S01E10 Moving to France: Claire’s Remarkable Life as a Hot Air Balloon Pilot

Jane: Welcome to another episode of the Sunflowers Podcast. My name is Jane Anderson and I’m glad you’re all here. I’d like to thank you, on behalf of Kim and me, for all the likes, shares and subscriptions. If you haven’t subscribed, please hit the button; it helps us to grow. You can also buy us a sunflower. If you want to support us and help us develop the podcast further, please follow the link and buy us a little sunflower. Thank you so much. Today we’re going to interview Claire. Claire, it’s great to have you here. I’m very excited about this interview. We met through Sunflowers in Argenton. We’re not going to reveal your secret yet, but we’ll get to that later. We’ll start as we always do: tell us who you were before you got here.

Guest: I’m originally from Wales. I moved to Yorkshire to go to university and never went home again. I met my husband and we’ve now been together for almost forty years. We’re blessed with two wonderful children: a son who is nearly thirty and a thirty-four-year-old daughter. Coming to France was the development of a passion. Craig came from a family where they didn’t really go on holiday. The furthest abroad he had ever been was a day trip from Newhaven to Dieppe. I was lucky enough to go abroad a couple of times with school, on geography field trips and things like that. When we first started going on holiday, we weren’t very intrepid. It was nerve-racking. We chose to go to a gîte in France with friends who had a family of a similar age, and she was a French teacher. That’s how timid we were: we wouldn’t go abroad without a French speaker. The following year we were a little more confident and booked a two-week break. We spent one week in a big gîte with friends, then dared to go further, near Poitiers and Futuroscope. We were able to see more of France under our own steam, without a chaperone. That’s where the passion for France started.

Jane: Whose idea was it to move to France? Was it yours, a joint decision or a dream?

Guest: This is where we uncover the little treasure. It was 2001 and foot-and-mouth disease was happening in the UK. Some neighbours and a group of friends asked whether we would help crew for a hot-air-balloon team. We managed to palm off the children—they went to either Pontins or Butlin’s somewhere, so they definitely drew the short straw! There was one flying yoghurt pot with about twelve people crewing. We literally had to draw straws to stop arguments about who would get in the basket. There was no flying at all in the UK because of foot-and-mouth disease. It really brought the sport to a halt. It’s such a logistical sport: you have to remain current and fly a certain number of times each year to avoid losing your licence or having to retake your check flight. There were around seven pilots and we were just crew at the time. But when you see over five hundred colourful bubbles in the sky at once—it was incredible. This happened in north-eastern France, near Metz. Because of the situation in England, there were even more balloons and pilots than usual.

Jane: More than five hundred balloons? I think I’ve seen it on television and in your photographs. It looks incredible. Were you up in the air?

Guest: We hadn’t got off the ground yet; we were crewing. We made some long-term friends during that expedition. When foot-and-mouth was eventually over, we could fly again in the UK. I crewed enough and earned some time on the burner. Then my mum and dad asked a very expensive question: “What would you like for your fortieth birthday? ” I said, “I’d like to complete my balloon training, please. ”I found myself on a plane to Spain and took four out of five exams. Unfortunately, it rained rather a lot. I just missed my fortieth birthday: I completed my check flight a fortnight later, but we got there in the end.

Jane: And that made you a hot-air-balloon pilot. How many women do that?

Guest: Only about three per cent of aeronauts are women.

Jane: And you’re in that three per cent. What attracted me to speaking to you was your passion for it. You go into so much detail, and I’ve learned things I would never have dreamed of knowing. Does that then trigger the wish to move to France?

