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Would anyone move back to the UK??


Fiona
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As I wile away the days and weeks in a state of desperate boredom before we move to the Midi Pyrenees early next year, I just wanted to find out who among you would either move back here in a shot if you could or never in a million years?!  We have been talking and planning to move for the last 5 years - ever since our eldest was a baby - however, we are just getting to the point where we can do it now.  I have read a million (at least!) forum posts in the last couple of years about all aspects of French life - some very good, some very bad. So thankfully the rose tinted glasses I had on a while back (when I dreamt of an idyllic rural lifestyle, filled with long lazy sunny days, with my two children living a sort of Enid Blyton-esqe existence full of adventures etc etc) have long since been removed.  However, that said - even with a firm reality check in place - I am still optimistic and hopeful that the life we will move to will be of a far better quality than the rat race existence we are plodding through now!!  We are in a fortunate and less fortunate position (if that makes sense!).  Fortunate in so much that we don't have a mortgage and intend to always keep our house in UK so that we have a rental income to offset against outgoings.  Less fortunate in that we don't have jobs to move to.  My OH is in the building trade so hopefully that will yield some work.  I am willing to turn my hand to whatever - as long as I am not working permanently full time in IT as I am here and missing my kids all the time.  We have saved hard so we have living expenses to cover a year if no worst came to worst.  My French is basic but am starting to learn again.  My kids are 6 and 4 so good age for integration.  So any thoughts/comments/opinions on life in France versus life in the UK (good or bad) would be most welcome....

Thank you for reading

Fiona

(there are two of us with the screenname Fi on this board! So have reverted to my "formal" name!!  [:)]

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[quote user="Fiona"]

I am still optimistic and hopeful that the life we will move to will be of a far better quality than the rat race existence we are plodding through now!! 

[/quote]

Of course the same rat race goes on here, its just all in French. I suppose it all depends what you want do, where you will live and how you are going to make a living.

Out of interest, one of our French neighbours just spent a week or two  in the UK seeing some family and was shocked at how cheap the cost of living was compared to here!!. Make of that what you will.

Danny (in a very quiet bit of the Midi Pyrénées)

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Thanks for those links Clair....... some good threads there to work my way through!  Apologies if I am covering a topic that's been done to death already - I just like hearing what people have to say. 

Danny, I'm guessing the exchange rate will be a factor in how cheap it is to go from France to Uk at the moment.

WoolyB - sorry, perhaps presumptious of me to put the back in the title - but I am sure you know what I mean

Thanks fi x

:)

 

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we've had a holiday home for several years but only moved out fulltime in July of this year, so perhaps we are still in the rose-tinted phase but I can't see us moving back to the UK.  We have been back twice this year and been shocked at the congestion and how squashed together everyone is (south London).  Coming back to the peace and quiet, and space, around us in France is wonderful and I really couldn't envisage going back and living in a little box house any more.  It helps to have good friends here, people you feel you can rely on and turn to who perhaps replace the extended family that you have in the UK.  People I know who have gone back have cited two reasons:  (1)  running out of money, so make sure you have finances in order and some income, don't think that you can easily find work here, and (2) homesick, miss their family or arrival of a grandchild pulls them back. 

 

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[quote user="Fiona"]I just wanted to find out who among you would either move back here in a shot if you could or never in a million years?!  [/quote]

The latter for me, and after 29 months here, my eyes are very wide open and my vision has no rose tint to it![blink]

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I don't think we will move back to the UK.  Where is 'back' anyway - the place we lived was somewhere we had to be for our jobs so we certainly wouldn't go there, and rural Cornwall - where I wouldn't mind being - is probably no more  helpful for employment etc than here.  That said I might well move to another part of France, less rural and more lively.  I've almost never been to London in my life so not really able to compare that to rural France - many posters act as though London was the UK and all that happens there the only way of life in UK.

The rat race, as someone pointed out, continues in French.  Very few of those who post happily on these forums are totally reliant on working here for their income.   Often when I read some deliriously happy post I realise that the poster either a.  is a second home owner, b. has a pension (or other revenue)  from another country perhaps plus an income here or c. actually still works in the UK.  The French are every bit as stressed, worried about money/politics/drugs/crime etc as the English.  Of course, many English people say they are not - but that based on the fact that they themselves often don't speak enough French to watch the TV, read the papers or have a meaningful conversation about anything except the weather or the rugby.  The French, on the whole, are outwardly more formal and less 'heart on sleeve' than the English so unless you know someone well it may not be evident at first glance that all is not well in their world.

