BMI baby- Super commuters

living the dream

Super commuters

Lady Sarah Tetley Hall, a descendant of the great Yorkshire tea-brewing family, isn’t your typical commuter. For a start, she lives in a magnificent 14th-century château, Château d’Arnac, tel: +33 (0)5 5591 0977), in Beaulieu-surDordogne. Situated a two-hour drive north of Toulouse, the beautiful property is where the Windsors spent weekends and Napoleon’s soldier, Marshal Ney, gave the command for the French to charge at the battle of Waterloo.

Sarah’s journey to work is also atypical, with planes her preferred mode of transport. She’s joined the growing number of people who have chosen to live abroad and fly back to Britain to work. By 2016, 1.5 million people will work in the UK and live overseas, predicts a report from the Future Forum.

“I bought the château six years ago and had a long, hard job restoring it to its former glory as the past owner had virtually ruined it,” she explains. “Now work is complete, it’s such as beautiful place that I want to share it with people, so I commute every couple of weeks to the north of England to promote the house as a venue for celebrity weddings, music events and themed parties. I also organise tours of amazing châteaux in the prettiest villages in France, and this is a wonderful area for fishing and canoeing.”

Sarah returns to England for a week or two at a time, flying from Toulouse to Manchester, where she stays in her house in the grounds of the Grade I-listed Royds Hall, near Bradford.

“Royds Hall used to belong to my family, so when they sold it, I bought the gardener’s cottage.” It provides her with a “bolthole” from which she can not only promote Château d’Arnac, but also do charity work for a school for the blind in Harrogate.

“I don’t find commuting by plane difficult,” she says. “It’s no different to getting on a train. And when it comes to sourcing furnishings for the château, I gravitate to what I know in England as it’s easier than schlepping around Paris. Also, where I live in France is very rural and I miss opera and music, so I love coming back to England to fill up on culture and see friends.”

Besides the nine-bedroom château, with four fairytale towers overlooking a lake, Sarah has restored the 19th-century gatehouse as a honeymoon cottage for guests, “full of hearts and a sexy black bathroom. As castles go, it’s what they call ‘domestic’,” she adds. “It’s now the place I call home.”