Hello Everyone
My names Dawsey and some may have followed the more than two year saga of my better half Bea and I's long, drawn out and ultimately futile attempt to relocate to France in this post Brexit world to buy and /or develop a camping/glamping business. Our search, which saw us criss cross France in our trusty old camper 'Helga' is all laid bare in a rambling 50 page thread on here.
That thread ended with us ultimately tiring of all the new difficulties, hurdles, hoops and costs and being forced to give up on the French dream and lick our wounds back in the UK in a field next to a pub, in the end just another sad footnote to the damage done to the aspirations and futures of millions in this country and beyond.
For us, the good news was that we did in the end find a gem of a place to live and a piece of land with loads of potential just 20 miles from where I grew up in the Lakes (LUXURY! - I used to dream of living in a lake...!) so I have been able to 'come home' after 30 years away and still chase the dream.
The dream was always to develop a twin pronged camping operation, a simple paid 'aire de camping car' as they are called in France, with the most successful business being Camping Car Park or CCP, and an upmarket Glamorous Camping or 'Glamping' offering based around a handful of luxury units with hot tubs, kitchens, bathrooms, views. One would be a pretty low maintenance income stream by providing simple low cost secure overnight parking in a nice peaceful and tranquil location with basic facilities to camper-vanners, caravanners and motorhomers, the other was to be a higher investment but higher revenue and higher effort offering catering to young hipsters and instagrammers and those looking for a more luxurious and obviously far higher cost stay.
This idea and dream has never changed, it is mapped out on the first page of the first thread and I'm confident we can achieve it with what we have bought - which we completed on and arrived at just a week ago. There's obviously a few little challenges ahead though, not least we still remain living in Helga, our furniture is still in storage in Kent, the land resembles a tip in places and the house was soaking wet inside, and has no heating, no hot water, no kitchen and no functioning bath or shower rooms. I've already put temporary repairs to the leaky roofs, industrial dehumidifiers have been running constantly for a week, and with a little bit of warmer drier weather the house and spa is just beginning to dry. Well, it was until my attempts to recommission both the high pressure hot water system and the spa baths in a bathroom and the swimming pool room (we havent had a bath in over two years) reintroduced some, ahem, more wetness. It doesn't help that many of the pluvial drains seem to be blocked.
In this new thread, if anyone is interested, I will be charting, in a similar-ish timeframe how we create something out of what I think could be a real diamond of a place. Priorities are the roofs, clearing trees, big solar, multiple heat pumps and tidying the land - oh and Bea wants a kitchen and a bathroom.
Naturally I started with the garage....
My names Dawsey and some may have followed the more than two year saga of my better half Bea and I's long, drawn out and ultimately futile attempt to relocate to France in this post Brexit world to buy and /or develop a camping/glamping business. Our search, which saw us criss cross France in our trusty old camper 'Helga' is all laid bare in a rambling 50 page thread on here.
That thread ended with us ultimately tiring of all the new difficulties, hurdles, hoops and costs and being forced to give up on the French dream and lick our wounds back in the UK in a field next to a pub, in the end just another sad footnote to the damage done to the aspirations and futures of millions in this country and beyond.
For us, the good news was that we did in the end find a gem of a place to live and a piece of land with loads of potential just 20 miles from where I grew up in the Lakes (LUXURY! - I used to dream of living in a lake...!) so I have been able to 'come home' after 30 years away and still chase the dream.
The dream was always to develop a twin pronged camping operation, a simple paid 'aire de camping car' as they are called in France, with the most successful business being Camping Car Park or CCP, and an upmarket Glamorous Camping or 'Glamping' offering based around a handful of luxury units with hot tubs, kitchens, bathrooms, views. One would be a pretty low maintenance income stream by providing simple low cost secure overnight parking in a nice peaceful and tranquil location with basic facilities to camper-vanners, caravanners and motorhomers, the other was to be a higher investment but higher revenue and higher effort offering catering to young hipsters and instagrammers and those looking for a more luxurious and obviously far higher cost stay.
This idea and dream has never changed, it is mapped out on the first page of the first thread and I'm confident we can achieve it with what we have bought - which we completed on and arrived at just a week ago. There's obviously a few little challenges ahead though, not least we still remain living in Helga, our furniture is still in storage in Kent, the land resembles a tip in places and the house was soaking wet inside, and has no heating, no hot water, no kitchen and no functioning bath or shower rooms. I've already put temporary repairs to the leaky roofs, industrial dehumidifiers have been running constantly for a week, and with a little bit of warmer drier weather the house and spa is just beginning to dry. Well, it was until my attempts to recommission both the high pressure hot water system and the spa baths in a bathroom and the swimming pool room (we havent had a bath in over two years) reintroduced some, ahem, more wetness. It doesn't help that many of the pluvial drains seem to be blocked.
In this new thread, if anyone is interested, I will be charting, in a similar-ish timeframe how we create something out of what I think could be a real diamond of a place. Priorities are the roofs, clearing trees, big solar, multiple heat pumps and tidying the land - oh and Bea wants a kitchen and a bathroom.
Naturally I started with the garage....
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