When I decided to buy a writer’s cottage, I didn't really know what I was looking for at first. All I wanted was a place were I could stay for long stretches of time – as long as family life would allow – to really concentrate on my writing. Over the past twenty years, I had rented or borrowed many such places, and they all taught me something about what I like and don't like. Therefore, my first piece of advice would be this: When you look for a place of your own, try out a few before you buy. Stay at friend’s cabin, a rented apartment, your uncle’s cottage in the mountains. While you are there, you will discover what's important to you. Write it down. Make a list.
One of the things I discovered, is that I don’t like to be alone in the wild. Frankly, it really scares me. I like to have people around, but not too many people, so I didn’t want to get an apartment in a city, which was probably going to be too expensive anyway. The other thing I discovered was that climate is important to me; I love the sun. I also love France, but to me, France and warmth equalled Provence, where the only thing I could afford was a shack by the roadside. Instead, I steered my search towards other parts of southern France, with equal amounts of sunshine, but fewer million dollar listings. Four weeks later, I landed in Béziers for the first time.
A quaint little house in Vieussan, a small village in the Orb valley. It had a lovely terrace with amazing views of the river, but it was too expensive for me, priced at 180.000 euros.
It was my very first encounter with Languedoc. I rented a small studio in town for a week, and every day for the next seven days, I looked at houses. Most of them I had found through listings on French real estate sites, often lacking in description with just a few (often very bad) photos. In France, a house can be represented by a whole array of agents, which means that none of them put a lot of effort into presenting them. A lot of the time, they won't even tell you the exact location of the property.
Some of the houses I viewed were more appealing in real life, others a huge disappointment. They were all cheap (my main criteria), located in villages that looked like French prototypes, previously habituated by people that had since passed away. In Norway, when you put a house on the marked, it’s costmary to remove the most personal things, making sure everything’s clean, perhaps even hire a stylist. That wasn't the case here. Oftentimes, the dead owner's things lay scattered about like he'd gone out for a pint of milk and never come back. Instead, rodents and insects had taken over, cobwebs the sizes of pillows hung from beams half devoured by termites. And yet there was still a beauty to these houses, the only remaining witnesses of a life lived, a time passed.
I will never forget this house in Caunes-Minervois with it's beautiful loft. The house was too big for me, but it had so much potential, with an asking price of just 130.000 euros.
One day, after a viewing, I got in the car, dizzy from the heath, wondering what in the world I was doing. In the house I had just visited I had encountered a dead lizard, a live bat and cobwebs so heavy with dust they could barely sustain themselves. I drove north, wondering if there was a point to all my endeavours, or if I should just let it go. Then a river appeared, blue and cheerful, as if taking me by the hand to say: Follow me. So I did. As I came over a hill, the village of Roquebrun appeared in the distance, the houses strewn onto the hill like buns in a bake shop. I parked my car in the main street and looked at the people walking by, smiling, tanned, dressed for the beach. What is this place? I wondered. It felt like a well of sunshine.
My appointment with the real estate agent wasn't until an hour later, so I went into the nearest restaurant and asked for a table. Outside or inside? the hostess asked, an older lady addressing the guest as if they were all close friends. I pointed towards the outside and she escorted me to a veranda with a table under a wine-covered pergola, allowing just the right amount of light to sift through. From my seat I had a view of the river where people were floating slowly on their backs. Vegetable gardens sloped towards the water stacked with giant tomatoes, squash and salad. I remembered that the house I was viewing came with such a garden. And I knew at that moment I was going to buy this house, no matter what it looked like.