If you really want to move here because you want to move to France as opposed to any other place, not because you want to get away from the UK and if you are committed to learning French and are prepared to put up with the bureaucracy and the very low wages and high cotisations then you may be happier here.  Think long and hard though before you uproot your family, give up your jobs and lose your support network of family and friends.  Jobs are very hard to come by here - even if you are a fluent French speaker - and running your own business is stressful and expensive.  If you are only moving to France because you want out of your current life - and in fact you picked France just because it is close by - then maybe you would be better off downsizing and looking for alternative employment in the UK.

Whatever you decide I wish you luck as making a major life change is never easy - but it can  be exciting!

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Would anyone move back to the UK??

Yeah me.

Isn't for the money, managed for 4.5 years but want / need to live in England and might keep a holiday home here

Will probably have to work back over there and to be honest I want to.

Can't wait.

Plenty of work for a builder in France and moving here with kids will help.

Hard to explain what its like living in France, just doesn't do it for me but its worth the experience.

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If my husband should die before me I would move back. I am 61 already, healthy and stable but I know from experience that being a widow is difficult and being an elderly widow in a country where you do not have roots would be impossible. Strangly the things I would miss would be Libraries, U3A and such.
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[quote user="ChezShells"]

Hard to explain what its like living in France, just doesn't do it for me but its worth the experience.[/quote]

I think that's very true. France doesn't suit everybody, there's no shame or sense of failure in admitting that. Trying it is an adventure that may or may not work out; if you don't give it a go you'll most likely regret it for ever.

Having lived and worked in France full time I wouldn't really want to repeat it; sharing time between the two countries works OK, but there again that isn't ideal for other reasons. Things might be different if circumstances change - best to wait and see, and take each opportunity as it arises.

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Am I the only one reading this who didn't experience a few thoughts along the lines of....you haven't got work, you don't really speak French, are you just hoping for the best? We are on a pension and I would not have dreamed of moving to another country without employment in place. If your husband doesn't speak French he may be limited to working for Brits. Sorry to put a dampener on your dream but think very hard about how you would manage here.
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We are moving back!  We came in October 2000 more or less on a whim plus a bit of a plan and picked up infomation as we went along. We have lived here just over eight years now and have been really happy in our renovating and also life in general. Language has posed a few problems but none that were insurmountable and being retired rather than having to work has been a real bonus plus we tend to be glass half full rather than half empty.

However, itchy feet have started to kick in and it is time for another adventure while we still can. I don't think we ever intended to die in France so would probably have gone back at some stage as really old age arrived - at 70 we think we are just about out of our teens and want to grow old a bit disgracefully with the family around to pick up the bits if necessary.

The house sale completes early December and at the moment we have nowhere permanent in England.  It's payback time for eight years worth of visitors while we look for a smaller house and a larger camping car. Then it's on the road again.

Good time financially for us both in terms of  UK house prices and the €/£ exchange rate. I guess we are part of a small band who are happy with the exchange rate at the moment but I hope it comes back up for you guys after December.

Anyway it's back to the boxes and packing and cancelling services here.

OP has a dream and I say go for it. If after a year it hasn't worked then there is a house to go back to in UK and you will always be able to say you walked the walk not just talked the talk. 

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 plod wrote: "We are on a pension and I would not have dreamed of moving to another country without employment in place."

This is my view too, plod. Perhaps young families nowadays are more prepared to take a risk, because in the UK there are now safety nets. But there are no safety nets here.

As to going back, we have always been openminded about this, and yes, I would, though we're contented here for the moment. I still feel strongly that my roots are in the UK.

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We went back to the UK for 24 hours a couple of years back. Couldn't wait to get back to France.

If we had to go back to anywhere, it would be back to Australia.

France has its downsides (mainly the high taxes/social charges etc (it's all tax to me)), but everything else outweighs that. Every country has it's good points and bad points. However, it's so easy to lose your national identity. Like woolybanana I don't feel part of any nation. And that's probably good.

R.

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It is easy to sound smug and 'I'm all right Jack' about one's life in France, but it is a fact that quite a lot of people are indeed going back. In many cases, it is out of necessity rather than desire. Again, it is all too easy to dismiss them as not having researched things properly, but that's not necessarily always true.

One thing that is slightly worrying about the original post is that she talks of boredom in what is perceived as 'rat race Britain'. I wonder, in quiet rural France, how she will fare once the holiday feeling has worn off. Plenty of people thrive on comparative isolation with very little happening, but if one is disposed towards boredom...

As Cerise said above, the reason for moving to France should be positive feelings about France, not because you don't like things elsewhere.

