We're John and Jules Mitchell and we moved to France in 2003.
It wasn't that we hated the U.K. or the people living there - we just wanted to have some control over what we'd be doing for the rest of our lives. I (John) had been in IT since starting work and Jules (my wife) had been the insurance business for as long. We have seven children between us, although none of them have us both as parents. When the last kids started to leave the nest we thought we could do something with only ourselves in mind, so we started looking to move.
As Jules had two horses and lots of dogs and cats at the time, we needed to find some space. We visited property in Wales and Yorkshire, and considered others in the South and Scotland, but the prices were way out of reach, even then. When we stumbled acrossa property for sale in France we realised that we could only cash in on our lifelong investment, whilst keeping the same standard of living, if we moved abroad.
I did think that I might commute weekly, as I'd done for the final two years in the UK, but we quickly decided that we wanted to spend more time together, even if it meant a drop in our standard of living, so a home with a small income where neither of us had to work for anyone else became our goal.
As I speak some French and Italian it was obvious to consider those two countries first. Italy (as with Spain) doesn't seem greatly hospitable to horses, so we went with France. Yes I know the French eat horse meat, but not much really...
This blog is just to tell the story really, so here goes!
