Showing results by author "Dick Strawbridge" in All Categories

Like many Brits, Dick and Angel had long dreamed of living in France, but where others might settle for a modest bolthole in the French countryside, the Strawbridges fell in love with a 19th-century fairy-tale chateau, complete with 45 rooms, seven outbuildings, 12 acres of land and its own moat. Throwing caution to the wind, Dick and Angel swapped their two-bedroom flat in East London for an abandoned and derelict castle in the heart of the Loire valley and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime with their two young children, Arthur and Dorothy.

In January 2015, Dick and Angel Strawbridge embarked on the journey of a lifetime when they swapped their cosy two-bedroom flat in East London for a derelict château with 12 acres of land in the Loire valley. Where Sunday Times best seller A Year At the Château told the entertaining and heartwarming beginning of the family's French adventure, as they found their forever home and began to restore and renovate the dilapidated castle, Living The Château Dream is about the years of hard graft that followed.

Picking up from where Living the Château Dream ended, Dick and Angel recount the newest and biggest challenges they faced on the journey to transforming their once derelict and abandoned château in France's Pays de la Loire into a thriving family home and sustainable business.