Ten years on - the journey begins ................. part 1

Since the early 1980's we have travelled in France for our holidays. In the early days we were both teaching so would set off for nearly six weeks, making the most of the long holidays. We travelled to most regions, but were drawn back to two main areas the Alps and the Charente.

In the Charente we mostly holidayed with our caravan at a small site at Bignac,near Angouleme. Our children loved it there, and wanted to return every year. It was a relaxing holiday for us as they were able to make friends and keep themselves occupied at the pool, lake, boules or tennis.

The Charente department

Camping Marco de Bignac (from their brochure)

Winter holidays were spent skiing, staying mostly at the small village of Chatel  in the Portes du Soleil ski area.

In 2004 we decided the time had come to buy a property and that Chatel  in the Haute Savoie was just the place!

The campsite at Chatel was full, so we booked a small site at St Paul en Chablais in the hills above Evian les Bains as our property hunting base.

St Paul en Chablais,  Haute Savoie.

Quite by chance one morning we drove up to Thollon les Memises and found views to take your breath away. Within an hour we had found the apartment we wanted to buy!

Our apartment (the one with the yellow sale boards) with the Memises behind.



The developer was building some new apartments, and to show us the quality of the build took us into another block, which was a year old ,where unexpectedly a re-sale had just come on to the market.
We were staggered by the views  from the balcony of Lac Leman.

Lac Leman from our balcony, looking west.



The apartment was the right size and prices were lower than at Chatel. Tim knew straight away that we had found 'the one'. Being Libran it took me a little longer!! Within a day we had signed our first contract.

The rest is history (as they say). Or for readers of this blog the history will be the future, as periodically I  blog about this beautiful area and the wonderful time we had there.