The lane to Le Chatel is dappled with light filtered through a high brambly hedge and gently decaying orchard on one side, and the tall ash tree and sometime wheat, sometime maize-field on the other. Strictly speaking, Le Chatel is the name of the hamlet of 6 or seven houses.
Ours is the last cottage in the hamlet and the drive down to it from the Orbec- Le Sap D road is half a mile and a trip back in time. From smooth tarmac at the junction, the grass gradually inhabits the crown of the road surface until, past our gate, it becomes an earthen track that gently peters out into a leafy path as it enters the nearby wood. A five minute trundle is all it takes to find yourself in Deepest Normandy and reassuringly, of course, that works both ways.
When we first meandered down that lane it was Easter 2002. It was billed by Espace Immobilier in Orbec as a definite possible: A Parisian's second home and reasonably priced as he had changed his job and could no longer use it. On the face of it, it had all the essentials: a shower room, usable kitchen-diner with proper plumbing and electricity, and much of the main work had been done.....well after a fashion. It also had two good sized bedrooms, another large attic room available to convert, and the bonus of an acre of meadow that was graced by several mature trees. We didn't have a big budget by any means, and as we didn't have the expertise to renovate a wreck from scratch, the best we could hope for was a place that was habitable that we could do up on a 'creep and go' basis. (Of course, caught on the wave of optimism its much easier to visualise the 'going' than the 'creeping'. )
The house itself was a 'longere' ....a single-storey long house,one room deep, with an attic over the top which was converted by means of velux windows.. It had been a farmhouse and only two rooms had housed the farmer's family, the rest had been barns. It had clearly been remodelled several times since the first building stood in that spot and some of it was colombage....oak timbers pegged together in the familiar black-and-white pattern.....and some of it was old hand-made brick dating probably from the early 18th century. It was vernacular, not grand, and its old latch door was functional rather than imposing..
As we ducked under the lintel I found myself inside a cottage that was cluttered with furniture and ornaments as only the French can manage. A mad melange of classical pieces of dubiously antique furniture, dated soft furnishings, and kitsch ornaments. It didn't bear much resemblance to the colour supplement ideal of French interior design.
A large open fireplace built from hand-made bricks in tones of terracotta ,rosy red, apricot was the dominant feature of the main reception room. It was clothed in a pair of orange velour curtains that looked like a small scale version of the dust-gatherers that hid the screen of our local cinema when I was a child. They had been fitted to stop the soot coming down the Father-Christmas sized chimney opening when it rained., but with the house empty they had simply made the place smell musty. I longed to pull them down, sweep the hearth and see those bricks glow in the light of logs burning across the old fire-dogs.........I didn't remember much else of the interior. I was smitten by the fireplace.
Outside, the garden and meadow had obviously lacked any real attention since the house had been put up for sale the previous year. But it was before the grass and hedges 'took off' again and the weeds hadn't re-sprouted from their dormancy so it didn't look too over-whelming. The borders surrounding the partially grassed-over gravel patio area still held traces of plants that could be salvaged and under the hedges primroses and speedwells winked invitingly.
An old barbeque sat rusting gently by the hedge and a green plastic table and chairs graced the middle of the gravel oasis. It wasn't a big stretch for our imagination to conjure a crisp gingham tablecloth with a bottle of wine and a basket of bread.....
We bought it, of course!
The next time we saw it was in July. We were required to inspect it and check that the inventory was correct before we went into Orbec with the vendor, who was a neat little man who wore a natty pair of crocodile skin shoes. We had an appointment at the Notaire's to sign the final papers.
By this time the meadow was tall with bleaching hay and several successions of weeds had sprouted, and seeded, on the remnants of the gravel patio. The garden table was still standing, but was now an island in a sea of drying growth which would require shears to penetrate. Nature had undertaken the process of repossession in earnest.
Together with our 17 year old (then) son Robert, we arrived on a hot July afternoon with a car full of both holiday luggage and cleaning materials and other essentials. Travel weary and hungry, we didn't have the energy to dwell on the scale of the task and we simply resigned ourselves to getting through the Official process on auto-pilot.
Inside, we checked off the items that M. Michel had either included in the sale or negotiated seperately. One basic double bed, a few pieces of scrappy occasional furniture in our bedroom (rather vaingloriously described on the list as antiques), a rather attractive and genuine antique coffee table in the otherwise empty fireplace room, and nothing at all in Rob's attic room. (Though his room was carpeted and was otherwise in the best condition in the house which was some compensation. I made him up a bed for the first night using an inflatable 'li-lo' I found in the cupboard by the fireplace.)
In the kitchen-diner we fared rather better. A fridge freezer, washer, fitted cooker and a table and chairs. All this complimented by a strange sideboard that managed to be bleakly monolithic and whimsical at one and the same time. It had a black marble top and mirrored back, and two up lighters on each side of this which consisted of milky glass shades garnished with wreathes of glass grapes and other assorted fruit which glowed and sparkled at odds with the funereal black top when the lights were switched on.. The previous owner had completed the effect by polishing it with gilding cream to disguise the fact it was missing pieces of veneer.
By far its best feature, however, was revealed when we finally managed to pry open one of its creaky cupboard doors, It was full of crockery and cooking pans and glassware. Everything we needed in the kitchen! Suddenly things looked up. We could live there for our holiday with these essentials....we didn't need to throw in the towel in round one and book into a B and B.
Elsewhere, it became clear that Monsieur's clutter had disguised, or perhaps encouraged, a variety of damp patches and cracks. Nothing truly monstrous though, and besides, the joy of finally owning our own place in France made entertaining any negative thoughts seem rather petty. Besides, it was Too Late Now.
An hour later, having returned 'home'! from signing the papers, we had our first visitor. His wasn't a social call: he'd come to turn on the electricity. He greeted us as we stood randomly pulling weeds from the gravel in an attempt to access the garden furniture. Sucking breath in through his impressive moustache he shook his head wearily and intoned ' A lot of work'. Clearly he couldn't understand what had possessed us. It took us a couple of years worth of 'holidays' and long weekends before we understood him.
Its hard for us to remember how we managed to clean the house, rough-cut the grass, AND have a holiday in that first frantic fortnight. I suppose we were on a high and of course the days were very long and we worked well past ten pm in the garden. We wouldn't have managed at the outset without the sideboard of kichenalia and the assorted tools left in the shed , or the inflatable sofa, chair and mattress we picked up in a sale next day at Leclerc's hypermarket. It could so easily have been a disaster. But we ended up having a great time, even managing a couple of days at the beach. Of course when we got back to England we felt absolutely shattered and I don't think I recovered for six weeks. By which time we were travelling back again for our next visit.
Xxxxxxxxxxmy long picture in pastels of Le Chatel.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx