Help needed! Family wanting to move to Northern France!

[TPO]

Hi All!

Apologies if you've heard this a million times before but we are new to this site and wondered if you can offer us any advice!

My wife and I (and 4 year old Ollie) are keen to relocate to Northern France for a change of lifestyle. I am freelance (working from home - wherever that is) with an occasional need to be in London for meetings.

Does anyone have any experience of commuting to London on the Eurostar? Obviously going direct from Lille would be ideal but is it a nice place to live or are there nice places to live nearby??!! Or has anyone got any other recommendations of places to live within perhaps 3/4 hours max of London by train? Ideally we'd like to be on the coast or near it - again ideas or recommendations would be very welcome! Not sure that we can be too isolated from civilisation and of course schools would have to be factored in!

Many thanks in advance!

Tom, Phillippa & Ollie!

[David J]

Hi Tom Phillippa & Ollie

Have a suggestion for you. Why not look at flying to say Stansted and then get the Stansted Express into London.  It would open up more locations in France and you would only be an hour and a half  away from Stansted and 45 minutes from Stansted to London. If you look at the Ryanair website you will see the locations of the French airports, the flight times etc. Obviously connections and checking in would extend journey times but it's another option.

Good hunting.

 

David J

 

[Ron Avery]

Only snag to that is none of the lo-cost routes and some scheduled routes are guarenteed as being daily in the winter or even around this time next year,   Touolouse - Manchester with BMI being a classic example.

[Patmobile]

It is possible to travel to London and back on Eurostar from Calais Frethun station.  Unfortunately, because of the current timetable, you can't get anything like a full day's work in at the office before having to check in at Waterloo for your return journey, so it's not so good if you're planning to work just one day at a time in London.. 

A better bet for people who live in the Pas-de-Calais region is to take a car on the shuttle.  You can buy a bundle of 10 x 24 hour return tickets very cheaply, and although it can be a horrible drive from Dover to London, spend the whole day in your office before setting off to return at a time of your own choosing.

You wouldn't want to do it every day, but if you have to work there one or two days a week, it's not out of the question  

If you were to settle down in a seaside place between Calais and Le Touquet - Hardelot, for instance - you could make the trip in about 3-4 hours each way.  Best if your office is in South London, of course.

Patrick

[cooperlola]

Expanding on Pat's idea, on leaving the shuttle you can get from Folkestone (not Dover btw) to the Ashford station car park in about 15 mins - leave your car there (season tickets available for the CP) and then catch the train into London (a similar journey to the one I did for 20-odd years).  Great rail service from Ashford to London Bridge, Waterloo and Charing Cross.

[Pierre ZFP]

Just be carefull that shortly 'Ashford International' station will be phased out and everything will be going to Ebbsfleet (near the Dartford tunnel) this may or may not work for you. Think this is due late 2007.   As a guide, I used to do Cannon Street to my house in PDC in 3 hours door-to-door

[Pierre ZFP]

Forgot to add that the journey now takes me 4 hours but that's because I drive from Luxembourg [:D]

[cooperlola]

Coo - I thought I was brave driving from mid-Kent to Harlow every day!  The commuter service to which I referred (from Ashford to London) will not be affected by the change in Eurostar route btw.

[Cassis]

Used to take me at least an hour, more often an hour and a half, door-to-door from Bromley Common to my office in EC2.

These commuting times from France to London that you see bandied about in magazines never seem to take into account how long it takes you to get to and from stations, etc. The time on the train/plane/spacecraft is often only the half of it (or less).

[Beryl]

This is going to sound very vague, but wasn't there some doubt about whether Eurostar would continue its service from Calais to London? I seem to remember a poster on here from up that way discussing a pressure group or similar on here in the summer.

 

[Patmobile]

Eurostar is pretty useless for commuting to London from Calais anyway, because you can only stay for a few hours before having to get back to Waterloo to check in for the return.

The shuttle is better.  Some years ago we, too, used to get from our house in Docklands to our house in the Pas de Calais (about 80km from the tunnel) in less than 3 hours from door to door.  We don't any more, because after less than a year of owning the house here, we found we preferred to be in France all the time.

Patrick

[Eskenazi]

Hi there! We have a  weekend house in Pas de Calais, near Hesdin, and had intended to move over full time  - however we changed our minds after various changes with Eurostar /Eurotunnel. Eurostar used to have a wonderful ' carnet' system which allowed cheap and flexible travel - that is now gone & their policy seems to be to make it as difficult (and expensive) as possible to use the service. Furthermore, they are likely stop the Calais / Frethun service altogether, so as to shave 5 mins off the journey time to Paris - I can put you in touch with a group who are trying to fight this, if you like. Eurotunnel also stopped their  very useful  Homeowners  offer.

I would not want to live in, or near, Lille, as it is, frankly, a dump. If part of your reason for wanting to move to France is to get away from vandalism / graffiti / drunks etc, then don't go to Lille, which is covered in graffiti (yes, even in the swanky part of town) and has plenty of vandalism.

Nor would I want to travel vis Stansted, which is a total nightmare.

All that said   - if you don't need to travel over every week, Pas de Calais is a great place to live, and we know lots of Brits who love it there - but all either retired, rich, or working almost totally from home.

[Sprogster]

I find Eurostar and the TGV generally very expensive. I am flying from Paris Orly to Nice next week on Easyjet, as the cost was a third of taking the TGV from Paris to Avignon!!