We know from the outside that we’re going to love this house. We pull up opposite the house and our estate agent, Max, says “Well you said you always wanted a pink house”. And I have. It’s a girly cliché but I don’t care. My dream house would be pink.

Yes, the house is pink. It is an edge-of-village, detached house with a beautiful, but faded, exterior. Around the windows is some nice plasterwork and we can picture wooden shutters on the downstairs windows. It has a certain French feel to it. The garden is big, with established fruit trees (apples, quince and medlar) and two walnut trees. There is a ruin of an outbuilding and a big pile of stone that screams ‘guest rooms’ at us.

Inside is basic and rustic but with a lovely solid feel, and it’s the best condition house we’ve seen so far. It needs work for sure – an internal staircase, internal bathroom and septic tank (external obviously) are all needed. These are not small DIY jobs. But we like the feel and are pleased with the high ceilings, higher than any other village houses we’ve seen.

Downstairs has three rooms – a big room that would make a kitchen/diner, a smaller room that would make a cosy sitting room, and the third room (which gets the least light) could be divided to make a pantry and bathroom. Upstairs has three rooms and a corridor, plus a small balcony with views up to the tree-covered mountains. There’s not much in the way of period features but there are some original wooden floors, one lovely stone floor and the third bedroom (for us, a study) has beams on the walls. We get great vibes, only intensified when the neighbour offers us a large bunch of grapes over the fence, freshly picked from the vine. The neighbour has a donkey outside his house!

Needless to say we love the house and, after a second viewing, are considering putting in an offer. But first, we want a third visit with a builder to look at the house (for a general appraisal and to look at some cracks in a couple of internal walls). Plus, we want to get more of a feel for the area and whether it is somewhere we would want to live.