Last weekend, I stood in the sunshine at The Folly, the orchard we had bought in Limousin back in 2002. It had been Ellie’s idea to purchase it – giving me a project to protect against possible boredom in retirement.

Ellie and I reflected on the time our son-in-law had first visited the plot with us and told his girls to be quiet and listen. They immediately asked him why and he again asserted they should stay quiet and listen intently.

After perhaps 20 seconds they admitted: “We can’t hear anything.”

“Exactly,” Marc replied. “`It is so incredibly peaceful.”

I spent an average of four days per week at The Folly during the first seven years of retirement, listening to the silence, which was interrupted by the odd passing tractor, the local woodpecker and every spring and autumn, by the sounds of thousands of migrating cranes flying overhead.

I loved the tranquillity, so far removed from the 24/7 concerns of Watford FC and my work with the Watford Observer, as I worked on the concept of turning the orchard into a garden.

“I spent some money up here,” I admitted ruefully as we sat out in the sunshine, preparing to sign the papers, which would confirm the sale.

“When we go on holiday, we have a great time but we don’t get any money back when we return,” Ellie pointed out. “This place was a seven-year holiday for you and you loved it.

“Also, think what it has done for you. You came out here at nearly 19-and-a-half stone. You had an unhealthy pallor and looked like a candidate for a heart attack. You lost three stone and got your health back.”

She is right, of course. I might have had two rounds of golf per week during the last ten years in the UK but there is nothing like physical work for conditioning.

“And we took most of the trees and plants with us,” she said, recalling our journeys down to The Tarn.

That was also true and we had got a fair price for The Folly and we had sold it to two friends, Dave and Donna, who live up the road from our old house. We were pleased they had got it and we knew because of Dave’s gardening business it would mean The Folly would be used as a place to burn garden refuse etc.

That was perhaps hard to take, but it only underlined the truth in the name: Oli’s Folly had been just that, no matter how therapeutic. A garden in the countryside was something of a fantasy. So we saw The Folly, and stayed in the one-bed apartment I had built there in one of the stone outhouses. It has a sink, cooker, fridge, microwave, table and chairs and a double bed while next door is a tiled bathroom with toilet and shower and basin.

I could see nature was hitting back, after I had kept it at bay. Stinging nettles, weeds, briars etc had begun to make inroads but Donna-Long-Legs, as we dubbed her, had insisted on keeping the top third unchanged and worked to maintain and develop the area round the pond I had installed back in 2007.

Last Autumn Dave-up-Road phoned me to say they would be able to pay for The Folly this year and so, having saved the money, they were in a position to take ownership of the facility they have used fully over the last two years. So we drove up, unpacked and took in the tranquillity.

“We needed that tranquillity, when we came out here from England,” Ellie recalled. “It was something we valued but then we got to the stage where we needed to get back into life. But it is still lovely.”

I knew she was trying to offer some comfort but in fact I had no need of it. I had walked round and noted a few signs. I was at ease with the sale and the fact we had adopted a gentleman’s agreement over the whole thing during the previous two years and had honoured it to the letter on both sides, was rewarding in itself.

Later, at dinner at their house, we were told that Donna had decided The Folly should be used as a folly and the other stone outhouse would be converted into a bedroom. The wooden shed, which I had erected on a polythene membrane, is totally tongued and grooved. With silicon cementing the joints, it is totally rain, damp and insect proof and that was confirmed by Donna who has transformed it into an artist studio.

“We always said that you could stay there whenever you come up,” Donna stressed, “and that still stands after we have signed tomorrow.”

That was nice to hear, not that I doubted them and their assurances on that score a couple of years back. I had moved from Limousin to The Tarn with far more ease and fewer backward glances or regrets than I could have imagined. Nine months before we had moved, I had my 70th birthday party at The Folly. I did not know then that I would be turning my back on all that but I had finished The Folly and I drunk moderately all afternoon and evening because I wanted to drink in the fact the garden had never looked so good.

We signed the papers last Friday, initialling so many pieces of paper (both sides) until our wrists ached; as is the way with the French. Later, over a drink, I pointed out that a number of flower-beds had been reclaimed and old plants had emerged and blossomed.

“So, if you are not using it as a business base, what is the long-term aim,” I asked.

“No I have been banned from there but I have bought the garages and a small field opposite our house for a song, so that works out,” said Dave.

“You ask us what is the aim. I will tell you. If we can get The Folly to look, just for 24 hours, as good as it looked on your 70th birthday, then we will be very happy. That is the aim.”

And that is why I did not feel in need of comfort at losing The Folly. It was not going to be a memory of a field transformed into a garden by an old codger who then sold it and so it became is as if he was never there.

The Folly will continue to be a folly, for two people who really love it.