MY HOME IS A CASTLE--the tale of how and why I became a chatelain , four times .This is my present home. If you are visiting for the first time you may care to read the older posts first.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

GOLF- the FINAL HOLE!


So, this is the final chapter of the golf story, the last installment left us awaiting the full dossier following the visit from the ' Golf-course expert' -there must an official title for these people -with anticipation!
The day dawned , the dossier arrived and we waded through it .
It was very detailed , from the complexities of the soil, right down to drawings of a) the 18 hole golf-course with the water holes , b) the clubhouse situated near the 9th hole, and c) the large Hotel nestling just within the woodland. It also noted the catchment areas by population, and current golf courses within a certain radius. Then it talked up the benefits of creating such an establishment in the countryside of the Loire Valley in France. In fact it was genuinely worth the large sum we had paid, so we were well satisfied!


So the next step was to go to the Mairie for the planning permissions! Then the ' French Administration' took over and we spent a long period ( I cannot recall exactly how long but it was at least 2 months) biding our time and looking into local golf courses and the running of them!


Finally -- We got our permissions! WHOOPEE! We were estatic, and thought that we had really arrived! Our dreams had been realised! We would find a buyer and be able to repay the bank and get back to concentrating on our first love, which was running the beautiful chateau La Roche Hue.


How naive we must have been, always looking through rose coloured glasses, we were about to get our first lesson in trying to" run before you can walk"



Our main setback was to discover that just outside of our nearest local town ' Baugé ' a Japonese consortium had already obtained planning permission for an 18 hole Golf-course which was already well under construction! This information was a huge blow as it had not been mentioned by our expert in his dossier. So he had not been as thorough as we had thought. We had relied on him to discover any potential competitors! We went to visit this course and it was in an ideal situation , and was being developed by professionals! This Bauge Golf-Course is still up and running today!


"So where do we go from here?" was our first thought!


We carried on with a search for a buyer for the golfing project-- we advertised in Golfing papers/magazines etc. Several enterprises showed interest but none of them decided to go ahead, mainly because of the other Course. We thought of suing the Pro for our money back on the dossier, but realised it might end up costing us more, so we discarded that idea.
We also approached several golfing celebrities- again nothing and money or ' lack-of ' was getting to be a problem.


Well, at the end of the day, we still had our lovely farm, so, reluctantly we put it back on the market.
Eventually , we sold it to the nephew of the family we had bought it from, ie the original owners of Chateau La Roche Hue. He , the nephew, was a Comte ( an Earl) and (unbelievable, but nevertheless true) he wanted to buy the farm, renovate it and install his mistress and her pet wolf! Yes I did mean WOLF!




So we struck even! We sold the farm for what we paid for it, making no profit, put our dreams on hold and got back to the business we were running, and concentrated on how to make it profitable. So endeth the tale of the GOLF..............

19 comments:

  1. Well Delphine you must count yourself extremely lucky that you came out square save for a little lost dream considering you were following your heart and not the head in this venture...

    Happy days

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree - how fortunate you were to sell it for what you paid.

    ReplyDelete
  3. OMG!! How lucky were you to come out even ... yet you got smarter in the process! That really is a good deal! My mistakes usually cost me!

    Blast that so-called "expert"! You trusted him to find all of the caveats! Wonder what he's doing now!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello Delphine,

    As promised in my comment on your first post, I have been reading through your adventures. There is no doubting that La Roche Hue was/is a beautiful property and I admire your energy and enthusiasm for tackling such a project. Not much of the stolid Taurean there, eh?!! Nor with your golf course plan. Pity that didn't work out but things didn't go too badly in the end.

    I'm also glad Chris is OK and, may I say, how charming you look in your birthday photograph!

    I look forward to future instalments.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ahhhh...the lives of the rich and famous eh? just a minute....what am I saying? my sister once had a lion..... in the city of Seattle..... Atlas used to ride around in the back of her pick-up truck.

    I'm glad you managed to come out even...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy days too Delwyn,I am usually level-headed but I think we just got carried away on this one!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello Ruth, yes we were extremely lucky ,but the locals were really disappointed that it came to nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Cottage Girl- yes I wonder what they are all doing now, does the Comte still have his mistress ? To me that was the most bizzare thing - because it was accepted!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hello again Derrick, sorry we lost touch. Hope Scotland is Sunny too today! Thankyou for all your nice comments I have visited your posting today too!

    ReplyDelete
  10. BumbleVee --that is amazing! Did she bring it up from a cub? How did she cope when it was big? Are you going to do a blog on it? You should!

    ReplyDelete
  11. A sad tale with a blessed ending.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Rudee , thankyou for your comments. I have left a message on your very thought provoking post today!

    ReplyDelete
  13. oh dear...the tale ends on a little sour note but in the end, you broke even and...the wolf got himself a nice shelter!
    :-)

    ps : no...i haven't forgotten your tag..am just very slow on these things. i guess by now i discouraged the whole blogosphere from tagging me but i will do it next week..hum along with another tag from another blogger !

    ReplyDelete
  14. Whew! I'll bet you heaved a huge sigh of relief after that fiasco came out better than you had feared! Too bad for the village though. I'm sure they were looking forward to the extra jobs and influx of money.

    ReplyDelete
  15. My castle in Spain-- there is another story about the wolf, which I will relate later! Don't worry about the tag, I am having trouble too keeping up with everything.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Yes Susan it was a pity for the local community, but we tried our hardest and they were brilliant about it!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Well as you say you live and learn. Luckily you didn't lose too much, just your dreams sadly. That would have been great to have a golf course.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hello Winifred, We certainly did learn from that exercise, any future ventures were ruled by head more than heart!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Far too many exclamation marks. Far too much getting and gaining.

    ReplyDelete