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How a life threatening illness lead to a successful business in France!

Sally Stone and her husband, Mervyn, relocated to France in 2002 to run ‘Les Bons Voisins’, a successful property management business that they now franchise across France. But it hasn’t been easy. Here, Sally tells their story...

In 2001 a work colleague bought a holiday home in France, which he was happy to lend out. My husband Mervyn had a birthday coming up. What better than a cheap weekend away, thanks to the ferry company’s special offers and the free accommodation?

So – off we went, and found a charming, medieval Breton market town with tiny streets and beautiful stone houses. Warm, welcoming people. And a house where all you could hear in the garden was church bells and birdsong, although the house was only a five minutes slow stroll from the centre of ‘town’.

We opened a bottle of wine, soaked up the sunshine, and thanked the resident neighbours for their help in pointing out local places of interest, and got chatting. If only we could have bought a place like this, we mused out loud. Well, they said, there’s a little cottage round the corner, which needs someone with vision.

The cottage was rumoured to be available for £10,000 or less if some of that was paid ‘dessous la table.’ Worth a phone call, surely. We assured ourselves that we could have holidays where we knew the bed would be comfortable: buying and restoring the cottage would only be the equivalent to a few foreign holidays, after all, and Mervyn’s DIY skills could be exploited to the full!

But who can plan for the unexpected? Six weeks after

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