Couple who couldn't afford home in the UK buy entire village in France

28 July 2022, 10:43 | Updated: 28 July 2022, 12:10

Couple react to buying a village on Channel 4 show

Paul Mappley and partner Yip Ward appeared on Channel 4's Help! We Bought a Village.

A couple who couldn't afford their dream home in the UK decided to buy an entire village in France for a fraction of the price.

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Paul Mappley and his partner Yip Ward told their extraordinary story on Channel 4 show Help! We Bought a Village.

The pair, who have never owned so much as a studio flat in the UK, managed to buy the historic hamlet of La Busliere, in Normandy, for €14,000 (about £11,775).

As reported by Metro, it's made up of six cottages, two barns and a paddock, a two-storey workshop, cider press and communal bread oven, and the Paul and Yip - who are both landscape gardeners - are planning to turn it into a luxury holiday destination.

They were living in a caravan in Tumbridge Wells before a friend offered them the chance to buy it back in 2019.

The cottage has no electricity and needs a fair amount of work, but Yip urged anyone thinking of doing something similar to ‘just go for it’.

He told The Sun: "In the area we were living before 2021 it was about £300,000 to buy a tiny place to live, and that was just never on the table for us.

"We had always rented and we were living in a – really lovely – static mobile caravan belonging to our friend.

"But when they looked to sell it, we began to worry.

"So it was incredibly exciting when we heard from a friend about Le Busliere. We began to think: 'This could really happen for us.'"

While Paul admitted that it had been 'stressful at times', he added that they are 'so grateful to be here’.

"It was like a squat when we moved in, but we’re quite comfortable now," he said.