Congratulations BritishCaicos, how wonderful to be able to live out your dream! Wish many happy years in your new home, with a bon rouge by your side...

Kerouac

you had me thinking for a moment but no 926 miles in all, 300 in the U.K. and 600 miles in France.

KayF

French - I’m getting there and have every intention of being fluent, it’s hard when the people Aquitaine are generally very receptive to Brits and instantly reply back in English. The French property system is brilliant, I hadn’t been aware that one Notaire acts for both sides. In the U.K. we usually have a lazy lawyer for each party both lawyers generally spend most of their time on holiday, fail to communicate and create battles where there shouldn’t be any.

To sign the Compris de Vente we arranged a Zoom call with the Notaire and our vendors who live in Sydney, Australia. They were at 2am and it was good of them to bend their times to attend. Incredible, legal process as we all appeared on the Zoom windows pm the Notaire chaired the meeting with a copy of the agreement in the centre of the screen. She then picked through the 48 page document, fully explaining every clause in English and checked each party was in agreement. At the end of the meeting each party gave POA to office clerks who signed the document for us. What a great and expedient experience. The only down side is this odd period of the searches between exchange and completion, usually around 8 weeks when the local Council is offered the chance to buy the house.

The U.K. is now fully out of the EU , we will not need Visas but are stays are limited to the usually 90 days in 180. It will not be an issue for the first 2 years as we do not have 90 days to spare. When we move over we will apply for full residency. We had private health policies but I’m still not sure about the logistics of health care when we move. One issue that has always prevented from retiring to South Carolina was the cost of health care. Without any established US plan, it would have been prohibitively expensive.

janisJ

Yes, we gave up on The Highaknds, I still have an option on a plot on a hillside overlooking Loch Sunart in Ardnamurchan but the pandemic has focussed many people’s minds. Don’t know what to do with the plot.

just for you





No vines unfortunately

Thursdayd

We’ve spent many happy times in The Carolinas, our first trip to the US many years ago, we fell on Beaufort, NC and nearly didn’t fly home p. Loved it. Our latest favourite place are the Sea islands south of Charleston, goodness knows when we will see them again.

Gorgeous and thanks for posting! Do you offer B&B?

BC, I'm glad it turned out well for you. You have a stunning property. Good luck with your preparations to move and please let us Fodorite francophiles know how it's going from time to time. We welcome ongoing trip reports.

Thursdaysd, I have that thought in my mind also. BC, you may find you have lots of American neighbors in a few years.

Thank you, BritishCaicos. What a pretty place. Congrats on the successful sales paperwork and your Herculean efforts. Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle (RIP) would have loved the online part of it! 😁 They might want to warn you about the open invitation to visitors.. lol. Please keep your Fodor''s friends up to date.

FWIW, here's a shot of St. Em. vinyards from my 2016 trip report:

I sandwiched Bordeaux between 2 Paris stays. May we read more about your France visits!

April in Paris...with a Side of Bordeaux

We edited a few posts. The Lounge is the appropriate place for political discussions. Please help us keep the travel forums a politics-free zone.

And there you have it, the reason why I stopped posting last time.

I’d assumed with an absolutely lack of traffic, you would wish to encourage discussion not delete posts that are not inflammatory, racially toned or abusive.

I am not a child an have no intention of being treated like one.

you’ve lost another poster.

goodbye

That is very heavy handed, some mild discussion about moving abroad based on the outcome of an election. Hardly a reason to remove posts.
Of course comments on moderation are not allowed either, so this post will disappear as well.

Thank you for your trip report BritishCaicos - your house looks great. We sold our property a few years ago, glad not to have to deal with French taxes and utilities anymore, which I found maddening at the time, especially the telecom companies.
Unless we can spend serious amounts of time in a second home, I wouldn't buy one again. But your house looks lovely. Best of luck, hope that we can travel freely again soon!

Tulips

I’m very thick skinned , I don’t care what anyone thinks or would say about me.

I find it incredibly insulting that anyone would delete my thoughts which have never been sexist , racist or abusive (other than to the odd idiot).

This site lost its sense of humour A LONG TIME AGO. it was so much fun 10 years ago.

I don't know what got deleted but the political situation in a given country one plans to visit can be pretty meaningful. Our own local situations can certainly impact our abilities to travel. I don't see how you can fully separate the two. Unless someone writes.[some politician] is an idiot...that's something else.

Sadly, I have to agree with this.

BC, please continue to post about your experiences, I for one have always appreciated your comments and dry wit. As one of the posters said, you can’t really separate the political from our travel questions, especially during this pandemic.

Congratulations once again on the gorgeous property you’ve acquired, you’ll surely be getting many Fodorite visitors now we know where exactly you live...😉

What a dream, BritishCaicos. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations and I hope your lives there are as beautiful as that setting. Sighing over the French doors from the kitchen to the outdoors.

My retirement dream had been long stays in the English countryside, but the scales have fallen from my eyes. There is no there there, any longer. Not in the UK, or the US, or even my other home of Okinawa—and those are political and societal issues that color travel experiences. (Anyone who disagrees should visit Chicago on a protest weekend.)

Please don't leave. I don't 'think' any posts were deleted - just some small edits if I remember correctly. To be fair the same thing has been done on other threads. Fodors lets us post just about anything we want in the Lounge - its a free for all over there. But they've been pretty consistent keeping politics off the travel forums. I think that is a good idea myself - the travel boards are for travel info, not rehashing Brexit or elections or which party is great and which is pants.

(These posts may be deleted since they have also been pretty consistent knocking down discussion of moderation._

OK Janis has explained the new rules which seem to curb social interaction to false environmental but hey ho.

ChgoGal

there are only two places left in the world we want to really see - they are the West coast of The States and Japan. Okinawa was on the agenda as the seascapes look amazing, I seem to remember it’s quite far South in the archipelago? I think we were going to use it as a beach stop over.

thanks everyone else for the lovely words , we had to try to move on in life, just no idea when this is all going to end. We received a letter from our bank indicating that negative interest rates were entirely possible. The charge was more than the Tax Foncière on the house in France. Hence, we had the choice of staring at a bank balance costing us money or staring a picture of a house we couldn’t visit which costs us less money. I think we made the best choice. (I hold no particular political party responsible for the current low interest rates)

Is StCirq still around she’ll hate me , she hated Saint Emilion with every bone in her body!

Used to make me laugh when Pal called her a cave dweller. I miss his unobtrusive wit.

Yes StCirq still posts quite a bit. I'think' mostly in the Lounge.

Please remember that discussion and complaints about moderation are not permitted. We are not deleting some of the above posts that come close to the line to help maintain the flow of the thread. Thank you for the cooperation.

Yes, StCirq detested St Emilion and always said it was nothing but a tourist trap, she strongly dissuaded me from going there when I was looking at the Bordeaux region some years back!