Guest: Within six to nine months of qualifying, I received a call offering us a second-hand balloon in exquisite condition. We became the owners of a very good used balloon and could attend the Metz event, or Chambley, in the Grand Est region of north-eastern France. We met some fabulous French people. On our third visit, the cold-inflation fan broke. Some people helped us pack up, noticed the fan was damaged and said, “It’s okay—we have TIG-welding equipment. We’ll fix it for you. ” That was more than twenty years ago. Over time they said, “You don’t need to camp anymore. Next time, stay in our house. ” We have remained friends ever since. That was the beginning of our love affair with France and its people—their honesty and generosity are fabulous. When we had our own balloon, we didn’t want to purge the tanks and dispose of the gas before taking the ferry back from Calais. We travelled further south, quite close to this area, to fly some friends who had also lived in Yorkshire. The whole village would turn up. We swapped empty tanks for full ones, took up more passengers and alternated with my husband, who also qualified as a pilot a little after me. It became a small balloon festival. That’s when we began noticing this region. It felt a little like the Lake District with the temperature turned up. We started having a quiet look at estate agents while we were here. Then Brexit brought the realisation that if we didn’t do it now, we might miss the boat. The ninety-day rule made things very difficult unless you could manage two houses simultaneously. We decided we would live the dream. I was a teacher and had become progressively more unhappy in my career. To keep a job I was being forced to teach outside my specialism. I felt like a complete fraud. It does terrible things to your confidence and mental well-being when you have to teach GCSE and A-level subjects in which you don’t even hold the qualification yourself. We first decided to pay off our house, so that if I were made redundant we would have an emergency safety net. Once the house was mortgage-free, my daughter bought us a book about property investment, which completely changed our mindset. We were able to release money from our house. It had been a project and, after twenty years of work, we had made money on it. We used twenty-five per cent deposits to build a portfolio of buy-to-let properties. That UK property portfolio supports us and helped finance the leap. My husband is a graphic designer as well as a musician, and he has continued working for UK clients because we now have fast fibre broadband here.

Jane: Fibre is a game changer. When I first came here, I was still effectively working with businesses in Scotland. Without fibre I couldn’t have done it.

Guest: Craig had to muddle along at first and eventually got Starlink. Halfway through the twelve-month contract, fibre finally arrived. It’s now available everywhere. Even though we’re in a national park and somewhere very small, it’s better than the broadband we had in Yorkshire. We sold the satellite dish so somebody else could benefit from it.

Jane: You had the portfolio and were ready to go. This is a beautiful home and you’ve welcomed us in—we’ve taken over your house and you’ve fed us. Was it easy to find the property?

Guest: We had already looked at a few, so we had a starting point. This was during the run-up to Brexit. I used two search filters, as I was used to doing for the property portfolio: an aspirational price range and a realistic one. One day, a property from the aspirational search suddenly appeared in the affordable search. I wondered whether I was losing the plot, but the seller had reduced it by thirty thousand euros. The friends we stayed with for ballooning visited it for us. One was a filmmaker with a drone and camera. He filmed the roof, garden and loops around the commune, because we needed to know where the power lines were. The idea was to buy a house with a huge garden so we could launch the balloon from it or hold a small balloon meet. One friend filmed the exterior while another photographed the inside and asked the estate agent for as much information as possible. We even told the seller not to worry if she had to leave things behind. During COVID it was difficult to reach charity shops in the UK, and we assumed it was the same here. We said we would pass things on rather than let them go to waste. We needed to complete before Brexit, and we got in just under the wire—with twelve days to spare.

Jane: That was tight. When you arrived with twelve days to spare, how did the reality compare with the dream? Sometimes the first six weeks are fine, then suddenly you realise you really live here.

Guest: It was harsher than that because I only had two weeks here. We moved in and had to find the bolts for the bed and make the kitchen workable. We had our sheepdog, Sophie, with us, which was lovely. But I was contractually obliged to return to the UK on 2 January. There were no flights, so the only way back was by Eurostar. Within ten weeks, the UK entered lockdown—and I was still there. I was living in the bedroom with bunk beds at my mum and dad’s house, trying to look professional while teaching online with poor internet. I decided it was better to go into school. I joined the roster looking after children from key-worker families while also teaching online. We did five-a-side football, cooking lessons and activities for mixed age groups. At the same time, teachers in our department had scheduled online lessons. I was juggling pupils, living with my parents and shopping for around four families. I found the supermarket queues very stressful: waiting for the green light before you were allowed inside. The amount of cortisol coursing through us must have been enormous. We were constantly in fight-or-flight mode. A dear friend also lost her battle with cancer. She was a family friend and the local village marshal. All we could do was stand two metres apart to watch the hearse pass. When you’re pursuing the dream of living in France and then see friends dying, you think: yes, we’re doing the right thing.

