On The Road - Chapter 2
Next day, after another surprisingly luxurious night’s sleep in the back of the car (we were blessed all week with balmy weather, night and day), we started work on the househunting, departing the campsite, parking in town and searching out ‘AriegeImmo’ in time for our 10am appointment. We spent the rest of the morning with Nicky, who took us out into the mountains to look at two houses, one at the very end of the very last hamlet on a very remote lane off the main road running through the Val de Bellongue, west of St Girons, the other down in the valley itself. Neither were what we wanted; the first was a pretty house, indescribably well located in terms of its beautiful surroundings, if not its accessibility (although not as beautifully located, or indeed inaccessible, as a later one), but in need of a total overhaul inside. The selling price alone was over our budget, so when factoring in the cost of renovation, it was far too expensive, and even if we’d been able to afford it, it wasn’t quite right.
The second was huge: six bedrooms, three storeys, enough land to hide a horse (who appeared from his hiding place rather too promptly for comfort as we were wandering round the grounds) and a view from the balcony to surpass that of the first house. But again, it was expensive, bordering on derelict, and clearly not ‘the one’.
We ended the day with another immo, who was this time French, which allowed all parties to practice their French/English where appropriate whilst he drove us to the third house (prompting a mercenary Squidge to realise the possibility of a cheap touring holiday courtesy of a series of immos and their cars, on the pretence of searching for a house). By the time we arrived, it was 6pm, we were at 1000 metres, and the sun was setting over Mont Valier, one of the highest peaks in the Ariege, but nevertheless seemingly in the back garden. The proximity of the house to the highest peaks, the soaring raptors and proper wilderness, as well as its ample size, totally renovated state, impressive frontage and affordable price tag, was utterly seductive, to the extent that we temporarily overlooked the fact that it had no road access (3-4 minute walk from a barely metalled lane), and that no-one else lived within 200 metres of its altitude full time, with the rest of the hamlet consisting solely of maisons secondaires, visited in summer by the city dwellers of Toulouse. It sounds ludicrous now, but it was so stunningly beautiful that we suspended all logic and practicality and temporarily looked upon it favourably as a possibility.
Luckily, over an ironically sobering glass of wine that evening, we figured out why it was so cheap, and the next morning politely told Jean the immo that it was trop haut, at least for a couple of English mountain-living virgins.
So, three seen, none worth offering on, and next day we chugged over two high passes in an ever more dependable Land Rover, who was finally coming into his own on terrain he seemed to revel in, climbing up to 1500m like an ‘assisted’ cyclist, via Seix and Aulus-les-Bains, heading east to Tarascon-sur-Ariege. Having driven through mist, then fog, then steady drizzle, then summer sunshine, then fog worse than the previous fog, or indeed any fog ever delivered from above in the history of fog, and then sunshine again as we came out of the high mountains, we were welcomed into the Val de Vicdessos by a golden eagle chasing something soon-to-perish, flying maybe three to five metres above and in front of our windscreen, its shadow vivid on the tarmac below.
At that point, I forgot about the househunting and was delightedly distracted by the experience for the rest of the day, a state I was able to sustain into the next day, as that next day was Sunday, which would be as likely to see an open immobilier as the city of Manchester would be to see a United supporter. In other words, we had a free day, which we used to read and research in the sun next to the Ariege river, before taking a break from our hitherto exclusively bread, cheese and water diet (and ok a drop of that sobering wine) by treating ourselves to a pizza from a bizarre shed outlet in the Super U car park - high rolling indeed.
Next day, back to work. Tarascon boasts two immobiliers, each within a few doors of the other. We visited both, and by 10am had shrewdly come out of the second without securing a viewing of anything in the area from either. Unfortunately, the town’s relative proximity to Toulouse, and the improvement of the road south of Foix, had recently driven prices up, signalling something of a disparity between the market and our budget.
Thus, having scheduled the day for viewings, we had no reason to stay, and therefore returned to St Girons, with a view to using it as an overnight stopping off point before fruitlessly leaving Ariege and starting the Haute Pyrenees leg of the hunt.