After a high-speed sprint across Europe's capitals, pressing pause and coming home to our own stone barn felt like the ultimate exhale.
We are immensely lucky to have our stone barn home base here in Arçais, right in the heart of the Marais Poitevin. Think of it as the French equivalent of the Cotswolds - waterways, weeping willows, and stone cottages.
We are currently at the tail end of a mammoth, multi-year renovation project here, which we are finalising specifically to get it listed on Airbnb for some passive income. We completely understand what a fortunate position we're in to have a property here, but finding an affordable base somewhere for an extended period of time is an absolute game-changer for a sabbatical.
Search for longer stays on Airbnb and Booking.com for discounted deals. Beautiful, small homes can be snapped up for amazing value. For example, the gorgeous Bean Barn provides a monthly rate for £1,100 (that’s £36 a night!).
Here is what living slowly, working remotely, and spending sensibly actually looked like during our 17-night October stretch..
The Market-to-Table Lifestyle (And the Secret Pro-Chef in the Kitchen)
Candidly, dining out at tourist traps three times a day is an absolute rookie error. Whilst restaurants in France are undeniably high quality, doing it three times a day is expensive and completely misses the point of slow travel.
Instead, our days here revolve around making our own lunches and dinners at home, turning temporary kitchens into an epicurean event. We rely on local co-ops, village shops, and morning markets for fresh baguettes, incredible cheeses, and local wines.
Even supermarkets in France often close for lunch (the larger ones stay open, but small co-ops in town lock their doors from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM). Buy your lunch in advance, or expect to be locked out!
If you don’t happen to live with a secretly pro chef like I do, YouTube is your best friend for recreating local cooking - look up some relevant chefs to where you are staying. Pair it all with a regional wine, and your candlelit dinner on the terrace feels Michelin-starred for a fraction of the cost.
Master the 'Rustle-Up' Cook
When you are trying to slash food waste and keep your budget airtight, some of the best meals come from creative desperation. We have all experienced standing in front of the fridge, hanger setting in, staring at seemingly random ingredients and wondering how on earth to pull together dinner.
It’s because of this that - in our humble opinion - the Rustle Up Challenge was by far the best section of the best cooking programme, Best Home Cook (why that programme was ever discontinued, we will never understand! Thanks so much for that, BBC!).
This is where you lean into what is already lurking in your kitchen:
- Clear out the perishables: That punnet of mushrooms nearing its use-by date and yesterday's leftover boiled potatoes can easily form the base of a hearty skillet or bake.
- Repurpose pantry staples: Pasta is almost always hiding in the back of the cupboards. Think about how you can weave in dry ingredients to bulk out a pan.
- Rescue forgotten extras: We recently found a half-empty tub of cream cheese that had been bought for a salmon recipe and would otherwise have gone to waste. Combined with our freezer stash of chicken and those tired mushrooms, it turned into a brand-new, never-before-made creamy mushroom chicken that tasted like an upscale bistro dish.
If your brain isn't cooperating when you're hungry, don't forget that AI is brilliant for this: type in whatever random fragments you have left in the fridge and pantry, and let it generate a recipe for you. It saves money, stops food waste, and turns a fridge clear-out into a culinary win.
Across our two and a half week unwind, our total Supermarket spend came to £484.51. This included multiple village shops, local fresh markets, an Asian supermarket run and a number of Super U visits.
Keeping Busy - Canoeing, Gym Routines, and Vide-Grenier Gold
Let’s be real here - a French supermarket visit is a fun day out in itself! But, when you're settling into a base for weeks at a time rather than days, maintaining a rhythm and keeping busy is everything. For us, October in the Marais Poitevin was all about striking that exact balance between outdoor adventure, daily wellness, and hunting for project pieces.
We took a glorious afternoon out canoeing on the local waterways. Cruising silently along in the sunshine, we explored the canals, sailing right past kingfishers and even spotting a baby coypu (ragondin) up close as its mama led it toward the water. Best of all? The canoeing itself was completely free.
Pro-Tip for your sabbatical: always look for Airbnbs or base locations that give you free access to local bikes or water activities.
