dang65

Thanks for all the replies. We're a youngish family with 3 young children + 1 older son who will have left school and will probably stay at college or uni in England.  I think the fact is that we would almost certainly move to a large town if we went to France.  We're going for a stay near Poitiers next week as part of our research.  I like the Dordogne too, of course, but not sure if it would be practical for us. I like the idea of living close to a town so we can have a garden and parking etc but still have facilities near by.  I cycle to work here in the UK (about 10 miles through countryside between home and work) so that sort of range would be fine.  I really don't want to have to rely on the car all the time, though we do have one for famly use of course.  We lived in the middle of nowhere in the Isle of Man for a couple of years and basically had to drive everywhere.  Lovely place, but feeling of total isolation which can do your head in after a while. My French is conversational, but needs plenty of work to get anywhere near fluent, but I work in IT as a programmer, which is a fairly universal language and doesn't require the sort of verbal interaction as you might find in many other jobs.  I understand that Poitiers, with Futuroscope nearby, has set itself up as the IT capital of France, but I need to check local job ads etc when we're over there.  No doubt I'll post plenty more questions as time goes by.

I certainly intend to get a job first, but I only want to move the family to France if it's going to improve our standard of living.  If we're not going to be able to get a bigger property than we have in the UK, and better schools and a lower cost of living, then there's not really much point in moving, beyond having a bit of an adventure which is probably not the best priority really.

Hello.  First post here and not sure if this has been covered before, so sorry if it has. We're just starting out on investigating options to move to France in maybe a year, maybe two.  We'll be taking our time and reading plenty and visiting various areas etc etc, but one question occurs to me straight away... It seems that "nearly all" Brits moving to France head into the countryside, either completely rural or in little villages.  I understand that this is probably the dream for many people, either for retirement or for those who can work from home somehow, but I'll need to get regular employment and I imagine that really means living in a large town or city - as it would in the UK. Do many posters here live in urban areas, and are there huge differences in prices, cost of living and size of accomodation between the towns and the countryside?  I've read that one reason why Brits are welcomed in France in many cases, is because they are helping to keep small villages and remote properties alive and active while the French themselves tend to gravitate to the urban areas and abandon the countryside. Any comments on this subject would be of interest. Cheers.