House #3, viewing #3

So, tonight we went back to see Graham's house again. 7pm, brought a bottle of Chateauneuf-de-Pape. Our goal was to see the place again, of course, but specifically to see it in the evening light. Cocktails on the patio, don't you know.

And it was a little bit of a reality check for us both.

The house was still the charming old cottagey house it had been on both prior visits. No issue with that. The sun sets nowadays at around 9 pm. But at 7 o'clock, when we arrived, the whole place had already passed into shadow. Just barely, but still in shadow. Instead, the whole opposing hillside, where the highway goes through the moutain, was bathed in a warm early summer glow. That land got evening light. Graham's house was on the wrong face of its hill.

The first visit to Graham's house, it was raining. The second, which really sold us, was in broad sunny daylight. And today, all was dusky, with the sun just behind the hill above us.

This we can deal with. A southeasterly disposition is not in and of itself enough to kill a house; after all, it gets morning light, and all day. Facing southeast, three full faces of the house get direct light at different times throughout the day. But whereas we had focused on the beauty of the land for sale during our first two visits, because the land was bathed in gorgeous sunlight, now the spotlight had shifted, extrospecting, showing the view in bright contrast, subduing the locality of the property itself.

There is some glorious wooded mountainside in the view. But there are also some really ugly buildings in the view, and this through the bushy foliage of mid-spring. Warehousey corrugated plastic-roofed thingies. They gleam in just the right light, which is why we went there at dusk to begin with. To find out.

Here's a sample picture from the nice-day visit. I was so focused on the distance, the near view didn't bother me then:

And we're very confused now. There is so much potential here, and it's even possible that the offending buildings will disappear in the upcoming rehab of the waterfront. But they might not. We just don't want to make a mistake. It's also possible that, given the high of delusion we had entertained following our last visit, any repeat visit would be something of a reality-check. And it was.

In addition to this, there was some noise from the road. Not the road immediately in front of the house, nor even the highway up the mountain opposite, really, but from the road across the river, which functions as the primary road into Lodève. Still, Lodève isn't exactly a metropolis.

And of course, except under the luckiest and most expensive of circumstances, no house actually in town will offer a virgin panorama, nor silence. Graham's land is still beautiful, and there will always be tradeoffs. Walking distance to Kepler's school. To the library. To the winery... well, no, but still. Are they worth a slightly blighted view?

On the positive side, Kepler loved it. He chased Graham's cats, and kept his stick away from Graham's dog. It was anice visit, just not the perfect confirmation-of-excellence-in-all-respects we were hoping for.

We didn't take many pics. Somehow the presence of wine made this visit seem more social than business. But here's the house from its very foot looking up:

And from the same spot, looking along at the remise:

You can see the light in the background, as opposed to the foreground. Yet still, it is beautiful land, which with a bit of clearing up, could be a lot tidier. But then, of course, there's the view, the offensive part of which we regrettably did not photograph.

Also today we got to see a copy of the surveyor's chart of the land:

The accompanying sheet says that the house itself is 140 sqm, the remise is 51 sqm, the remaining land is 9170 sqm, and specifically that the remise is listed as developable property. It's zoned as residential space already. Also it seems to me that the sidewalk in front of the property is Graham's as well. Interesting. And that the stairwalk up to his front gate is in front of his neighbor's land.

Oh, what to do? We have a meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon with the town planner. Then we should know more about what of the bad buildings are going away, and what they're to be replaced with. And maybe by then we won't care so much. Stay tuned.