How gin and tonic and binge watching tv can change your life
Like millions of others, we have always been fans of Escape to the Chateau. It ticks all of the boxes for us; property, countryside, adventure, culture, DIY, flare, excitement, story telling!
It was 2020 and in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, let’s be honest, there was a lot more time for our guilty pleasures. And by this I mean sitting on the sofa with a gin and tonic watching tv!
And so, we started to binge watch Escape to the chateau all over again from the very beginning. It was just like watching it for the first time; the magic of their relationship together, the romantic idea of relocating and bringing an historical building back to life, France, two young children in tow and the promise of a lot of hard work to make their dreams come true. It is one of the most inspirational tv series you can think of.
What covid also brought us in our lives was redundancy for Will. As someone who sold wines and spirits to bars and restaurants, his job no longer existed in a world where these establishments were closed with no end date of reopening in sight. Rather than take on the dread that comes with losing a job, we chose to seek its opportunities.
Inspired by Dick and Angel, our friends who also dared to do it and our new local alpaca farm which we watched with heart shaped eyes, Will proposed to me that we make the move and live the dream (which included alpacas). I initially laughed at the idea. This was Friday. Will tried to woo me over the weekend with coffee and croissants in bed and visions of what our life could be. By Monday morning, 10 minutes after logging on to work from home like a large percentage of the world now, I called Will and said “let’s do it, we have to try”.
We weren’t looking for a chateau, but when we found one how could we say no? Well… we didn’t buy a chateau of course, we needed a farm, but imagine our luck when we found a property suitable to reinstate into farm-use, directly opposite a magnificent 13th century chateau; Chateau de Sanzay. We couldn’t resist making an offer, could we really be living here with that view… our own chateau (sort of), just like Dick and Angel? Our offer was accepted, we sold our home and we made a lot of quick arrangements to come to France.
Now was time for French paperwork, but perhaps we’ll leave that for another blog. However, it’s important to note that there is a lot of rules and regulations and we couldn’t have gotten through this in our tight deadline without some help. Before we arrived, we had dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s - it really was all happening.
Also on the agenda for the next few years; a lot of vision and hard work to set up the business. We were completely prepared to work harder than we ever have before, just like Dick and Angel and 18 months later, we are reaping the rewards that at some points, it was hard to believe we would ever get to. Again lots more of this, for another blog, another time.
One more thing of course, we then decided to allow some cameras into our lives at the most nerve wracking time. A new home, a new country, a new exciting career and a film crew for a tv programme that was to be shown on channel 4. We didn’t quite mean to take this much inspiration from the Strawbridges, but when life gives you lemons, you contribute to a tv show!
You can watch the show on Channel 4s streaming service, or we’ve found the first episode on Youtube and included this below.
