Dreams on track, finances off road

It is now 18 months since I left the UK and embarked on my dream of earning a living in France. It's been a terrific experience, but it looks as if I will be spending the winter - and perhaps longer - back in the UK.

The plan I had when I started was to spend the first year finishing the decorating work in my farmhouse, converting our granary into a small, cosy, one-bedroom flat to live in, and then market the farmhouse as a gîte over the winter, so it would start earning some money during the summer of 2005.

I knew it wouldn't be easy. Speaking little French and with a similar lack of experience in either DIY or running a gîte, I knew I would need a lot of luck, as well as a fair amount of money, before I could support myself. With this in mind, I planned to use the drawdown facility on my current account mortgage to finance the building work on the conversion as well as to buy food and pay the bills in the interim.

So, after 18 months, what have I achieved? Well, I am able to write this from my light and airy, open-plan granary conversion, with its view of the courtyard and over to the woods that crown the ridge of the valley. The granary conversion is everything I hoped it would be, and it promises to be cosy in the winter too, cloaked as it is with 20cm of thick insulation around all the walls and the roof.

The farmhouse sits ready to receive guests, the lawns are trimmed and my vegetable plot has been giving up its harvest to help see me through the autumn.

Several months of French lessons have meant that I am able to have a stab at starting a conversation with one of the villagers, even if it peters out after a few exchanges. I have even managed to carry on two conversations simultaneously when my friend Jean-Pierre came into the boulangerie as I was asking for my morning croissant.

On the other hand, although I have been enjoying the peace and tranquillity of rural life in France, that wasn't quite the plan. I had hoped that our courtyard would have echoed with noise, as various families came to enjoy what this corner of Normandy has to offer. But I haven't had a single paying customer all year. And it seems I am not alone in this. Many gîte owners in the area tell me they have just had their worst season for years.

There seems to have been a combination of factors behind this. P&O withdrawing its services to Cherbourg and, later, Le Havre, has allowed the prices of the remaining operators to rise; the weakness of the dollar meant that holidays to the US had become relatively cheap when compared with the strong euro and, finally, the D-Day 60th anniversary celebrations in 2004 had drawn such a lot of visitors that, perhaps, everyone who had hankered to visit Normandy did so last year.

The upshot of all this was that, despite my website (www.la-basse-cour.co.uk) receiving hundreds of hits in the spring and despite the few dozen enquires that I received as a result, I had no firm bookings.

I had always expected the first season to be slow, and I hadn't helped myself by making my house unavailable for some of the peak weeks, planning to be in the UK for three weeks in late July and early August, and a further fortnight either side of my wedding in late August. However, I had hoped for just one or two paying guests, at the very least.

So, my money is almost all gone and a winter in the UK doing temporary jobs beckons. Mind you, it won't be an exile. I will have the unaccustomed luxury of central heating and I can be confident of being able to communicate with virtually anyone I meet. I will be able to see Samantha and Joanna, my daughters, far more often. And, of course, I'll be living with my new wife, Stephanie.

Before I took the plunge to live in France, a neighbouring ex-pat remarked that most people in my situation experimented with several different ideas before they finally hit on one that enabled them to support themselves in France. It may be that our plan to use our farmhouse as a gîte and live in our granary off the income won't work.

However, I have one or two other ideas up my sleeve. We still have a large farmhouse, handily placed right on the edge of a village. We are investigating the practicalities of renting it out on long-term lets to local families and, if we are forced to sell it, the value has increased threefold since we bought it five years ago.

I have also entered into a partnership with another local ex-pat who has spent the past few years running cycling tours for Canadians, and we hope to launch something similar for UK cyclists for next season.

The first phase of my dream may be over, but I'm eagerly looking forward to phase two.

James.Duffell@la-basse-cour.co.uk