One, Place de l’Eglise

Pre-order your escape to Languedoc . . . ____________’A timeless story of what it is that makes France irresistible.’ Michael Palin____________The estate agent describes it as a ‘nightmare.’Yet for one English couple it is a coup de foudre – and love at first sight.The roof leaks, the mortar in the ancient walls is crumbling, fertilizer bags stuff broken windows. There’s no electricity, the plumbing is a lead pipe in one room, the cellar doors are rotten.There it stands, a thousand-year-old ruin ignored by the Languedoc villagers of Causses-et-Veyran who pass it by to the church next door. But for Londoners Trevor and Kaz it drives them a little crazy and they buy One Place de L’Eglise.Over the years they turn the house into a home. They navigate the language (apparently préservatif’s are not something put in sausages), floods and freezing winters. And eventually they find their place – their bar, their baker, their builder (ignore him at your peril).Slowly the family and the locals get to know one another and these busy English discover slower joys – the scent of thyme and lavender, the warmth of sun on stone walls, nights hung with stars, silence in the hills, the importance of history and memory, the liberation of laughter and the secrets of fig jam.One Place de L’Eglise is a love letter – to a house, a village, a country – from an outsider who discovers you can never be a stranger when you’re made to feel so at home.Old houses never belong to people. People belong to them.]]>