Part deux. Where does an Estate Agent in France go for her holiday?

The finger of fate landed on Elba, a charming Italian island on the Tuscany coast, with a mix of sandy and rocky beaches, plenty of plush hotels and restaurants and a popular mooring place for the rich and famous (and the not so rich or famous).

The flight in to Elba Airport was done unsighted. You can do a pass over just to check it out but Denis decided to swing it in and go for it. Fantastic, the hill tops seemed inches from the wing top as he cranked it over and executed a perfect landing. We got a hire car and set off to our pre-booked hotel.

YIKES. We were in the docks ..... not the pretty little fishing port type but the huge great big cruise liner and commercial type ......... this is the problem when you booked last minute in holiday season – you take what you can get! Well, it was a bit scruffy round the edges but no matter, the staff had big welcoming smiles waiting for us and couldn’t have been more helpful, proving yet again that it’s the people that make the difference. The staff at the Hotel Massimo pulled out all the stops to make us feel welcome and were full of information and helpful hints. They booked us in for lunch and evening meals at the most interesting eateries, places where the sun sets into the sea, the views are stunning, the fish is fresh and the staff happy to welcome you. So we were looking forward to their first recommendation as we headed off into town - we weren’t disappointed!

We were staying in Portoferraio, one of the island's most ancient towns and main port centre, its origins date back from the Ligurians, the Etruscans and the Greeks, before becoming a Roman colony and then in 1814, the city gave refuge to the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte (how’s that for a potted history!). So the fortified hilltop town is very atmospheric providing the perfect setting overlooking the harbour for our meal. This part of the port looks over a pretty little fishing village type harbour but instead of fishing boats the luxury liners were all lined up and were a sightseeing attraction in themselves.

The restaurant was a cranky, rustic place in a narrow cobbled street where food was the most important thing and the restaurant seemed almost thrown together with bits and bobs on the walls and the tables and chairs not matching and yet it really worked - someone with a clever eye or a delightful accident of interior design? Here we found yet more smiling people. We just had one of the best meals, simple and delicious. We could see into the kitchen and watching them work was really interesting, what they don’t know about preparing fish isn’t worth knowing! They realised we were all very enthusiastic about our food and they in turn became enthusiastic about what we were choosing and made a big effort to inform us what was going on, what was the best to eat and which wine should go with it. When our desserts arrived and we all started making yummy noises they just plonked the biscuit box on the table and let us get stuck in – marvellous - it certainly help absorb the local digestif! To add to the welcoming atmosphere about half way through the meal the receptionist from the hotel turned up to make sure we were enjoying ourselves, how sweet was that! She needn’t have worried; with fresh fish, cold white and the biscuit box ...... we were all in seventh heaven!

Action stations the next day. We jumped in the car and off round for some snorkelling in a sandy bay with rocky outcrops. Yep, there were lots of people but we got our sunbeds without having to put any towels out at dawn, and as most people were sunbathing and not swimming we had plenty of room round the rocks to check out the fish and have a good swim...... before lunch. Lunch took 3hrs30. It was good. The view was fantastic, really everything was fantastic. This is obviously not going to make the Holidays from Hell program and I’m thinking we should make Holidays from Heaven we could share all the good places to go!

More swimming got us prepared for the evening meal. ...... you’ve probably picked up on the fact that we all like our food! This again was booked by the hotel on a recommendation from one of the staff who’d taken someone “special” there and apparently it worked - I didn’t ask!


Anyway, they were right, it was fantastic. Really good quality food and prepared in a really delicate and interesting way.

I won’t give you the full run down you but if you go to Elba – go to the Tahiti. Right on the beach edge....... absolutely wonderful and a really special way to end our stay on Elba.



The next day we flew back into the air strip at Courchevel 1850, in order to land here you have to have a standard mountain rating and in addition for Courchevel you must land there at a minimum every 6 months or retake the test – it’s a tad tricky and many a experienced pilot has had problems here! We passed close to the glaciers and mountains that we ski each winter taking loads of photos to study.

Then, dealing with a lot of mountain turbulence, we came safely into land. A round of applause for the Denis and it was all over. SOB.

I love the mountains and I wouldn’t swap them but I was very sorry to wave goodbye to the sea, the fish restaurants and not to be doing any more swimming for a while! This was the only way to travel as well, we are so fortunate to have been able to have a holiday in this way. Every part of the trip was exciting, no customs, no misery in the airports just fantastic fun which in turn meant we arrived fresh and happy and this made every other part of the trip even better.

Fancy flying into Courchevel and staying in your own chalet or apartment? Here are a couple of properties for sale in Courchevel for you to look at.
5 bedroom chalet for sale Courchevel 1650

Rental property for sale 3 studios and one apartment in Courchevel 1300, la Praz.

