Moving to France from Essex has made us happier and healthier [says Zoe Ballard, 37]. We have always loved animals and had often joked we’d love to start an animal sanctuary. It then got to the point in our lives when we’d had so much fun over the years we wanted to give something back.
We met on the dancefloor 17 years ago, when my husband, Justin, 54, was a DJ and I was having a moment on the podium. Our life in the music industry as DJs, producers and record label owners was party-filled and hectic, but we also had day jobs: Justin his own cosmetic vehicle repair company and me as a part-time executive assistant.
Home was a two-bedroom end-of-terrace with a postage stamp-sized garden in Thurrock, Essex where we had as many animals as we could: our dog Mylo, seven koi carp and two rescued tortoises.
Our quest to find one to two acres of land to open a sanctuary began around seven years ago — initially we thought we’d have to get another mortgage and live in a caravan to make it work.
The banks of Mayenne, near where Zoe and Justin live
ALAMY
For two years we were outbid by developers at auction, or the land for sale was subject to restrictive covenants, making the cost prohibitive. Just one acre in the countryside around Essex or Kent would have cost around £250,000 without power or drainage connected.
So we started looking in northwest France, where we’d holidayed a lot. We loved the easy driving, clean air, and green rolling countryside with pretty villages. Every time we returned we asked ourselves: why are we even coming back to the UK any more?
Zoe and Justin saved an elderly horse from slaughter
We focused on the Normandy area as we wanted to be able to get back to the UK easily and because our €100,000-€250,000 budget would go a long way.
After viewing 30 properties on a series of road trips, we found the one — a three-bedroom farmhouse on 1.4 hectares (around 3.5 acres), with a second house and two barns near the medieval town of Mayenne in the northwestern Pays de la Loire region.
• ‘I dreamt of horses as a child — now I have three in my back garden’
On the drive to view it, the estate agent (who happened to run a cat rescue) told us the price had been dropped from €160,000 to €142,000 (£123,000). It was clearly meant to be.
We sold up in Essex and moved last summer: the profit from the house would give us a cushion into our later years and help to fund the sanctuary.
The Ballards moved in to their new home last summer
When researching visas we found a lot of conflicting information online, so we used a relocation company, French Connections HCB, to get us VLS-TS long-stay tourist visas.
There’s a lot of chatter on Facebook groups that you are not allowed to work on this visa, but you can as long as you don’t do so for a French company. Earning money from UK sources, either remotely or by travelling back to the UK, is legal. So is running a not-for-profit association.
For my remote work contracts I had to prove sufficient income of at least €21,621 (£18,700) a year, and we submit tax returns in both the UK and France. When our French has improved we will go for the four-year residency card (rather than annual visa renewals) but the language exam has got tougher.
Comical moments in shops around getting the gender of a baguette wrong, or much worse, have all been part of the warm welcome we’ve received. Our French neighbours invited us for dinner and loaded us up with potatoes and marrows to take home.
We’ve launched the Yin Yang animal sanctuary and are building paddocks and shelters ready for four miniature Shetland ponies who are arriving this week instead of being sent to the slaughterhouse. We are so excited to be realising our dream.
Four Shetland ponies were saved from the slaughterhouse
Our first rescue animal was Henry, a kitten, and four more cats followed, and then Paul, a 28-year-old horse who we also saved from slaughter, plus six hens and two roosters.
Both of us have always ridden horses and I was a volunteer for South Essex Wildlife Hospital for two years, so have some useful experience. The rules in France around the rescue and care of wildlife — like orphaned hedgehogs and fox cubs — are much stricter so we are aiming to get a certificat de capacité to permit this and turn the spare cottage into a rehab unit.
DIY materials and plants are more expensive in France, but fuel is cheaper and food is around the same, but far better quality, so the cost of living evens out.
We miss our friends and family but see more of them here as we have the space to put them up. Creme Eggs are the only other thing that Justin misses about UK life — certainly not the traffic congestion and road rage that he experiences when he returns to the UK every five to six weeks.
Here we feel much healthier and happier. We are grateful to wake up each morning, look out of the window and see open fields and hear birdsong rather than the hum of the A12 and M25. We love being isolated down our country lane but can fetch croissants and coffee from a village just three minutes’ drive away.
It feels like we’ve won the lottery, because we’d never have had the money to create a life like this in the UK.