7th and 8th May - Ceret

Today dawned with clear blue skies. Woohoo! We were up early to make our appointment with the notaire at 9am. He was very helpful and great to discuss all the ins and outs of selling a property in France via a Power of Attorney. Because our property will be worth over 150,000E, our capital gains tax will be assessed at a tax office in Paris. All our invoices will have to be emailed to them after we've found a buyer. We will need to compile a list itemising all the furnishings we have bought along with the receipts. We have the latter, but to write them off against tax the current value supposedly has to be approved by an auctioneer. The latter seems nuts. Alternatively, we can use the list to agree to a sale price for the furnishings with a buyer and treat it as a totally separate transaction to buying the apartment itself. Nothing is straightforward.....

At any rate, it was very reassuring to hear that the sale process can proceed after we have returned to NZ, and it is just a matter of going through all the hoops. It will take 2-3 months for settlement after the agreement to buy has been signed. 

Later in the morning we jumped in the car and headed to a nearby Lidl. It's a cheap and cheerful supermarket and we bought a good range of groceries. Just a little further up the valley we parked at the town of Amelie-les-Bains. We had arranged to meet English friends here for lunch. The reunion was good fun, with the promise to meet up again before John and I depart in early June. 

Next stop was back in Ceret at one of the local garages. We had booked in for a Control Technique, similar to a WoF. France requires all vehicles to have a Control Technique less than six months old before they can change hands. Our CT is 18 months old so is not due again for another six months. The check took 30 minutes and it was very disappointing to learn that the car had failed. It needs new front tyres because the existing ones are heavily worn on the inside. This is particularly frustrating given we had the tyres realigned last year in Perpignan. We will have to have two new tyres fitted and take the car back to the garage so a now CT can be issued. It's yet another thing to have to chase up. 

View towards the coast from the Devil's Bridge

Last stop for the day was the bike shop in Ceret. We have decided to bring our paintings back to NZ in a large box rather than send them back in an unaccompanied package (and attract GST etc) or take the frames off and roll the canvases up into a cardboard tube. The bike box handed over to us was HUGE, but we didn't want to say no. It did fit inside our car, but only with it draped over the top of my head and with John hunched right over the wheel. Thankfully it was only a short five minute drive home.

A VERY large bike box

Over the next day or so we will work on cutting down the box so our paintings fit snugly into it, with sufficient padding. We'll have to take the weight of the box out of the 50kg (2 x 25kg) allowance we have with Qatar Airways. 

We feel as though we're making headway, albeit slowly. 

We have been looking forward to Wednesday 8th because our friends from Montpellier organised to drive down to visit us. Andrew is a Kiwi and Marijke is Belgian. They've been good friends ever since we met them when they lived in Ceret for a year. They have since stayed with us in Nelson - Andrew's mother lived in Nelson (and his sister still does) and Andrew owns property in Nelson. 

We have a lot in common with Andrew and Marijke and we had a really nice time catching up on lots of news and gossip over a coffee at a cafe, followed by a simple lunch at our place and then a 13km walk on the outskirts of Ceret. They took us along a long track that was new to us, but well known to them until we did a little bush bashing to find the road again at the end! Andrew and Marijke are serious athletes and walk, cycle, row and play tennis to a high standard. It was really fun for John and I to walk along a new trail, much of which was beside one of the water canals. We are very keen to walk it again before we leave here in June. 

Andrew and Marijke left for the two hour drive home with as many things as we could unload on them - power tools, large wall map, weed sprayer, jigsaw, Kiwi beanie and more. There is so much stuff we can't take back to NZ and we were keen for them to have as much as possible. They have a large property at Montpellier so can make good use of tools etc. It's great news they are planning another trip out to NZ in January, when they will walk the Te Araroa trail between Nelson Lakes and Bluff. They plan to tackle it in around 5-day sections. We're planning to link up with them in Hanmer Springs, when they will stay a few nights with us and also enjoy a soak in the hot pools.

Marijke and me

Today was our hottest yet - we climbed to just over 20 degrees. It was very windy (the seasonal tramontane wind) but the blue skies were lovely and it was a joy to be out and about. It seems rather odd but the plane trees in town appear to have flowered twice in a year. This means there is lots of flower pods and fine dust or pollen floating around in the air at the moment. If we have the windows open we need to vacuum the floors every day. We're being very vigilant with our cleaning in case someone knocks on the front door asking to have a look at the apartment. 

In fact, we have our first viewing by a prospective buyer booked for Monday. Our agent Valerie notified us that an American has contacted her and want to come and have a look. It will be interesting to see what their reaction is to the place .......