Really nice, 2 bedroom apartment in La Praz, Courchevel.

When we got back it was straight back to work; clients every day for the rest of the week which was excellent. The next morning we were looking at barns to renovate, in particular the large barn with potential for 400m2 of habitable space. As we stood looking at the various properties I could almost hear the sound of the sea and decided the only thing for it was to have fish for supper!

Sigh.

So where does an estate agent in France go on holiday?

Ahh well this one got very lucky. Very lucky.

Long term ski buddies Denis and Marianne (D&M) have a Cessna T303 Crusader, an 8 seater plane no less, and invited us to join them on a seaside adventure ......... yippee!

D & M flew in to Albertville airport to collect us. Sue and Roy who have a ski apartment for sale in St Martin de Belleville drove us there and stayed with us for lunch. As this is a small airport it is popular for microlights and small planes and a really interesting place to sit and have a leisurely lunch. I can heartily recommend sitting out under the trees of the aerodrome restaurant being served good nosh by pleasant staff (good loos as well!). The airport is just 25 minutes from the ski lifts of the Three Valleys and about the same into the Valmorel ski area. Perfect for us.

Time to go......... I felt like the cat who’d got the cream ...... earphones on, luggage stowed, seat belts on, confirm ready to go with the tower and Denis launched us smoothly skywards with the flight plan set for Porteroz in Slovenia. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to be on our private plane heading for the sand and sea of a country I’d never been to before – no queues, no waiting, our own schedule to make – how cool is that!

We flew over the Alps passing over Paradiski where David Cowx is our agent on the ground, then on over the col du Petit Saint Bernard and into Italy with Mont Blanc on our left, then up the Aosta Valley and passing overish Milan, Verona and then Denis flew us over Venice and the Lido – a truly amazing place from the air and now I really, really want to visit there as well.

We checked out Piran before we landed and it looked lovely from the air, if you look at the photo you can see our hotel – it’s the blue one to the left of the bay.


We had an extremely gentle landing at Portoroz airport in Slovenia and were greeted by incredibly nice, smiling staff who handed us a quick, nostril flaring snifter instead of checking our bags (don’t you love it when that happens) and within 30mins we’re in a taxi.

The ride to our hotel in Piran, inventively named.... wait for it ...... Hotel Piran, was not as smooth or as confident inspiring as the flight but having clipped a couple of the slower pedestrians and collected a couple of shopping bags over the wing mirrors the driver’s work was done and he dropped us at the hotel, now slightly moist from fear as well as the heat, but none the worse for wear!

We had arrived. “Oh I do love to be beside the seaside ..... Oh I do.....” my husband clamped his hand over my mouth and dragged me inside.

Lovely location, should you sleep walk you’d find yourself waking up in the sea. The hotel was charming, nothing fancy but really nice and there were the really friendly people again. It was about 18.30 when we got to our room and there was only one thing to do - go out again for a swim. Lovely, warm, calm, lovely. Back to the room, 15 minutes later back out to check out the surrounding bars and restaurants, phew!

Everything was lovely, everyone was smiling, the sun shone, the sea sparkled. We found a good restaurant and nailed a sea view table to admire the sun set from. It was soon piled high with seafood and wine. Denis being Greek and therefore knowing about these things became designated fish chooser (of course being Greek means knowing about seafood – it’s in their genes!) and he sure picked a goody. We had this huge, tasty fish, big enough for four, which Denis expertly dissected at the table as the sun set into the sea. Oh the joy of it. Afterwards it was dancing to a band playing local, traditional music with a modern twist. They’d start with a very modern or highly recognised song like Dancing Queen by Abba or Billy Jean by ... well you know who sang that ....... and then slowly introduce their traditional slant. It was really good foot stamping, hand clapping, sing along (yes, we found we could sing Slovenian after a couple of bottles of the local stuff.....extraordinary how that that happens .......) music. There was a great clarinet/sax play who smoked in between phrases, lord knows when he actually took a breath. Marianne and I got dancing pretty early on, swirling around with the locals, while the boys concentrated on trying the local alcoholic beverages – normal set up! We finally went to bed at about 02.30, such a wonderful, adventurous day and we’d only left the house at 11.00 that morning........

We spent two days here swimming, eating and dancing – little bit of sightseeing – but mostly the swimming and the eating! What really struck us was how incredibly friendly and interested in us the locals were, if your brought something from a shop you didn’t just pay your money and leave, they wanted to know where you were from and what you were going to do with the purchase and generally smiled a lot. One chap even discounted the postcards which were only 30cents in the first place because we had a bit of a joke with him. It’s very hard to imagine this country at war and so recently as well. The beauty of the place and the people hides this unhappy past.

