Juillé

How This All Began 

It's a long story - over 50 years, but here is a sense of it.

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When I was fourteen, I began writing letters to a girl in a small village in SW France.

What started as a school pen-pal exchange became something much more enduring. Over the years, our friendship grew into a deep bond—not just between two people, but between families, cultures, and ways of life.

One year, my parent's European road-trip itinerary took us so close to her village, that we stopped in to say ''bonjour' and the friendship was cemented. 

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I was welcomed into her family with a generosity that shaped me. Their home became my second home. I returned again and again—through different seasons of life—always finding the same warmth, the same rhythms, the same quiet sense of belonging.

More than forty years ago we made a promise, as young women do, that one day we would live in the village together.

 

However, life took me elsewhere for a time. I was born in England, and later moved to Australia, where I built a life and family of my own. But France—and this village—remained a constant thread, something I returned to whenever I could.

Years later, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to fulfil on that early promise.

 

The farmhouse you see here is part of that story.

It has been created not as a holiday rental, but as a home—one that reflects the life I have experienced here over decades.

A place shaped by long lunches, family gatherings, shared meals, market mornings, and the quiet beauty of everyday routines.

 

When you stay at French & Cooper, you are not simply visiting France.

You are stepping into a place that has been lived in, loved, and shared across generations.

 

My hope is that you will feel not like a tourist, but like someone who belongs here—even if only for a little while.

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