Have House, Will Travel

The house exchange community has discovered the secrets of travelling the world for free, simply by extending an invitation to total strangers to swap homes. Attracted to a long hot summertime without peak season accommodation prices, we set out on our first house swap in the summer of 2008 and haven’t looked back. Seven swaps in and we’re hooked – with up to six months of the year spent swapping.

How Does a Home Exchange or House Swap Work?

Home exchange is basically like online dating – for houses. You upload your profile to a choice of home exchange websites, and push its most outstanding features. Of course you can specify how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have, but you will also be promoting your home’s location and it’s useful to include data on local attractions. The aim is to make your house sound attractive enough to appeal to visitors from your preferred destination. As well as selecting the country you wish to visit, you will also have the opportunity to specify deal breakers such as; children/no children; pool/no pool; internet/no internet and so on.

And in just the same way as you might meet your consummate mate through a dating site, there will be a perfect house swap for you. We’ve been surprised and charmed with each of our house exchange destinations – all of which have been a mystery to us beforehand. And that’s one side of house swapping that we really adore – that we get to visit towns and villages we’ve no idea exist. Spending the summer under blue skies and a hot sun with a foreign language as a soundtrack can’t be recommended highly enough. To combine that with our career and the family’s education – we’re living the dream, oh, yes we are!

Our First House Swap – Catalonia

Our very first house swap in 2008, was in the mountains of Catalonia, about 30 minutes west of Dali’s birthplace, Figueres.  We arrived to our location – a modern bungalow surrounding by romantic old buildings, uninhabited. It was nestled in the mountains in a beautiful location, with nearby breathtaking mountainside villages and only an hour away from the beach!

We’d made the trip to Barcelona city centre before, and when our son Ruaridh was only one, we spent a week on a very cheap package deal in the Costa Brava – but neither of those experiences could have prepared us for the Catlonian house swap. We were in the mountains – in a tiny village without even a bread shop. This was going to be all about getting in touch with a simpler life. Time here just slowed down – it was magical (and helped along by a power cut!)

We’d been on a very tight work deadline prior to leaving for this first swap, which we’d just made by the skin of our teeth – but we couldn’t rest on our laurels and needed to get straight onto the next part of the project. Only a few days in, on a particularly electric weekend, we lost power. And that was when it hit us. You don’t travel all the way to this beautiful highland village with free range cows, chiming their bells outside your door and expect to keep up a frantic pace. So, prevented from working online due to the power cut, we chilled out – and looked around us. We took lungfuls of fresh mountain air. We played rounders, football and badminton in the vast garden at our disposal. We burnt pizza in the BBQ oven. We read lots of books, and we danced and played limbo in the tiny living room at night. We laughed a lot – and we relaxed.

House Swap Number Two: Chemaze, France

Our second home exchange found us crossing the Dordogne north to the Mayenne region of France and the small village of Chemaze.  Again, the experiences were endless:  we we played in the fountains, challenged the locals to Ping Pong, resisted chocolate temptation extraordinaire, visited the most amazing museum I’ve written about here before – the Robert Tatin Museum.  And went bike riding almost every day – even in the rain!

Travelling so far north was delayed a little with some visits to friends in Bordeaux and a detour to visit the folks soon we’d be swapping with on our 4th swap, so we were very ready to get online and connected again. Fortunately, the house was fully equipped with an office for two, and a hard wire to the Broadband for each of us. Better still, the village was abundant with children on holiday, and all ready to play with Ruaridh – the exotic visitor from Scotland. This northern village was on the outskirts of the attractive town of Chateau Gontier, and the theme for this swap was work and play.

The location was actually so similar to our home set up that we vowed not to do this type of swap again – and instead look for something different – but what we took was far more important than that, we discovered how we would like to live when we were at home in the UK. Not a bad result!

Swapping Again:  Home Exchange in Montauban

Montauban, 30 mins north of Toulouse was the location of our third home exchange in 2008.  It is a beautiful town on the River Tarn and we stayed in 50′s townhouse.  Lapping up the French lifestyle, we relaxed in the pool, spent a lot of time in the medieval town centre, enjoyed countryside art installations, and made lots of new friends with whom we went kayaking.

A town-centre location, this swap took place during the month of August and because Montauban is not known as a tourist centre, it was so empty we felt like we had the whole place to ourselves! Having access to deliciously cold dipping pool in this urban garden was a great touch, in the high summer heat – and we made use of it almost every day the sun was beating down. We also took advantage of the multiplex cinema (in French) on the outskirts of the town; the numerous cafes and bars in the town centre; and drank in the breath-taking scenery of the Aveyron, whilst kayaking with some great new friends the day before we left.

We loved Montauban and the families we met there so much that we went back to stay with them in 2009, where Ruaridh went to school. Just one of the long-lasting friendships we’ve made during our adventures – where the people have become so much part of the learning and growing experience.

House Swap Number Four:  The Atlantic Coast

Our fourth house swap in 2008 was on the Atlantic coast, just south of La Rochelle in an area famous for its mussels and oyster farms. We stayed in a 2 hundred year old restored Charentaise farmhouse on the edge of a nature reserve, and our senses were delighted with endless things to see and do.  We fooled about in the hot tub, raided the vegetable garden for produce, all near the ancient village of St Sornin, famous for its church where we rounded off the trip by getting married!

The wedding itself was organised almost in its entirety by our swap host couple – even so far as providing the witnesses!

We rediscovered our love of the coast during the month or more we spent in this wonderful farmhouse. During September, most of the holiday makers have packed up and headed home, and so our greatest pleasure was the ability to enjoy the wild, ruggish land in peace. To visit the coast was only a 20 minute drive from the tiny hamlet nestled in glorious woodland in which we stayed for the duration. And to cycle to the small village of St Sornin amongst the blackening sunflower fields, on the tiniest of roads built upon the reclaimed marshland was as romantic as it sounds. The locals would probably not be so happy to hear of their village described as such, but to us there was the definite feel of the wartime France. Without any of the horror, distrust and other associations, but with all the romance.

Looking Back on Our Experiences

Our hosts went beyond the call of duty and we were introduced to many fine people, both locals and ex pats, and the ease with which we find ourselves being married made the experience absolutely unforgettable! This year we hope to return for a visit, as one of the swaps this time around is only an hour and a half inland. Yes, the world is a big place, and there’s plenty of other locations for us to visit as we did last year, but these locations and the house swappers we have met along the way are so very special and have made such an impact on our lives, that we cannot help but return, share stories and enjoy the good life.

If you’d like to get some house swap action, here are a few websites you might find useful:

• http://www.homeforexchange.com
• http://www.1sthomeexchange.com
• http://www.geenee.com
• http://www.homebase-hols.com

We’re just about organised for our third season of swaps – 12 weeks of sun, sea and people and experiences we hope we’ll never forget… You’ve still got time to arrange yours! We can gift you a voucher for trial membership of one of our favourite sites. Just leave a comment at the bottom of the article and I’ll get it organised for you.

All photos copyright Julie Gibbons.

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