"The End of the World....plus 20 kilometres"

I am a Kiwi living in London the UK with my (English born) Kiwi husband, John, two teenage kids and a Welsh terrier dog called Reuben. We are an ordinary family. I am a full time nurse and John is a university lecturer, the kids are at high school. We all share a love of travel and adventures. In 2015 we bought a a tiny maison de village house in a small medieval village in Southern France as a holiday home. The village is in a remote wine growing region described as a visiting friend as ' The end of the world ...plus another 20km'. We have spent many great summers exploring the Occitania region, wild swimming in the L'Orbieu River (which the house overlooks) and renovating the house. We planned to spend a good deal of our retirement there.

Then Brexit arrived and our future plans looked less certain. We started to rethink the next steps of our life journey. My Canadian heritage gave us the possibility of a life in Canada, and after a little searching and the gift of a small inheritance we brought a country house in a French speaking village 1 1/2 hours from Montreal, Quebec.

We are now remotely renovating two country homes, in two French villages, in two different continents as we continue (at this time) to work and live in London.

This is no small feat, as we don't speak French and have a limited budget.So far we have struck many surprises including; wonderful local people, warm generous neighbours, helpful villagers, and renovation hiccups. Probably the biggest surprise is both how different and how similar aspects of French life can be in two French Villages.