After fifteen wonderful years spent here in Lyon I have decided to move out to the countryside. I still very much enjoy living here, but as I'm nearing my sixties some aspects of what the city has to offer - bars, clubs, rock concerts etc - have witnessed a steady decline in my presence over the years and I have been spending more and more time in the country at friends' places because I appreciate the serenity of being out of the city.
And so it is that I am buying a house just outside a small village not far from the Alps with a very good friend I have known for many years. In fact it's not really 'a house', but two houses and several outhouses on a fair-sized chunk of land. 5,250m² to be exact. Neither is very big but we will be able to live our own lives whilst both looking after the animals we intend to have as well as tending to the land. There is a lot of renovation to do but we both know enough tradesman to get most of the work done at a reasonable price. Scheduled move-in date is next August.
Here are some photos of it all taken on two separate occasions, starting with a couple of views from the lane outside.
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| My place, with hers to the left in the background |
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| Both houses under a beautiful cerulean sky |
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| A view of the mountains with the houses behind me |
Here they are again, this time taken from within the garden.
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| Hers, complete with balcony, and.. |
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| ..his. No balcony this time, but a lot of weed-clearing to do! |
The views from the windows are great. There are almost no other houses in sight and the only thing which breaks the silence is the birds chirping away and someone's donkey braying. That is going to make a change from Lyon, where as I type these words I am looking at an apartment block just over the street from my apartment. The road is busy all day long.
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| Once cleaned up there's going to be a table and chairs in the shade out there |
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| From a bedroom window |
This view takes in some of the extent of the land, which goes down to the trees, although there is more to the left with a couple of ponds and a henhouse. It's separated into a garden, then what will be a vegetable garden, and then a field for two ponies and, when needed for grass-cutting purposes, the neighbour's sheep.
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| Oh, and there's a functioning well too, on the left. That'll need building up |
My place is going to be a three-room affair basically, with a salon-american kitchen and a large walk-in-shower-cum-WC-cum-dressing room downstairs. There may eventually be a bedroom in the loft. It used to be the farmer's abbatoir and as such will need a fair bit of work, but although it looks in a hell of mess right now the work won't take that long.
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| Half of the living room |
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| Half of the bathroom |
The surrounding area has several nature trails and bicycle tracks. Not surprising really because it is very pretty indeed. Here are a few views from within a two-kilometre radius.
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| A tributary of the river Rhône, looking upstream... |
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| ...and downstream |
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| Looking over the fields towards the nearby village |
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Finally, I found a lovely wild rose growing on top of a wall where it meets my house during my last visit. I hope to be able to leave it untouched during the renovation work in the hope it will come back next year.
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| Simple, and beautiful |
Meanwhile, off I pop to get on a crowded metro network for a meeting. Ah well, not for much longer...