Soon we were choosing our next destination, it’s very exciting just to put your finger on the map and say “yep, let’s go there”, but I was very sad to leave this little gem, Piran. The Slovenian tourist board’s official slogan is “I FEEL sLOVEnia”. I did and I hope to go back there soon.

Fancy living near Alberville airport?
I've got a nice property for sale in Aigueblanche, its located just 10minutes from the airport, 15 maybe 20 minutes from Valmorel ski area and 5 minutes from the La Lechere thermal spa! Perfect.

It's not all play and no work in the Alps!

It’s not all play and no work being an estate agent in the Alps you know.

Actually I think I can safely say we all work really hard. But it’s the type of work that gets under your skin and you either love and become addicted to it or it just ain’t for you ...... I love it.

Because I’m the team leader for this area I get to travel far and wide looking for properties, helping the team and searching for new property agents. Last week for example I was near Annecy showing clients around this lovely 3 bedroom house that offers great value for money and can be doubled in size by finishing off the top floor, and is near the incredibly beautiful lac d’Annecy, with all the summer activities on offer that you’d expect near such a big lake. Then with Alison, one of the Rhone Alps team, on holiday, I was showing a client round for her and took them to this amazing ski apartment right in the centre of Samoëns, which they are considering. Then it was back to my valley to get the diagnostics (pre-sale tests) done on a ski studio in Les Menuires that is currently under offer. So I really do get about which is all good when you’re travelling through scenery as beautiful as it is here.

Andrew, the buyer in les Menuires, had been looking for a decent ski in ski out studio apartment that would provide him and his friends a ski base without breaking the bank and was delighted when he spotted this one. The studio is perfect for him and we have already sourced someone to manage it for him and rent it out so he can also make some income as well as saving the money of paying for his ski holidays. I have just taken on a very similar ski studio which is just as well as I do get quite a lot of enquires for this type of property. Not surprisingly as les Menuires for all its faults offer incredible value for money when it comes to buying ski property or having a decent winter holiday. And I know David, the agent over in Paradiski, is getting lots of enquires for his apartments and recently sold one in Montchavin-les-Coches.

Then last week “He who must be obeyed”, our intrepid leader Mr Leggett himself, held a National and team leaders meeting at head office in the Dordogne. It’s a long haul from here and for me means two days out of the office and about 16hrs of driving, but one of the amazing things about travelling in France is the emptiness of the roads, there are times when the auto routes get jammed up, but it’s the exception and not the rule. So when you plan a journey you can put your route in to viamichelin and the time they suggest the journey will take won’t be far off. Of course what they don’t allow for is breakdowns ........

I found myself in an industrial estate in St Etienne (yep, they really do have them in dream holiday locations as well as in the normal world), just past Lyon, in the rather surreal situation of having a chat with the charming garage owner, lorries whizzing past just a few inches from our noses, whilst sipping really good coffee from a china cup which arrived on a silver tray along with a chair for me to sit on in the sun whilst I waited for the repair to be completed. Job done and after some fond farewell and a rather hefty bill later I re-joined the auto route ............... only to find that the repair hadn’t worked ........ hey ho. There was no going back so I had to stop again at a garage in Clermont-Ferrand by arrangement of my dear husband (whose directing skills over the telephone were somewhat at odds with my interpretation of time and distance, but with a divorce looming I finally found the garage – Clermont is a big place!), here the more normal surly service was resumed and the problem was fixed!

This all meant I arrived in Brantome just down the road from our head office, where I had booked a hotel, at 22.30 rather than the 19.30 I had planned for. Still, I managed a walk around the beautiful town, also known as Little Venice, that is so popular with the Brits before bed and also walked round the bustling market in the morning buying several items I had absolutely no need for what so ever which was very satisfying .....

Then in to the meeting where Trevor Leggett and team had good news for us - property sales were up and across the board business was on the increase. Because of this upturn one of the topics on the agenda was recruitment. As team Leader in the Rhone Alps for I am trying, alongside Leggett HQ, to recruit estate agents all around the ski resorts, spa towns and lakes. You don’t anyone do you?

We are new in this region, the Rhone Alps, and what with the credit crunch happening at pretty much the same time we started it has indeed been hard work setting up – but we’re really getting there and now have well over 150 properties to chose from, including ski chalets and apartments, pretty mountain village and valley houses, houses near lakes, with streams, in fact we cover the whole spectrum of great places to buy. The great thing is that although the tourism here is immense due to the winter ski season it is also a stunning and much quieter place to be in the summer.

