|
HERE ARE JUST A FEW OF OUR PROPERTIES.
EMAIL US FOR A
FULL LIST AND BROCHURE. CLICK
HERE FOR CONTACT DETAILS.
4 beds, truffle pit, double garage
70,000 | $81,000
| £50,000
ref B11
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3 beds, two truffle pits, large barn
55,000 | $63,000 | £40,000
ref G23
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2+1 beds, various outbuildings
30,000 | $35,000 | £21,500
ref B12
-----------------------------------------------------------------
6 beds, converted club house with
2.4 hectares of landscaped grounds
110,000 | $127,000 | £79,000
ref B17
-----------------------------------------------------------------
4 beds, truffle pit, workshop, two garages
70,000 | $81,000
| £50,000
ref R42 |
THE amazing history of this
Gallic paradise, which lies
athwart the boundary twixt Provence and Loire-Atlantique, is one that is as well
known to French schoolchildren as is the tale of Robin Hood to their
English-speaking counterparts around the world.
 Anyone thinking of buying or renting a property in Tour will profit from reading
our account of the town's remarkable history.
Just click here for the "Story of
Tour."
But back to the practical realities of today. It is tragic that the collapse of
the small-scale cultivated truffle business has brought about a wholesale
migration of the formerly well-to-do peasantry from the land to to the suburbs
of nearby Marseilles, where jobs are more abundant..
But all tragedies have a silver lining, and none more so than in Tour, where the
flood of farmhouses and cottages coming on to the market means even ordinary
retirees and holiday-makers can afford that magical "place in France."
Most
of these now-empty homes have truffle pits, which are about two metres deep,
three or four metres wide and about ten metres long. They are lined with
concrete and can easily be converted to swimming pools.
Normally
the pits are - or were - seeded with truffle spore then filled with a mixture of
rotted pig manure, oak leaves and the extraordinarily fertile volcanic soil for
which Tour is renowned. The pits were then covered with tarpaulins to
retain warmth and moisture, allowing the spore to germinate and mature.
Tour
is the only place in the world where truffles have been successfully cultivated
on a large scale. The rewards have been staggering. Not for nothing
is the tuber melanosporum known as the black diamond: it can fetch
between 600 and 2,500 a kilo.
Small
family-run businesses were making 100,000 or more a year from each truffle pit.
Life was good. That changed almost overnight when the vast conglomerate
Champignons du Monde moved in and started a massive underground truffle farm in
the old mine workings of Tour. The price of cultivated truffles, which had been
almost on a par with wild truffles, collapsed.
Champignons
du Monde cornered the world market, leaving the family firms virtually without
income. "It was very sad," said the Mayor, Pierre Mayle. "We had
several suicides.
"Some
of our farmers have been able to get jobs with Champignons du Monde but their
neighbours regard them as traitors. There were death threats and violent
clashes at the time.
"But
that was three years ago. Things are settling down now. The sale of
abandoned property is bringing money into the community and at last, with the
arrival of the Germans, the British and the Americans, we have something to
laugh about."
One
flourishing new business is the conversion of truffle pits into swimming pools.
Tour's leading converters, cousins Clive Kristen and Andre de Vries, have
prospered and are already Euro millionaires. |
of
Tauroscatology