Buying and Renovating a Yoga and Walking Retreat in the French Alps

What started out as book-writing sabbatical in France for Mairi Watson resulted in a permanent move and a thriving yoga and walking business, she tells Alison Gibb

Turning 50 was a huge thing for me, not helped by everyone leaving home all at the same time, explains Mairi Watson. “Our youngest son was following his siblings and heading off to university; at the same time, my husband was starting a new career as an engineer offshore. I felt like everyone was off on a new adventure and I was stuck at home. I decided I needed to shake my life up a bit.” And shake it up she did.

Mairi decided to rent out the family home and move to France. “My plan was to have a year’s sabbatical somewhere warm to write a novel. Having worked in France as an au pair and later as a features writer, I had always wanted to return to live there – the question was, where?”

After much discussion, Mairi was outvoted and the family decided on a village in the Alps. They all loved skiing and hiking so moving to a ski resort for a year seemed like a fun idea. It may not have been warm, but at least it was France.

“We needed to be near an airport so that Peter had easy flights to Aberdeen, the children would be coming and going during the long holidays, and I still needed to pop back every now and again to see our ageing parents,” says Mairi.

Aside from the easy airport access, Mairi was keen for their new home to be in a village that didn’t close down between the winter and summer seasons and had a community feel. The family settled on Les Contamines-Montjoie, an hour from Geneva airport and 40 minutes from Chamonix.

“It was a place we had visited a couple of times when the children were small. It was very charming, cute and traditional with what looked like a strong, rural community. From afar, it looked perfect.”

The reality was somewhat different. The couple arrived on 1 May having rented an apartment through a friend of a friend. “The only time we had visited the village was during the ski season, so we just presumed it would be busy all year round,” says Mairi.

A QUIET START

Peter and their son Finlay helped Mairi and family’s two spaniels settle into their new rental home and then left – Peter to go back to work offshore, while Finlay headed to university. “I remember spending the  rst night in the apartment on my own with rain pouring down the Velux windows and thinking, ‘what on earth have I done?’. I had never felt so alone.”

With all the tourists gone and the locals on their much-needed post-ski season holidays, the village was deserted. “I got into a routine of waking early, packing a picnic of a baguette and cheese and a bottle of water, and heading out with the dogs. I would walk for five or six hours following the signposts up the mountains, literally passing no one on my way. Spring was starting to bloom, with wild flowers appearing and snow melt filling the rivers.”

Every lunchtime, Mairi returned to the apartment and sat at the kitchen table to write. As spring turned to summer, she started to meet people – in the village shop, in the one café that stayed open out of season, and through a yoga class in the next village, St-Gervais-les-Bains. Peter and the children came and went, she and the dogs got fitter, and Mairi started to love the solitude and time out.

IMPULSE BUY

“Although we were all loving ‘my’ sabbatical, we had no plans to buy a house – let alone stay. Then, one day in September, my son Sean and I looked in the window of the local estate agent and saw this tired, rundown 1960s chalet for sale. For fun we popped along and took a look. Within a day we had made an offer and it had been accepted!

“Eight months after our initial viewing, on April Fools’ Day, we finally got the keys to our new home! We walked out of the notaire’s o ce, across the road to a café and ordered a stiff drink. Peter and I sat there looking at each other not knowing if we should laugh or cry! On a spontaneous whim we had somehow managed to buy a house in France and commit ourselves to living there,” explains Mairi.

With everyone home for the Easter holidays, the family was able to progress quickly with the renovations. Within a month, they had moved in. “Vey luckily, we were able to move into the upstairs bit of the chalet, which is a separate apartment, and work on the rest of the property slowly over time.” Mairi’s writing was put to one side for a while and she became a full-time project manager, co-ordinating the electricians, plumbers, tilers, painters and decorators – in French. “There’s nothing like a project like this to develop your language skills,” she laughs, “nor a better way to get to know the village.”

With only seven out of the 1,300 full-time residents of the village being native English speakers, Mairi and Peter were forced to make an effort to learn French and integrate. “I speak enough French to have a decent conversation, but Peter’s French is still very school boy, however, I am always astounded at how he manages to communicate. With a combination of Franglais, Google Translate and sign language, he manages to make himself understood and can borrow a tournevis électrique (electric screwdriver) from the neighbour, no problem!” says Mairi.

LES JOLY DAMES

Over the next few years, the couple settled into the community. Peter continued to work offshore, while Mairi got a job in the village school teaching English and with a local friend interviewed the people of the village and wrote a book: Histoires Vivantes d’un Village Alpin, Les Contamines–Montjoie. She also managed the upstairs apartment of their chalet, which they rented out on Airbnb during the ski season and the summer holidays when the children weren’t at home.

“With Brexit, we were obliged to apply for residency, which required us both to have incomes in France. I set up a micro business for my teaching and writing and we put the income from the apartment through a micro for Peter. Our French residency cards (carte de séjour) allowed us to travel freely between the UK and France,” says Mairi.

It was the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, however, that Mairi decided to turn her hobbies of hiking and yoga into a business. “Everyone knows the French Alps for the skiing, but not everyone knows it for the stunning summers. It was the reaction of our friends to the amazing weather, the incredible wildflowers and the endless hiking trails that led me and a friend, June, to start our company, Les Joly Dames.”

RELAXING RETREAT

Les Joly Dames hosts walking and yoga weekends for small groups of women. They are welcome to come on their own or with friends for a three-day, four-night weekend of hiking with a guide, eating delicious food, drinking good wine, practicing relaxing yoga and spending time in the company of other vibrant, interesting, likeminded women. Very sadly, June’s husband died and just after the pandemic, she returned to the UK to be nearer her children. Now, nearly six years on, the business has grown in the most exciting and unexpected ways. Les Joly Dames now offers walking and yoga weekends in Morocco and Slovenia, as well as the French Alps.

“We have an incredible team of chefs, guides, yogis and drivers who make the weekends seamless and fun for our Dames,” says Mairi. “And most importantly we have an amazing following of Dames, who come year after year for a weekend of adventure, challenges and spoiling.”

LIFE-CHANGING

But Les Joly Dames would never have come about if Mairi had not decided to have a sabbatical year in France to write a novel.

“Living in France – and especially the Alps – has changed my life. I would say that, before we moved here, my life was probably a bit pedestrian. I cared about the car that I drove, what my neighbours thought and which shops I bought my clothes from. Now I can honestly say that none of that matters to me. I am fitter and stronger than I was in my 40s, my car, like everyone else’s in the village, is old, rusty and a bit dented. Our children have learnt to ski like the locals and have an appreciation of life abroad that I’m not sure they would have had, had we not left the UK,” Mairi explains.

However, she still enjoys waking early, packing a picnic and heading up the mountain. The only difference is that when she returns, she no longer sits at the kitchen table to write. Instead, she organises the logistics of the upcoming Les Joly Dames weekends. Maybe one day she will get round to writing her novel. She does, I gather, have 35,000 words already written!

Find out more about walking weekends for women at http://lesjolydames.com

Lead photo credit : Les Joly Dames offers yoga weekends