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Thank you Chas!  What a lovely refreshing attitude - and you are right, it is better to have walked the walk than just talked the talk! ;-)

Will, what I actually meant was I am in a state of boredom in my job - I am well aware of the risk of feeling isolated in rural France.  We spent 2 months in the Gers during my 2nd maternity leave spell, so I know exactly what the Gers can be like on a cold and wet Sunday in February!  I feel there are assumptions being made here about us that are not quite true - we have no intention of living miles from nowhere.  That was my original idea (back in my rose tinted days), but I realise that will not be practical for us.  Therefore we are renting initially.  We are first of all renting a gite from an English family with 4 children who live on site.  They are giving up their gite to accomodate family and therefore are happy for us to stay there during the summer for 6-8 months - after that we will look for another rental property.  I intend to rent for at least 18 months before committing to buy - and all the while holding on to our (mortgage free) house in UK which will be rented out as one source of income. And wherever we live will be rural-ish but with close proximity to a reasonable size village/town (where we are moving to is 10 mins from Mirepoix).  Yes Plod we are going there to a certain extent "hoping for the best" - but what exactly is wrong with that when faced with the alternatives??!  Our house is nice but not that big and with a fairly small garden - to upsize would mean taking on another mortgage.  My OH is finding work in the UK, in his trade, harder and harder to come by these days and he has had virtually no work in the last year (has been renovating our place but still looking all the same).  Yes I am bored - but that's because I am stuck in an office hardly talking to a soul all day bashing away on my keyboard, desperately missing being a bigger part of my kids' lives.  When I look around at the local teenagers and think about the safety aspects of life where we are I really don't want to raise my children in that environment.  I want to give them the chance to learn to ski and play safely outside and have a better quality of life.  Yes there are a lot of unknowns and I wish we were in that hugely fortunate position of having jobs to go to - but just because we haven't doesn't mean we can't make it work - or at least give it our very best shot.  The stress of our current lifestyle is taking its toll on us immensely - it may work out in France, it may not.  At the very least - if we decide not to stay put (and we have earmarked Dorset as place of choice to move to if France does not work out) - then we would have had a very nice long sabbatical and quality time together as a family.

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Yes I would move back to the UK, but only if the country sorted itself out!  As anyone would agree, the congestion, the noise, the crime, the depressing weather went  someway in convincing us to move away. However, be prepared for a complete change of life.  If you have been working and are coming out here to retire, then make sure you find some interests.  You have 2 young children so integration will be relatively easy for you.  Family and friends back home play an important part in my life and I thank god for having e-mail access!!!  Cost of living here is expensive, believe me.  The UK seems cheap or certainly did when I was back home a few weeks ago.

We have been fortunate to meet some lovely people here, and there is very much a feeling of "if you need anything, then give us a call"  It's very comforting.

Come out here and give it a go.  Have a positive attitude and treat the move as an adventure and I am sure you will settle very quicky and easily.  Good luck!

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Reading these posts makes me curious about the type of people that use the Forum and why.  Does anyone know (roughly) if most people are retired, have children, second home owners, employed, self employed, married to locals etc.

Does this have an effect on whether people would want to move or return to the UK?  

Haveing worked in the travel industry most of my life, I decided in my 30's to settle in France as it was my favourite out of all the countries I had lived and worked in (including the UK).  Now married, with 2 small children and gainfully employed (french job), I would not contemplate going to live in the UK.  France has it's downfalls, but on the whole, I like it better here and it is my home, for better or worse. 

It is interesting to know why people move or leave here - my reason for using the forum is I miss the ease of chatting in my own language and debating points of view with others - with cultural differences it is not so straight forward.

I wish you all the best Fi and hope you find what you are looking for.[:)]

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Fiona - sounds as if you have got it about right. It always pays to have an escape strategy, I think most of the horror stories one hears (and I have seen several cases first hand) result from not having an escape strategy, and being stuck somewhere where things are not working. But then it could be argued that some (not me) feel that way about Britain.
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Fiona,

It sounds to me as you have done lots of research, so good on you.

I would agree with a lot that has been said earlier, and I applaud you for renting first, a very good idea, we did and it worked for us.

But, do not underestimate just how difficult getting employment is, especially without the language, Mrs JJ is a qualified nurse (transferable skill) and she is fluent, but even she found getting work difficult, even more so for part time.

As to being a self employed builder, well I know plenty of them, who are in the system, and it is not easy with all the charges and taxes, being self employed does not seem to be held in high esteem in France.

Your children are the perfect age, in fact the same age as ours were when we arrived 5 and a half years ago.

All the best, and good luck.

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[quote user="Busy Bee"]

Reading these posts makes me curious about the type of people that use the Forum and why.  Does anyone know (roughly) if most people are retired, have children, second home owners, employed, self employed, married to locals etc.

[/quote]

Just click on the persons name , we have all filled in our details ....haven't we ? [Www] [;-)]

Or this could be an idea for new thread , a survey of members ? .....unless it has been done already ?

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