We take on new properties every day and have a really interesting and varied property portfolio. If you want to browse through simply go to the Leggett Immobilier home page , go to the country map on the right hand side of the page, and highlight the area named French Alps, chose the type of property you want and away you go. Another way to search is by postcode, for example the code for St Martin de Belleville is 73440 and if you put that in you’ll get all the properties that fall under that commune. Or search by property agent.

So let me introduce you to the Rhone Alp team, simply click on the name for all their properties;

Alison Farley has some stunning properties over towards Lac Geneva and also covers Samoëns and Porte du Soleil.

David Cowx is Paradiski and the surrounding valleys

And I, Heather Byrne, cover the Three Valleys, Espace Killy and the lakes – lac d’Annecy and Lac du Bourget – and pretty much everything in between whilst I build up a team over here.

So going back to recruiting estate agents in France we are looking in or near to the following locations Tignes 73, Val d’Isere 73, Valmorel 73, Annecy 74, Chambery 73, Aix-les-Bains 73, Beaufort 74, Belley 01, Albertville 73, Aiguebelle 73, Chamonix 74, Megeve 74, Flumet 74, Sallanches 74, Cluses 74, la Rosiere 73, St Jean de Maurienne, to name but a few and we will be heading towards Grenoble 38 and Lyon 69 plus their surrounding resorts and lakes as well.

Indeed Leggett’s are looking right across France.

Interested? Why not have a look at the recruitment page.

Aperitif at 1674m

Last week my husband and I cycled up to partake of an aperitif up at the refuge de Gittamelon in the Vallée des Encombres.

Now when I say up I mean a 350m climb in 7kms, now this might not sound all that dramatic to you but most of the climb is done in 5kms and quite frankly I’d like to see you try it .......and this on the hottest day of the year so far. In fact half way up I was seriously questioning my sanity and in another km I was thinking of phoning the men in the white coats to see about a free ambulance ride down. I was irritable and fed-up with the relentless pedalling in the scorching heat of a totally uphill climb with no relief from any downhill free-wheeling at all.

“I’m going back” I said to my husband, “OK” he said “I understand, don’t blame you”. Huh? This was strange, who was this man? Whoever it was it couldn’t have been my husband as his support and encouragement usually runs along the lines of “stop moaning and start pedalling”. So, being completely baffled and wondering who I was cycling behind, there was nothing for it but to carry on! I made it.

Anyway, this week, being gluttons for punishment, we did it again .........

This time, however, we cycled up with friends Alison and Rob, Helen and Chris. The reason for all this frantic cycling is simple. We, TEAM (H)UG, the six of us, are all in training. Oh yes indeed, for a race known as le Cochet derby, which takes place at the end of August ..... 999m in 9kms from le Chaterlard to le Col de Fenetre. Last year we all entered and did it, well I use the word “did” in a lose sort of way as I never actually finished and in fact had to rescued along with my bike and carted off in a 4x4. In fact out of the 6 of us (the only Brits in the race) just three finished; Simon, Rob and Alison. And three didn’t, myself, Helen and Chris (Chris of course maintains he was keeping his wife company .... yeah right.) In fact we were the only non finishers .......

So we parked up near this lovely ski chalet for sale in St Martin, got our mountain bikes out and cycled across the river towards la Chatelard.

La Chatelard is situated at 1350m, about 1 minutes drive or 5 minutes cycle from St Martin de Belleville, and has the most wonderful views.

As we passed through this popular village we cycled past a building plot on which a 3 bedroom house is about to built, it will make a really great ski base for a lucky family (or even a good rental property).

The climb up to the refuge is relentless and it was scorching hot again but we pressed on passing the pretty little village of la Gittaz perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, so precariously in fact that the is no winter access; on past Planlebon situated below us at 1317m which we looked down on from 1625m before we made the final push arriving at the refuge at about 1700m where a cold and much needed drink awaited us. The refuge and indeed the village used to be inhabited all year, the residents cut off from the outside world for 6 months each year, incredible to think of it really. Now it is only lived in over the summer.

They keep goats here, making their own cheese, which give it an authentic and lovely feel of a mountain farm which indeed it is. Been there for 100’s of years and will no doubt still be there in a few more 100. If you fancy the farming life how about this lovely farm for sale which is ripe to be developed but slightly more conveniently located and right near a ski resort as well!

Talking of goats; during our last big cycle ride we encountered the coolest goat ever, what a dude! Whilst I was admiring him, Alison who is well known for her skill and grace when falling off a bike (after all she gets a lot of practise), was descending rapidly and out of control as her bike was sliding on the goat’s hay; she couldn’t find any grip at all. Finally she decided to bail out landing amongst the goats who were equally as surprised as she was. Her bike was still on the right side of the fence but she managed to crawl out under the fence before I could get a photo.

Damn.