Jane: If moving is in you, you have to do it. We use the same word: we’re pioneers. We’re doing this at an age when it would have been lovely to do it at twenty-five, but finances didn’t allow it. You wait until you’re older and more set in your ways and more dependent on everything you know at home—then suddenly take this step. We should be proud of what we do, often without speaking the language. The French taught at school doesn’t come close to what people speak here. Your husband was here and you were stuck in the UK for work. Emotionally, it must have been extremely hard for you both.

Guest: Absolutely. But sometimes you can turn a negative into a positive. We had around eighteen months apart. During the countdown to the end of the school year, as the mornings became lighter, I downloaded the NHS Couch to 5K app and decided to do something for myself. My mum didn’t even notice until she saw the Lycra in the wash. I got up ridiculously early to do Couch to 5K before teaching; when the days grew longer, I could also do it in the evening. Unknown to me, Craig had signed up for WildFit. Neither of us had told the other. When we eventually saw each other again at Limoges Airport, around 21 July, it was a wonderful surprise. That was one silver lining, although there had been a great deal to endure. We have been pioneers. My first adventure was leaving Wales to live in Yorkshire, and moving to France became the next big step.

Jane: How did your family cope with the move?

Guest: That’s a tricky one. My daughter had already flown the nest. She is a costumier, so she needed to live near London and the film studios for her career. Just before COVID, I was looking for another property for our portfolio. I used to drive home from school by all sorts of random routes to look at properties. I found one that seemed ideal for my son because he is passionate about vintage Volvos. It had a huge garden, space for a large garage and a private driveway. Long story short, it happened—so we had an empty nest. COVID made everybody realise how precious life is. We could hear about events in China and then Italy. It was a very difficult time for everyone.

Jane: You’re now together in France, you’ve brought the hot-air balloon, and you’ve both been working on your fitness. A whole new adventure begins.

Guest: I reached the golden age of fifty-five, when I could access my teacher’s pension, and thought, “See you! ” I remember it was almost the last day of school and temperatures in the UK reached over forty degrees. The car’s air-conditioning had broken and I drove home with a wet tea towel on my neck. Then, at last, we were together. But we discovered more obstacles. We had brought our eight-seater four-wheel-drive crew bus. It drank fuel like a rabid dog, but being an old Toyota the French authorities wouldn’t issue a carte grise. We couldn’t transfer the registration and the vehicle couldn’t stay in France. We returned it to the UK, obtained a fresh MOT and sold it to somebody who could use it. We then had to bring another vehicle from the UK because cars in France were so expensive. It took us seven weeks to buy a car here. We now have two British-import cars. One arrived before Brexit, so there was little paperwork. We brought the Volvo over as a replacement crew vehicle and had to absorb the import charge. The next gift that kept on giving concerned our balloon pilot licences. What was meant to be a licence for life was affected by Brexit. After a grace period, a French tax resident needed a European pilot’s licence. Our British licences were no longer sufficient, so we were grounded. For a while, British-licensed friends came over and flew with us. Eventually we had to take the hit and do a lot of research. France wouldn’t translate the exam questions, and my French wasn’t strong enough for aviation exams. We discovered that Italy and Spain offered translated exams. Spain had a better pass rate, so we went there. We looked around Barcelona, completed our flight checks and sat the exams. It was extremely stressful and cost thousands, but it was the dream. The final bureaucratic hoop concerned fuel. A supplier wouldn’t provide a bulk refuelling tank unless we established an association and obtained a SIRET number. It was almost like setting up a micro-enterprise. Westwood Montgolfière now exists, our tank arrives next week and—provided the temperature falls—there will be no stopping us.

Jane: That’s so exciting. To be among only three per cent of female pilots is inspiring. How did you find the community and your French neighbours? They must love the balloon.

