Sonia and Karl from North Yorkshire had never been to the Charente-Maritime region of southwest France until 2023 but they’d ear-marked it for their new life in France with ‘great food and lots of space’.
Viewers of A Place in the Sun last month (March) will have seen the couple view five properties with Craig – and plain-speaking, braces-wearing Karl certainly did not mince his words when they fell short – at least two were ruled out as obvious ‘money pits’ for requiring ‘far too much work’.
So anyone who doubted whether their perfect home did exist in the region might be rather surprised to learn that the couple did push on and find their dream home.
“As soon as we got back from the filming we started looking online again and Karl kept travelling back to France every week,” says Sonia, 66, over Zoom from her spacious new kitchen (she did always want a ‘very big’ kitchen).
After looking at 20-odd properties the couple found the one – in January 2024. Located in Champagne-Mouton in the Charente, the three double-bedroom property is indeed the quintessential French, blue-shuttered stone house surrounded by green fields, an orchard - and silence.
“We are more likely to hear a woodpecker than a car here,” says Sonia. “We can play our records and sing as loud as we want and no-one will hear!”. She pans around their ‘incredible’ home with egg-shell blue kitchen with 30 cupboards and an Everhot range cooker. The property cost €165,000 but was originally priced at €219,000.
Whilst the purchase process was fine, getting a visa was ‘a bureaucratic nightmare’ but they succeeded and moved to France on a visitor visa. It cost them €300 and then €100 to renew it. Karl, 72, goes back and forth to the UK to do some building work so it suits them fine.
“Buying this place keeps us young,” says Sonia, who works remotely as an executive director. “I’ve joined a singing ensemble, a drama group. It makes for a very entertaining time. The paperwork here is a pain but the rest of life is fun. We love the food markets – they are dream for a cook.”
In fact they’ve been so diverted by the renovation – there’s a master suite upstairs with a 15 x 10 dressing toom - and now the social side of life that they have only just purchased a TV – so they could watch their episode go out last month.
“But we are still waiting to get married,” says Sonia, about the couple’s plans to find a house with a garden large enough to host their wedding. “We will do it in the local church – probably in 2026. The locals are very friendly too, she says. “Last year I got bitten by a bug and the pharmacist really looked after me,” says Sonia, who says the nearest big town is Ruffec, half an hour away – or Civray.
“The UK feels a bit claustrophobic when we go back. This place is like a tonic.”
