Rebecca Jones - Interview series vol. 19 | #117
On her life in her little château in France
Hello, this is Celeste. I have been writing poems since 2017 and my low-fantasy crime novel Project Dylan since 2022. Letters for Creatives is the place where I share my thoughts on writing, creativity, resources for creatives, and interview creators and authors.
It was a little dream come true when I got to interview Rebecca Jones on her countryside life in France.
Can you tell us about you and your background?
I am Rebecca Jones, a writer and former journalist. Along with my husband Tim, we sold almost everything we owned in the U.K in 2017, packed up our two children, two cats and the few belongings we had left, to move to a neglected petit château in a quiet corner of France and have an adventure.
I left behind a career working for women’s magazines and threw my lot in with this house hidden between woods and wildflower meadows, which we now run as a bed and breakfast and creative retreat venue. We are open and hosting guests every summer and spend our winters slowly renovating, rescuing and restoring the house and the estate.
I write about our life on Substack weekly and share additional posts each month about our backstory, the renovation work and our life in France.
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Why did you decide to start writing about your life in France on Substack?
I was sharing regular posts on social media about our life in France (and still do) and lots of people were asking me to write more. I had tried to write about our life here on Patreon but it felt complicated and didn’t sit comfortably with me. The idea of a weekly newsletter though sparked the notion of a weekly journal about our day-to-day life and I decided to try it.
I wanted to write honestly about a life that many people dream of living, to share the ups and downs, the highs, but also the lows. I felt a journal would allow me to do this in a way that social media wouldn’t. I’m never dishonest on social media, but because it promotes our business, it does tend to be the highlight reel.
The journal allows me to share the huge amount of work that goes into caring for a crazy house like this, the happy moments, the sad and frustrating ones and everything in between. I hope one day my children might read it and be proud of our life here and the risks we’ve taken to live this life.
I also write it for me. Journaling has been eye-opening for me. It is actually incredibly easy to forget or take for granted what you have achieved in a week. Writing each day allows me to see progress where I might not have before. Even on days when I feel I have done nothing, there is always something to say. It makes me take note of and appreciate the little things that would otherwise be lost.
How did you decide to move to the French countryside? And why a château?
We never really made the decision to move to France. It sounds crazy but I honestly feel we were led here.
I realised in early 2017 that we could essentially swap our four-bedroom Victorian townhouse in the pretty market town of Stamford, England, with its postage stamp garden, for a 12-bedroom château in France with six hectares of woodland and wildflower meadows.
Tim and I had by that point reached what we considered to be the peak of our careers, neither of us wanted to take the next step up on the career ladders open to us. We were bored. We’d renovated a few houses, got married, had two children and life felt like it was stretching out before us from behind a desk. It didn’t feel very inspiring and we kept asking ourselves if this was truly all that was left for us until retirement, working to pay off the mortgage and competing with all of our friends for the next step on the property ladder. We flirted with the idea of opening our own business but each idea we came up with left one person in their day job to pay the mortgage.
When the château idea popped up, we found it really hard to ignore. Tim searched online, typing “château for sale” and our budget into Google. This château came up in every search. We happened to be coming to France on holiday with our boys in April 2017 and we were going to be three hours away. We decided to take a look, if only to say that we once went to look at a chateau to buy in France.
I wanted to hate it, so I didn’t have to make the decision to leave my family and friends behind. But I was captured by the tree-lined drive way, the flaking shutters, the huge windows, the woodland and meadows and the romance of rescuing a forgotten old house. On a whim, we put in an offer, if only to say we once put in an offer to buy a château in France.
The whole process continued. When the first offer (which was cheekily low) was rejected, we put in a more sensible one, just to see. When that was accepted, we put our house on the market, thinking it wouldn’t sell and the whole idea would be quashed. But it sold in two weeks. There were various hoops to jump through with buying parts of the estate, which were considered to be agricultural land, and at every point we were waiting for something to go wrong and stop the process, but nothing did. Every barrier seemed to slide easily out of the way and by September 2017 we found ourselves here, our lives in boxes, with about ten words of French between us, wondering just what we had gotten ourselves into.
Which season do you like the most when you are in your little château? Why?
The thing I love most about living here is how much closer my life and nature are entwined. You notice the seasons so much more when they are on your doorstep. I can find something to love about every season; the spectacular sunrises on cold winter mornings with the scent of woodsmoke and ice hanging in the air, the sweet days of early summer when the roses and lime blossom fill the breeze, the energy and vibrancy of spring with its pinprick sharp light, bright colours and fabulous morning chorus. But I think it is autumn I love best, maybe because we arrived in autumn and it will always be a special time for that reason. I love the misty mornings and golden afternoons, the slower pace of our life as the days shorten, the leaves turning, the lamps going on a little earlier, the dahlias reigning in the cutting garden. It is definitely a time of year that I look forward to.
What is your favourite part when you host people?
One of the loveliest things about hosting people is seeing them fall in love with our home. When you live here all the time, it is easy to take the huge windows, beautiful light and peaceful grounds for granted. They slip into your day and become almost normal. Each time we welcome new guests though, they remind us to see it all with new eyes again. I particularly love skeptical husbands, dragged here by their wives, unsure why they are in this quiet bit of France. The most satisfying thing is how happy and relaxed they are by the end of their stay. We are very laid back here, there is no formality, just friendliness and a touch of luxury to make everyone feel welcome and well cared for.
Have you encountered any challenges when you host?
The very worst thing about hosting is how little some people value and appreciate the work that goes into hospitality, the long hours, the physicality of it. As consumers we have come to expect a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week service from every business, small or large.
People forget that small businesses, that are perhaps a one or two-man band, cannot provide a round-the-clock service while trying to have a balanced life. Some people want the charm of a small family-run place but then expect it to be run like a huge corporate hotel. There is a disconnect and a disregard for small businesses in general, and hospitality in particular, that needs to change if people want them to survive.
Terms and conditions need to be respected, opening hours stuck to, response times for emails on weekends and in the evenings allowed for — we aren’t all Amazon with a staff of thousands. It is just us two juggling it all, working many hours each day during our summer season to make our business work.
Mercifully, these people are few and far between, and we have gradually built confidence in ourselves and our business and will push back and say no when people overstep our boundaries. We have learned to get the no in early, if they won’t accept it then they aren’t our clients and we don’t want them to be. Another guest who does respect us, our business and our home will come along and we would much rather welcome them instead.
Can you tell us what you do from dawn to dusk, when it is busy and when it is off-season, respectively?