Guest: They noticed the windsock in the garden and know where we live. When we arrived just before Brexit, we found an exquisitely handwritten Christmas card in the post box, with beautiful italics and a wax seal. It came from the owner of the neighbouring château, welcoming us to the village. The village normally meets for Epiphany and shares a galette containing a small fève; whoever finds it wears the crown. Because of confinement, the mayor instead knocked on the door. Craig was here alone, and the mayor gave him a bottle of cider and one of the galettes. It was lovely. As the restrictions eased, Craig gradually got to know the neighbours. It had been a very testing time for him. I had a full life in the UK, juggling my parents, school and helping people, but he had been here alone.

Jane: I can sympathise with him. My husband also had to fly back frequently when we first moved, and I found that very trying. Thankfully, he no longer has to do it. How are you getting on with the French language?

Guest: I would describe it as a work in progress. Craig has an A-level in French, so his formal French is better—but people don’t speak formally, and here in the Berry the dialect is stronger. My hairdresser told me about French lessons. If you register with Pôle emploi—the equivalent of the Jobcentre—as an immigrant, you’re entitled to language lessons as part of integrating into society. I would have attended for free, but they actually paid me to take the course. If I had lived further away, I could even have received a mileage allowance. For twelve weeks I was back in the classroom, this time watching instead of teaching. I made some friends for life and gained insight into the tragic circumstances some other participants had endured. One man had spent nine months walking across Europe and ended up in a Red Cross camp near Brussels. France appears to welcome people and help them become self-sufficient. After three months in the classroom, I also found a local conversation group at a café in Chaillac, about fifteen minutes away in the Brenne Regional Natural Park. My husband attends a more advanced session than I do. Local French people sit with us and we practise conversation. They’re also helping newer arrivals study for French citizenship exams, including civics, French history and traditions. I’m interested in joining that too. It’s a civilised country and the neighbours are fabulous. They all want us to launch from their fields, so perhaps we didn’t need such a big garden after all. Depending on wind direction, we need several launch points. Some routes would take us too close to the airspace around Châteauroux and Argenton. When we put a request on Facebook, we received many responses saying, “Please fly from my field. ” Even the mairie secretary offered fields for us to inspect. We check them every year because of crop rotation. This area is mainly dairy and Limousin beef country, so there is plenty of pasture. The fields are also less challenging than Yorkshire, where the Pennines have hard dry-stone walls. If a balloon basket doesn’t stop before reaching one, it hurts.

Jane: What does the future look like now that the association is established? What do you see happening for both of you here?

Guest: We still have responsibilities. Unfortunately, two members of my family have died in the last eighteen months, so we sometimes have to return to the UK at short notice. We have found a fabulous dog sitter, which makes quick plans possible. But now it’s: let’s do it. We finally have all our ducks in a row.

Jane: You’ve worked hard, jumped through many hoops and reached your dream. The location is fabulous. If you could speak to the younger you—the person who was so anxious about going on holiday that she needed a chaperone—what would you say?

Guest: Get on with it. I don’t think we could have done it much sooner. We didn’t yet have the property portfolio and couldn’t be financially independent. For some people, stepping outside their comfort zone has to happen in baby steps. But I’m so proud that we did it. My daughter has said, “Mum, do you realise what an inspiration you are? ”

Jane: She can see the pioneer in you. She’s watched her mother work through every obstacle with her husband. That must show her she doesn’t have to remain somewhere if she doesn’t want to.

Guest: My dad was one of eleven children from Swansea. I remember leaning out of my grandmother’s kitchen window and being able to see the homes of several aunts and uncles around the Mayhill estate. I’ve also taught children who were frightened to move away from the family apron strings. When I was teaching, I had the opportunity to accompany several ski trips. On one occasion, a young man told me he normally couldn’t afford the trip, but his grandfather had died and left him some money. He knew it might be the only such trip he could ever afford. To see the Alps and the joy on his face was fabulous. We went through the Mont Blanc Tunnel and the mountains towered above us. It was a privilege to see the transformation and growth in that young man and his confidence. It’s a shame more children can’t access those opportunities. I feel very blessed that we have had the opportunity, the health and the nerve to do this.

Jane: And the nerves—that’s the big part. Claire, it has been wonderful talking to you. Keep flying that balloon. I’ll never be up in it, but I will hold the bags! It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Guest: Thank you so much.