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.