 days. The lowlight was both John and I coming down with rotten head colds the day before he arrived. Despite this, we had a nice cruisy time in Barcelona together, and when we returned to Ceret continued our quiet relaxed theme with lots of chatting over coffee, short walks and small expeditions. It was very enjoyable and relaxing. Unfortunately, neither John nor I were well enough to contemplate a few days' skiing, so it was to no avail that Alastair had carted his snowboard and gear all the way here. The weather in the mountains was apparently pretty windy a lot of the time anyway, but we could probably have got up for a day if we had been well.

The last day before Alastair left we made a day trip to the Cathar castles that John and I had explored a few weeks earlier and which we had enjoyed so much. It turned out to be another spectacular day. We managed to squeeze in two short walks to hermitages, morning coffee stop, leisurely lunch, a narrow gorge road and spend three or so hours exploring two ridgeline castles. During the day the weather grew progressively more threatening, so that when we were at the highest point of the second castle, storm clouds and a double rainbow provided a spectacular backdrop. Alastair was pretty much in raptures, as were we. A brilliant day all round.

Chapel on the pilgrim route

Hermitage

Inside the cliff-face hermitage

Alastair catching the rainbow

A very early start on the 30th and we delivered Ali to the airport at Barcelona by 9am for his flight to Stockholm. We had a pretty slow drive back to Céret, through the alpine areas of Spain, coming back into France through a minor pass in the Pyrenees.

Since then we've coughed and spluttered our way back to nearly full health, over three weeks after I first came down with it. Unfortunately, it wasn't in time to participate in the New Year's Eve party/sleepover we had been invited to with friends. That was gutting. We were in bed by 9.40pm and only woke briefly to hear the cheering and whistles of the locals here at midnight.

However we had a superb day a couple of days ago catching up with our French friends. On a short walk up the hill yesterday we bumped into Jean-Pierre and ended up being invited for an apéritif with him and Véronique. That turned into a full picnic lunch and coffee out on their terrace. We weren't home for long after that before we set off for a dinner at the home of other French friends. We enjoyed yet another stunning French meal and lively conversation for another 6 hours!

We haven't been speaking much French to each other over recent weeks so were quite chuffed with how well we coped with the lingo. We really want to keep working on it and be another step along before we return later this year if possible.

Yesterday was another stunning display of food at lunchtime. The friends we were to spend New Year's Eve with gathered again for a repeat performance that John and I could participate in. Lunch started at 1pm and we left at 5pm. It was lovely and warm and sunny so we could eat out on the top terrace and had a wonderful time together.

Wally looks a bit like Father Christmas

Strawberries Father Christmases we made for the occasion