Rather a lost day. Well, apart from the scenery, which was rolling and green and a constant pleasure to scan. But if the idea was to find a place in Languedoc we could invest in … Have to concede we really didn’t make any progress.

I suppose those things happen, when house-hunting. I’ve heard people in Abu Dhabi and/or Hong Kong say they looked at 25 places before they found one that worked, and we’re up to only 11, even after today.

But still …

This is how it went wrong.

We started the day in a little town named Bize-Minervois, to the west of our base in Beziers. (The previous day, we had gone north.) That is where we met our agent, a straight-talking (OK, you could say “blunt”) German-Slav-Frenchwoman with a little terrier named Bruno … who didn’t quite get what we were looking for. So she showed us three totally different places — and they were that — but none of them were right.

The first was a 19th century place in a tiny town (St. Jean de Mivervois) with no services and a layout that can kindly be described as “eclectic.”  The kitchen was essentially a grate over a fireplace, and a big portion of that room was given over to stacked firewood. The floors were bizarre, the furniture ancient and junk was in every closet. It had two saving graces — decent space and a rooftop terrace with a bit of a view back down the valley. Not a great view. A bit. But it was a fixer-upper, starting with somebody carting off all the hideous junk inside.

Next, she took us about 40 minutes away by back roads to Trause Minervois, which had been refurbished fairly nicely, but had no view of anything. She suggested tearing off half the roof to make space for a terrace, but we would have lost half of a bedroom … and the town was tiny and dead and suspiciously windy. (It blows here, some places more than others, and more in this place than any we visited.)

And for the third leg of the “completely different” tripod, we went to Caunes, another smallish village, though with a bit of a reputation for self-sufficiency and foreign buyers. What she showed us, however, was a dark rat hole that she thought was once a stable — and seemed ready to be one again. It needed some work, she conceded; Leah thought a tear-down was more in order. Plus, the place smelled of about 1 million cigarettes. It had a bit of a garden, but no view, and nothing else to recommend it.

(We finally are realizing that the U.S. concept of “staging” a house you want to sell may be a fairly unusual one. In Hong Kong, owners showed places that were filthy; in France, it’s not much better.)

Then on to our “for sale by owner” appointment in the semi-tony (for a village) town of La Liveniere. A British woman is selling next-door homes in the middle of a tiny but prosperous village which is home to some really excellent vintners. The house we were shown by a friendly Brit named Simon (a pal of the owner’s) had been nicely renovated (real showers!) but had no view of anything except the house 10 feet across the street, as well as no parking. A modern version of the three central-city places we had seen the day before, in the middle of a cramped street and no vantage points.

Leah liked it because it had been brought up to date, but the lack of view and light made it a nonstarter for me. And on our way out, Simon, who had gone next door to check in on the woman’s other property, asked us if we cared to see it. Well, sure. Why not.

Now there was a place we both liked. Enormous, a bit of backyard with a view, a second-story window with a view, three bedrooms, four baths … and, of course, double our price target.

It would probably have been better for us not even to have seen it, because, now, whatever we buy (if we buy anything at all) will seem mean and dreary.

Ugh.

On the way back we did find a vintner whose wares we had tasted at Le Chameaux Ivre, back in Beziers, and Leah bought five cases of vin for friends and relatives, to be shipped to Paris. So the driving around wasn’t a total loss.

But to say we made progress? No. Not at all. Unless one of us wins the French lottery in the next few days.

One more place on the schedule tomorrow, and then we start anew or maybe look again at the last place Anushka showed us yesterday. Hard to imagine that in a region this sprawling, with tens of thousands of tiny places, not one fits our budget, is vaguely modern and has a view. But we haven’t seen it yet.