Helen

Meet Helen – Personal Trainer, Property Developer, Wife and Mum.

Helen lives between Cap d’Antibes, Monaco and the UK. She lives with her husband, two children and 2 dogs. She is a personal trainer and also a property developer.

“Originally I am from Stockport. I grew up there and we used to holiday in north Wales. I think this is where my love of the sea comes from. My family are all very active and live either by the mountains or by the sea. One of my brothers has sailed all over the world and also builds sailing boats, so we are all pretty adventurous. My dad was a pilot in the RAF”.

“I met Richard, my husband, through friends. We were both on holiday. I was on holiday with my friends and he was on holiday with his friends. A year after we met we were still together and the rest is history”.

“He was already a footballer at that time but he was the wrong side of the city for me. I was a Manchester United fan and he was playing for Manchester City . I didn’t actually know that Man U and Man City were even in the same league at the time. Despite being a Man City player my family were actually quite happy that I was dating a footballer. I was a bit of a party animal before so my mum was actually really happy when I met Richard as he was, and still is, a good calming influence on me”.

What brought you to the Cap?

“Actually years ago Richard had some time off and at that time his team were sponsored by a holiday company so they asked us if we would you like to go to Cannes. They offered to send us to Cannes for a few days, to the Hotel Matinez in fact. Of course we said Yes. I had never been to France before. My dad lives in Spain so I had always holidayed in Spain. That was probably 10 or 11 years ago now but as soon as we arrived at the Matinez I just fell in love with it there and then. We got married there about 4 years later on the beach of the Martinez. I remember saying to Richard that first time we were there” ” If we ever get married this is where I want to get married”.

“And that’s exactly what happened, I got my wish. We were married there about 4 years later on the beach of the Martinez. Soon after we started looking for a holiday home in the area. Somewhere we could spend time when we weren’t working”.

When we decided to move to move abroad full time we looked at Monaco first.

” My husband works in the UK so it seemed to be a convenient location for his commute but the main reason for moving was for our privacy”.

“It’s a little difficult to remain anonymous when you are in the UK especially if you are a footballer in the public eye. We obviously lived near Manchester and football is massive there. You can’t move there without someone videoing you or taking pictures”.

“It all gets a bit much especially when kids are involved. You become a little bit trapped in a glass cage. I couldn’t stand it and Richard he couldn’t stand it either. We are both quite private people”.

“The last straw for us was in 2011. I came home to find our house in Birmingham had been completely ransacked by burglars”.

“I was completely alone as Richard was away playing in Newcastle which they had obviously been aware of. Luckily the kids were at a friends house so didn’t see the mess but it completely shook us up”.

“Richard was told about what had happened at the end of his match. He literally booked us all on a flight that same day and we flew straight down here”.

“That’s when we decided to move here permanantly so that we didn’t have to be in that situation anymore. That’s what I love about here you have total anonymity. No one bothers us. We are just us and the kids are just the kids. I don’t like all the publicity stuff that comes with my husbands job in the UK. We have never done any magazine covers or articles although we have been asked to many times. The reason I agreed to do this interview is because it’s more personal, about me as a person rather than Helen the footballers wife”.

“When we decided to move to Monaco full time, which was about 2 years ago I realised that I really wanted a weekend home on the Cap”.

“I needed the atmosphere of an old house and I needed to have space, especially outside space. Due to our work, during the week we live in Monaco which is very small and built up so having space was very important to me. For our weekend place I wanted somewhere that had atmosphere and something that needed a bit of love and care. I longed for something I could put my stamp on which is what I look for in a house especially with my background in property development and interior design”.

“We had been looking for a house on the Cap for years and years just because I have always felt that there is something special about this place, something that brought us here. I don’t know if it’s the atmosphere of the Cap. I don’t know exactly what it is but I always knew that I wanted to have a place here. It was just a case of when”.

“It took us a while to find somewhere we wanted to buy as it had to be right. The House had to be right for the family. We saw a lot of houses which we could have bought but none of them were quite right for us. Our family is quite a warm family, it’s a nice family unit and I wanted my children to feel really really comfortable in the house and for it to feel like a home from home. Finally in 2015 we found this place right in the middle of Cap d’Antibes”.

