We first visited Ceret in 2009, bought our first apartment there in 2011, first lived there in 2012, and have been back for a significant part of each every year since, excluding the 2 Covid years of 2020 and 2021.
It's been an absolute blast! We've loved living in Ceret, speaking and being a bit French, the many side-trips around Europe, and the places we've visited heading to or from France. Over that period we've seen and done more than we could ever have imagined. It's been one of the most exciting periods of our lives.
Over time though, global warming has made the temperatures less tolerable - early on we would have a few weeks of 32 degrees each year, more recently midsummer means several months of non-stop 35 degrees. We've been going later to avoid the peak heat of summer, but that means we have missed the lovely long mild southern European evenings. Local friends have come and gone, and we have been working our way through our mental list of places we want to visit in Europe. Carbon miles come into it too, and us doing a round-trip to Europe each year is not helpful. Leaving our family in Nelson, including our 3 grandchildren, for 3-4 month spells had been a bit of a wrench too.
Last year we made the decision that we've had a wonderful time, we've done what we wanted to, but it was time to move on. When we first bought we said that we'd give it 3 years, then sell up and do something else. We've now had 11 years of visits of 3 to 8 months. At one point I think we had spent 4 of the previous 10 years in Europe. So, time to try something new. Following our decision in November or December, we began looking in earnest at Hanmer Springs, a small holiday village with natural hot springs, walks, cycle trails, golf, a nice village and only 3.5 hours away versus 40. We'd always liked Hanmer, and had stayed there a number of weeks over the last few years. No house we liked had come onto the market over the previous few years (we'd been looking), but in late December one place did, and we rushed down, put in an offer and had bought it by the end of January!
The aim for this year is simple. We want to get the apartment on the market, and preferably sell it while we are still in Ceret. We are only there for some 6 weeks this time so it's a tall order, but we need to get it on the market at the start of the holiday season beginning in May. We begin with a week in Spain visiting the long-term bucket list city of Seville, then returning via Madrid to Ceret. Mid-May we have a short visit to Amsterdam to meet up with son and daughter-in-law Alastair & Sophie, but otherwise we will play it by ear.
