Our story
We are Sophie and Richard Leech and we live in Silkstone near Barnsley where we both work. I am a Practice Manager for a GP Practice in Leeds and Richard is a Clerk of a parish council. Richard is also Chairman of our Parish Council and we are both involved in community projects on a voluntary basis.
We bought this house in 2007 as it was attached to the house next door which we bought in 2005. We love this area of France as it was just 20 minutes from my French grandparents house in Vaux sur Mer. We called it 'Les Hirondelles' after the swallows that visit every year.
The house was a bit of a ruin when we bought it with no real kitchen, a very basic bathroom and two bedrooms. We could see the potential albeit with a lot of imagination and iIt took a lot of hard work and even more money to get it to the standard it is today. We have spent every holiday at the house working on it renovating and this continues to this day . We redecorate every year a different part of the interior and take pride in presenting it in the best way we can.
We love the living area, the sun pours in in the morning and the French doors open straight onto the terrace. We left some of the internal walls in limestone which looks amazing and although we couldn't keep any of the original beams as they had perished, we have left the new beams exposed to full roof height and have whitewashed them.
The garden has been a labour of love too and we have recruited a wonderful gardener now, Kevin, who comes every 2 weeks to look after it. We invested in a ride on mower as the garden measures an acre and have planted lots of new fruit trees. We have planted a herb garden near the terrace for our guests to use at the suggestion of a past guest, which is very handy for barbeques.