What do you love about Cap d’Antibes?

“Everything, I love going down to the bakers and him shouting out “Ahhh Bonjour Helen” and I love walking around and people passing me by and they’re like aaaah Helen come and have a coffee. They are all so friendly here”.

“Of course I also love the sea. The sea here is like nothing you see anywhere else and I have been to a lot of places all over the world. For me nothing compares to the beauty of the Cap. I also love the variety of people you meet here. The people are just cool people, interesting people. There’s always something interesting going on here”.

Is there anything you dislike about Cap d’Antibes?

“Hmm the dog poo. It drives me insane. I just don’t understand the mentality of leaving your dog poo on the floor. That drives me mad and what else? Oh yeah just people that come and abuse the Cap. Basically they come and sit and have their lunch on the rocks and then leave their plastic crap on what essentially is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I mean how dare you. How dare you do that. That really drives me mad. However that’s not a problem with the Cap, unfortunately it’s a problem with the people who visit the Cap and the mentality that goes on now. I don’t understand it. It’s completely beyond me”.

What are the challenges of living on the Cap?

“There are challenges in everything. One is obviously the language. Learning the language which I have tried to do as best as I can. I practice everyday by speaking as much French as I can with the locals”.

“In Monaco it’s very easy to speak English all the time especially with my clients for work. Everybody speaks perfect English so when I come here I have to revert back into my brain and speak French which can be difficult but then that’s just part of living in another country”.

Is Cap d’Antibes your home?

“Monaco is our home at the moment because that’s where I work and that’s where we hang out. Here is probably my spiritual home if that doesn’t sound too cheesy. In fact I feel incredibly lucky because I have the best of both worlds, I have an amazing house in England which is in the middle of nowhere in the sticks , an apartment in Monaco and this house, we have all the extremes”.

“In the UK my friends live in the countryside, some of them farm cows so it’s a completely different environment. I go from Monaco where people are driving about in Ferraris to wading about in Cow Pats. But it’s all good and it’s all a rich tapestry of life and it makes you the person that you are because you can relate to a lot of people. That’s probably why I get on with so many different types of people and nationalities”.

“There’s no divide here, I wake up and go down to the market in Antibes and I know everyone from every walk of life. Richard often says to me ” Everywhere you go you literally know everybody”. It’s like that even if we’re in Birgimham or London I seem to know everyone”.

Most Interesting person you have met on the Cap?

“Ooh I don’t know. The most interesting person I have met? Everybody to me is interesting. There are a billion people that I could talk about that are, to me , equally as interesting as each other”.

“There is one guy, Pierre, who lives at the Phare in the woods. Apparently one day he just decided that he’d had enough of life in the mainstream and all the complications that went with it. So he just went back to nature and now he lives in a tent up by the Phare. He’s French and such a lovely guy. He likes to speak to me in English and I like to speak to him in French so we have this like pigeon conversation between us. He goes to the mountains in the summer when it gets hot down here and he sleeps in the mountains. At the end of the summer he comes back to the Cap. He’s a really cool guy”.

Do you think you will always have a place here?

“At the moment I am happy having a weekend home here, the kids are very happy. Tao, my son, he’s at the football club at Monaco. Richard is at the football club in Monaco and I’m working there as well. Long term I don’t know. I think we’ll always have something on the Cap but I think when the children grow up we might not need something this big. Maybe I will just literally down size to like a 3 bedroom or something, I don’t know. I think anything is possible. Because of the life that we’ve led I have literally moved to 9 places in 8 years and I think because of that you become very used to being on the move. I don’t think I could say at this point that we will stay in one place forever”.

“However our house in England is just so insanely personal that I know we wouldn’t sell that, and luckily we don’t need to. But again it’s more like that’s our holiday home in England rather than our day to day home”.

“If I think about it my kids have got the best life ever but that’s what I set out to do, that was like my intention. I had a bit of a tough time when I was younger and my intention was that my kids would have the best life ever and I don’t think you can get better than this”.