We also spent weekends hitting up local vide-greniers (the French equivalent of attic clear-outs and garage sales). Forget mass-regulated antique shops - this is where you find absolute gems if you have an eye for character. Of course, you’d probably struggle to fit antique hardwood furniture in a carry-on. But they make for an incredible day out, and you can easily unearth smaller treasures like vintage jewelry, brass accents, or spare clothing - which comes in particularly handy if you’re travelling light and the autumn storms roll in...
To keep our personal routines anchored whilst moving between travel legs, I bit the bullet and signed up for a local French gym. Navigating the foreign paperwork and language barrier can feel intensely intimidating at first, but opting for a Basic-Fit flex pass kept overhead delightfully low and flexible for our lifestyle moving forward.
If you want to stay fit, lots of mediterranean towns have outdoor apparatus, which is great to use in the sun! If you want to continue your fitness regime but shy-girl/guy workouts are your thing, search for flexible, QR-entry gyms where you don’t need to speak the local language.
Family Visits, Raclette Nights, and Community on the Road
Long-term slow travel isn't just about remote work and quiet walks; it can also be about finding new friends, spending time with loved ones and making memories along the way.
Community can be everything. If you're spending extended time at a base, our biggest advice to others is to lean into friends nearby, sync up with others’ existing travel plans, or actively make friends as you go. Having that familiar warmth halfway through a sabbatical grounds everything and turns a temporary location into a true home.
When my parents visited us during this stretch, we celebrated with Raclette Night: my absolute fave, the ultimate gooey cheese meal, and a fun, interactive dining experience. When the autumn rain rolled in, we kept things cozy with Quirkle battles against my mum and old-school board game days.
To send them off, we spent a day exploring the coastal town of La Rochelle before their flight home. Autumn is a brilliant time to visit harbor towns: the summer hustle and bustle has faded, but the locals are still enjoying long lunches outside. We walked through the historical town, and enjoyed a gorgeous 3-course celebratory meal out at Bistrot Gourmand. All four of us enjoyed an incredible 3 course meal (mum and I even had steak) which came with a free wine, beer or non-alcoholic cocktail, and the total bill only tallied up to 97.50 EUR (that’s about 20 quid per head!).
Search for ‘Menu Du Jour’ deals on chalkboards when walking through town - 2 or 3 courses can often come at under 20 EUR per head.
The Financial Reality Check: October in Arçais
AUDITED EXPENSE LEDGER // 17-NIGHT COUNTRY UNWIND (6TH - 23RD OCTOBER)To continue our financial transparency, here is how our money broke down across our time at our French base from the 6th to the 23rd of October (converted back into GBP):
Daily Sustenance & Market Feasts
- Food & Supplies: £567.26 • Supermarket run (£484.51): local fresh markets, Super U, village shops, and Asian grocery stockpiles. • Bistrot Gourmand celebration in La Rochelle: €97.50 (~£82.75) for 4 people including wine/cocktails.
- Catering Strategy: • Market-to-table lunches & candlelit terrace dinners. • Creative 'Rustle-Up' fridge clear-outs & zero food waste.
Activities, Routine & Accommodation
- Activities & Hardware: £68.00 • Vide-grenier hauls: vintage chairs, brass, copper, a champagne bucket, and straps. • Canal canoeing: FREE (home base access).
- Health & Routine: £40.00 • Basic-Fit flexible local gym pass for anchoring workouts.
- Accommodation: FREE • The perks of having our own stone barn base during renovations!
Total spend for nearly three weeks of slow-living in the French countryside: £675.26 split between us. Naturally, your accommodation choices will influence your own final bill.
What’s Next?
Three weeks of canal canoeing, kitchen cooking, market runs, family cheese nights, and vintage brass hunting in the French countryside. Not a bad way to anchor a sabbatical!
Make sure you’re following along on Instagram (@pathwaysandpassports) for the next audit. If you want to know more about our French barn transformation, this is visually documented over at @lagrange.arcais.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any questions about how we keep our slow-travel budget in check.
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Pathways & Passports
Chronicling sabbatical travel across Europe with radical fiscal honesty, curated aesthetics, and a love for high-low dining.
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