The woman at the bakery hands me the bread and asks if this is my first time in the village. I smile noncommittally. “You’ll be back!” she predicts cheerfully.
Of course I will. In fact, I have already been back hundreds of times, as I have had a second home here for 12 years, but she must not know about it. I have no local profile, no friends or colleagues. I have not joined any clubs or Facebook groups.
The way I come and go, leaving my property empty for months at a time, makes me everything the British beauty spot communities detest: locals call us “blow-ins,” “DFLs” (descendants of London) and other less publishable names.
Thank goodness my home is in France. Thank goodness the bakery is a boulangerie, the bread is a baguette and the village is Saint-Martin-de-Ré, on the dazzling, windswept Île de Ré, the jewel of the French Atlantic coast. Because I would never dare buy a holiday home in Britain.
The Cornish fishing port of Mousehole, packed with short-stay accommodation, is a tourist draw.
For all those whose memories of summer holidays are rapidly fading and you have nothing left but a few grains of sand in your trainers, I’m going to hazard a guess: before leaving your favourite little piece of Britain, did you spend an hour looking at prices in estate agent windows? Dreaming that next year’s holiday might not be in an Airbnb or a hotel, but in your own home?
Well, my advice is to think long and hard before you make your Rightmove ambitions a reality, because second-home owners in the UK (some 712,000, according to the Department of Levelling Up (2021/2022)) have never been more vilified. The rush to escape the city during lockdown saw property prices in tourist hotspots soar, preventing residents from safely owning or renting their own home.
When my husband, Andrew, and I bought our house in France, owning a second home was not a controversial issue. The Thatcher children came from modest families, we bought our first apartment at an affordable price, moved into a house when the children came along, and by the time we were 40 we looked for status symbols to acquire. It was an aspiration, not an immorality.
We discovered Saint-Martin-de-Ré, famous for its UNESCO World Heritage-listed fortifications, its quayside ice cream parlour La Martinière and its “donkeys in pyjamas”, in the 2000s, when I was looking for a remote place where one of my characters could disappear.
Later, I described an entire book there, another mystery about a missing person. Obviously, it seemed like a good place to stay unnoticed, so when I dreamed of a hideaway of my own, the natural thing to do was to look for a house there. We bought a peculiar little place in the tangle of old streets near the port, so discreet that it has no frontage, just a door between two shops leading to a hidden house at the back.
Author Louise Candlish writes in her second home in the French village of Saint-Martin-de-Ré
Twelve years of quiet, low-key holidays, cycling 100km along cycle paths and strolling through ancient pine forests and salt marshes. Wine from local vineyards, oysters from our own waters, early Ré potatoes (very similar to those from Jersey). And just us.
“It’s almost like we’re in a witness protection program,” Andrew said last winter, when we were into our fourth week of windy beach walks with the dog and hadn’t had any meaningful conversations with anyone but each other.
“I know,” I said. “Isn’t that great?”
It helps that we don’t speak French. Ignorance is bliss in a way it could never be at home, say in Cornwall, the nearest equivalent to the Île de Ré. England’s rugged south-west tip is undoubtedly the epicentre of the UK’s holiday home crisis, with 21,120 locals languishing on housing waiting lists, while some 13,000 second homes and Airbnbs sit empty for much of the year.
In places like St Ives, graffiti and posters reading “First home, not second home” are common; celebrity invasions don’t help. Remember Gordon Ramsay’s ill-advised comment about “hating Cornwall” when he moved into his house in Daymer Bay during lockdown? (He sold it shortly afterwards.)
Well, now Cate Blanchett finds herself in trouble just steps away from the icy seas that drew her in the first place.
He bought a cottage in the beautiful Mawgan Porth and then decided to demolish it to build an ambitious new property. Following local anger, he scaled back his plans.
“You always have to be sensitive,” says Emma, 48, who has owned a home in the picturesque village of Marazion, near Penzance, for nine years. She bought a historic property that had been slow to sell and was careful to hire local builders and craftsmen to restore it. Properties like hers are often unsuitable for young families, as they are expensive to renovate and far from transport links.
Emma advises spending as much time as possible in a second home, especially out of season, to avoid being accused of being part of the great “emptying out”. “Being there during the short, dark days means you are not a casual visitor,” she explains.
Get it wrong and you risk reprisals, as well as the occasional unfriendly sign. Emma knows second-home owners who have had their tyres punctured simply because their number plate identifies a London garage, or have covered their property with seeds to attract seagulls, who will then cover it with their filth.
In the Lake District, another over-sought beauty spot, police recently investigated arson threats over the message “Fuck your second home” printed on stickers next to an illustration of a burning house.
Saint-Martin-de-Ré is located on the windswept Île de Ré, a jewel of the French Atlantic coast.
In our little corner of France, this kind of hostility does not exist. Separated from the mainland by a toll bridge, the Île de Ré sees its population rise from 20,000 to 250,000 in summer, then decline again as sun-seekers and seasonal workers leave.
The pace seems to suit us all, with grown children leaving not because they are priced out of living, but because they are ready to head to the city.
In the case of our British counterparts, there are policy measures in place to keep people like us out. Trusts prohibit property from passing into the hands of anyone who does not intend to use it as a primary residence. A 3% stamp duty surcharge applies to second homes. And now, in some areas, double or even triple council tax is levied.
The strategy is to hit the privileged where it hurts the most and they may sell.
But for the vast majority, including myself, buying a vacation home didn’t make financial sense. The value is emotional, tied to that dreaded phrase “making memories.”
The upkeep of our house in Saint-Martin costs around 4,000 euros a year, which is a comparative advantage compared to, say, a family summer holiday in Florida. But the total outlay far exceeds the cost of a holiday rental or a hotel. And when we sell it, we probably won’t get back what we paid.
I’m known for my noir thrillers, so holiday home ownership, with its ripped-from-the-headlines moral dilemma and the tension and conflict that comes with it, was a natural subject for me. But as much as I love my French retreat, my new novel, Our Holiday, could only have been set in England.
My fictional village of Pine Ridge was based on a place I visit regularly, Studland in Dorset, reached via chain ferry from stunning Sandbanks (where there is currently a house for sale for just under £15m).
Studland is a more low-key place, with National Trust beaches and cliff-top walks to Old Harry’s Rocks or inland to Corfe Castle.
The Blue Flag beaches are a paradise for families, with pedal boats and stand-up paddleboards and even a sauna and seaweed baths on the beach. I have the same feeling as the Ile de Ré, the feeling that seduces second-home owners and tourists alike: that of having finally found the place of happiness.
There is currently a charming fisherman’s cottage for sale, just a few metres from the beach, with a thatched roof, original beams, beautiful old fireplaces…
But no, I’m turning away from the estate agent’s window. There are many people who deserve this piece of paradise far more than I do, especially those for whom this house would be their first.
Our Holiday is now available in paperback (£9.99, HQ)
