You’ve seen this one in a previous blog. Vicky and I have stayed in this cottage and loved our time here. It is quite livable as is! After I last wrote about it two parties were moved to look very closely at it and one couple travelled to Normandy to visit it. Their final comment to me was:

Thanks for all your input on this, we felt after a lot of thought that it did not quite meet our needs.

It is indeed a lovely cottage….It does need TLC rather more than I could take on….nothing that a handyman could not handle easily, but that’s not me.

It does need new windows too.

Apart from that the area is fantastic the neighbours lovely and it is in the middle of a village which is what we would want.

But take a look at what you get and the price!

Here she is again:

NORMANDY! It may not be our area of maximum expertise, but sometimes it’s worth breaking the mould… especially when it involves a charming stone cottage, set in a picturesque little village in the heart of the rolling hills of Normandy and belongs to special friends.

The cottage comprises 78m2 of open interior floor space, with a gorgeous garden of nearly 1000m², and has two bedrooms and a bathroom.

This little gem of a property is under 1 hr from the port of Caen and 35 000 Euro is the asking price!

I CAN’T RESIST A LITTLE (WAR) STORY…

… about my friend and cousin’s father Bill. He was a WWII bomber pilot and this cottage in Normandy was his last happy home. He had always harboured an overwhelming interest and desire to return to France from Zimbabwe, and to retire there, a dream he realised. He spent his latter years in this comfortable little home in a charming French Village researching lost allied aircraft and their crews in France, and wrote a fascinating book entitled “A Bundu Boy in Bomber Command” – “Memoirs of a Royal Air Force Lancaster Pilot from Rhodesia.”

It is available on Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Bundu-Boy-Bomber-Command-Lancaster/dp/1553958799

In the spring of 1942 at the age of 18 he was accepted into the RAF in Rhodesia for pilot training. In June 1943, having qualified as a fighter pilot and given the rank of Sgt./Pilot, along with many other Rhodesians that had enlisted with him, he was posted to England. On arrival he was put on a conversion course for multi-engined aircraft. During training he selected his six-man crew and on completion, now a Pilot Officer, he was posted to No. 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron partially manned by fellow Rhodesians. From August 1944 to March 1945 Bill and his crew completed thirty-six missions. Following the regular thirty, they volunteered for the extra six! Drawing on details from his wartime log books he takes us through these missions that range from the French coast to the Baltic sea and deep into the industrial heartland of Germany.

For those with a mathematical turn of mind the odds of survival were frighteningly small. Bill’s final mission (the 36th) was a 1000 bomber raid on Essen on the 12th of March 1945 – this was a few weeks before his 21st birthday. He brought his crew safely home for the last time.

Returning to Rhodesia thoughts of those close friends who would never return cast a heavy cloud over what should have been such an exhilarating occasion. There would inevitably be a period of readjustment – but first of all he must learn to drive a motor car!

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