Chasing the French dream

Follow your dreams, the saying goes. So last autumn I boarded the Ryanair dawn flight to Paris, only half awake and with directions to an old farmhouse I hoped to buy tucked inside a map of the Charante Maritime region. No more gazing in estate agents' windows every summer when we holidayed in a rented gite. No more gites - all being well, next year we'd be driving down to our own little old French maison de campagne near the coast. There wasn't a photograph, but the place was already furnished in my head with bits and pieces from home and a few well-chosen broccante finds. In a letter, the agent described the house as "a traditional gem" and in habitable condition. At the bargain price of FF290,000 (IR£34,000), how could I resist?

This agent specialises in buying and selling houses with original features such as oeuil de beuf windows, stone fireplaces and exposed beams. The house had all of these and was located half an hour from some of the finest beaches in south-western France - so a quick decision was essential. A quick taxi ride across Paris and I was on the TGV to Angouleme. Friends Annemarie and Gordon Standing , who retired from Co Wicklow to the Charente, were waiting at the station. They looked tanned and relaxed and French life was evidently agreeing with them. We headed straight away for the coast.

Years ago, the Standings came over in search of a holiday gite, fell in love with a converted schoolhouse in Deux Sevres and moved permanently to France.

The balmy temperature was unexpected coming from a wet and windy Dublin and the sunflowers in the fields had begun to droop. We drove through deserted villages returning to normal after the August holiday season. Through the busy market town of Saintes and it was time to look for signs to Thezac. We stopped at the mayor's office in the village square to ask for directions to the house.

It was situated in a small hamlet on the edge of a forest, the agent had said. What the agent had failed to mention in his letter was its utterly un-reconstructable condition. We were taken on a guided tour of rotting beams, earth floors, ramshackle bedrooms and a strong odour of the cows who had taken up temporary residence. The "useable" kitchen consisted of one cupboard and a cracked sink. No bathroom at all.

The thick beams were massive and there were good things you could say about the old lean-to outside, used by the French for eating in the shade. The garden "running down to a wood" had recently been cut, or more likely scythed. It was lumpy, barren of any signs it had ever been cultivated and the south-facing end measured three feet to next door's wall.

The Standings live in an old stone petit manoir east of Ruffec, in the Charante. It's an ongoing restoration task which has kept them busy since they moved there from Deux Sevres two years ago. The main house is now finished and two huge vaulted barns will be their final restoration job.

Most of the fittings in the house, including a country-style kitchen, came from the IKEA shop in Bordeaux, at considerably less than UK and Irish prices. Last year, they put in a swimming-pool using a self-build kit with the help of local labour. It cost around £7,000.

An ex-pat friend with an estate agency in Civray took us on a whistle-stop tour of houses for sale in the inland Charante area. We looked at six mouth-watering properties in perfect condition for the same cost as my "dream" house in the more fashionable Maritime region. They had exposed beams, vines over the door and outbuildings to convert to extra accommodation, funds permitting.

So all is not lost. I've been spending the winter dreaming over the snapshots and thinking it might be nicer to own a house in the heart of the French countryside than by the sea.