We’re 6 years into our move. Personally I still feel very much like a visitor – an “etranger”. While my French ability has improved there is rarely a day when I’m not introduced to some cultural difference that would never have occurred to me before relocating. Don’t get me wrong: I totally love the French…
I’ve set up this page to share my thoughts on the kinds of questions that come up when someone thinks of relocating to France. As my experience was of relocating as a family, there are relevant questions and answers here to my direct experience. Also we came here with a view to setting up our…
It’s 6 months to the day that we left our old home in the North of England for the far sunnier Sud de la France so here’s the progress report on our five main tasks: House buying Settling into daily life Sorting out the paperwork Learning the French language Earning some money House Buying Progress […]
It’s 6 months to the day that we left our old home in the North of England for the far sunnier Sud de la France so here’s the progress report on our five main tasks: House buying Settling into daily life Sorting out the paperwork Learning the French language Earning some money House Buying Progress…
We’ve just returned from an exploratory trip (holiday, of sorts) from the Charente and Limousin areas where we discovered there were houses with the kinds of specs we were looking for for sale within our price range. Having stumbled upon a few potential properties a couple of weeks ago we decided it would be good…
Oh, it’s been a long week. Plan A was always to buy a small house with a large garden but when we arrived all the properties we saw were so terrible we decided to investigate building instead. Plan B. That all seemed straight forward – we’d buy land, live in a van onsite, etc. –…
When we agreed with the owners to take this place that we’d previously rented during holidays in June and September, both nice warm months, we were warned by our neighbour, Marie, who we know from those holidays, that it wasn’t very warm or well insulated and that winters here could be pretty hard. We shrugged…
As of today we’ve been here three whole months. Wow, the time has flown. I was so relieved just to be leaving at last after a really quite difficult three months leading up to the actual move (DS was only two months old when James started cracking the “we need to pack up the house!!!” whip)…
We decided before we arrived that we would enroll DD into a maternelle as soon as we were settled, so it was always on the cards. Then, after reading various blogs from others who had relocated and put their children into the local maternelle or école without much of an issue (on the administrative side,…
Since we arrived in France we’ve been almost entirely without real, bonefide, always connected, not worrying about data limits 21st Century Internet (and hence, Wi-Fi) in the house. For a holiday, no big deal. For an adventure in a new country when you have a million things to sort out, friends and family to keep…