Proper planning prevents p**s poor performance!

We often get asked why we moved to live in France and the French are as interested in the answer as anyone.  Everyone has their own reasons for chasing the dream and for us it was about living a more fulfilling and less stressful life with the opportunity to have some peaceful, open space around us and breathe some clean air. It was not a rash decision after a bottle of French wine whilst watching one of the many UK TV programmes about Brits moving to the sun; it was something we had thought about for at least five years before finally making it happen. 

But for a move like this to be successful I think planning is key and every now and then I come across a document on the computer that was related to what we termed “Project Cinquante” (I’d just turned 50 you see!). Lists of tasks that had to be completed before we could move, lists of organisations that needed to be informed and, most importantly, the budget sheet detailing every conceivable expense. We even had a sheet showing who (between Nikki and I) was responsible for each element of Project Cinquante – removals, healthcare, finance, rental in France, the dogs etc.

A friend recently asked me if I’d be happy to have a chat to someone who was thinking of moving to France and this made me come up with the following things to consider.  Please note that this is by no means an exhaustive list, just my opinion based on our own experience.

Start your research by checking out some of the online expat sites that are a mine of very useful information and have very active forums where you can find the answer to just about any question you can think of. Two of the best I have found are the “Survive France Network” (http://www.survivefrance.com/) and “AngloInfo” (http://dordogne.angloinfo.com/ for the Dordogne version).

Where do you really want to live? In the countryside or a town, village or hamlet, totally isolated or with near neighbours for that ‘cup of sugar’ moment? We met a chap some months ago who told us that when he and his wife moved over to France they moved from London suburbia and fulfilled their dream of being totally isolated on a quiet Dordogne hillside. After two years they were going stir crazy and were fed up with only each other for company – they sold up and bought a house in the local town!

Think about transport links back to the UK - lots of flights from the regional airports in France are either summer only or they have a restricted winter schedule. If you expect to have to return on a regular basis look into the alternatives – rail can be a good option using the excellent high-speed rail network in France; alternatively you can always drive but consider the length of such a journey.

Learn the language; it still amazes me how many people we meet who have lived here for many years and still speak very little French. It can be done if you want to limit your experience to only meeting other expats and ordering your food from Tesco. Nothing wrong with either of these but what a lot you miss out on and how incredibly rude and arrogant not be able to engage with the local people in their own language. Children will pick up the language fairly quickly, but it will be very difficult for them to begin with and can take up to 18 months before they are totally happy in school; the older they are the more difficult it can be for them to settle in.

Think carefully about what your living costs will be in France; wine may be cheap (hurrah!) but food can be pricey. It does get cold here in winter and unless you have your own wood and a chainsaw, heating costs are likely to be as high or even higher than in the UK. 

If you need income beyond your pension or your lottery winnings, think carefully about how you are going to earn money to live. In rural France there is already high unemployment and if your language skills are limited it will be very difficult for you to find even a part time job.  Setting up a business is not as simple as it is in the UK and you need to think carefully about what you are going to do. Just because you were a bit handy at DIY does not mean you can call yourself a builder in France! Tourism related businesses are very popular (gites, chambres D’hotes etc.) but remember that the season is limited to only four, possibly five months of the year. Also look into the taxes that apply to businesses as they can be very…….well, taxing.

Healthcare in France is excellent but the healthcare system is very different to the UK, even once you are ‘in’ the system you have to pay for each appointment before being reimbursed and you may want to consider having a ‘top up’ health insurance policy since not all costs are covered.  It can take many months to get yourself registered in the French healthcare system, even longer if you go about it the wrong way! Again, do your research carefully about how to go about it properly

We love France, even if some of her ways can be frustrating at times and living here is certainly not one long holiday, but then nothing in life is perfect. We have, just about, achieved some of our goals in that we are able to spend more time together and are both less stressed by work; we are living mortgage free in a house that is economical to run; we have a two acre garden around us and the peace and privacy we yearned for; this year we will start to grow our own vegetables and we have an acre of wood to supply logs for the woodburner. Our monthly living costs are low but then at this stage so is our monthly income!  But, whatever happens in the future, we followed our dream and gave it our best shot. I would never discourage anyone from making the move, but I would urge them to plan it well.

Le Clos des Chênes

On the evening of the 2^nd October we arrived in a state of nervous excitement at the offices of the Notaire in Montbron who had been selected by both parties to handle all the legalities associated with buying a house in France. Unlike the UK where each party chooses its own solicitor to carry out the conveyancing process, it is quite common in France for the same notaire to act for both the buyer and the seller. Their role is to ensure that all the relevant checks and searches have been conducted and that all the relevant legal paperwork has been completed to ensure that the purchase is properly registered.

It is worth remembering that unless you ask for it, the notaire is not obliged to initiate a private consultation to provide you with tailored advice about your own particular circumstances. It is not their job to hold your hand throughout the process in the manner that might be the case with a conveyancing solicitor in the UK. We were fortunate in that there were no contentious issues between our vendors and ourselves – primarily this was because we all got very drunk together one evening and sorted everything out!

The Notaire in Montbron had been selected because he spoke good English and would therefore be in a position to ensure that we fully understood what we were signing. However, we were greeted with the news that he had been unavoidably delayed on another appointment and would not be able to meet us that evening. The look of utter disappointment on our faces must have been obvious – we weren’t going to become property owners quite as soon as we had hoped.

The day was saved though by one of the Notaire’s colleagues who offered to stand in and conduct the meeting – in French! She spoke very little English and my French is hardly good enough for a conversation involving legal jargon but we decided to give it a go on the basis that if we were really unhappy, we need not sign anything.

As it turned out, between us we worked everything out and by the end of the meeting we had signed umpteen pieces of paper and the words we were anxiously awaiting were duly spoken: “Vous êtes propriétaires”. Not since we were declared Man and Wife had anything sounded as satisfying as being declared the owners of our own piece of French paradise.

We had even come up with a name for our new home – ‘Le Clos des Chênes’. It means something along the lines of ‘the oak enclosure’ and reflects the fact that the house sits in the middle of a wooded field, the majority of the trees being oaks.

We had the lease on the rented property until the end of October so we now had a good four weeks to get moved in – quite a luxury compared to every other house move I have ever done. We set ourselves a target date of 24^th October to be living in the new house so that we then had time to clean the rental property thoroughly before handing back the keys.

Good plan I thought. The problem was that the day after the signing was our wedding anniversary – not a problem in itself except that we spent that evening sat on the covered deck, eating a huge steak cooked on the barbecue and drinking far too much wine as we watched the sun go down. Sod the plan - we knew we wanted to be living there just as soon as we could.

The next morning we started loading up the car and ferrying our belongings across in small batches. Our lovely neighbour Nadine took pity on us and offered her the use of her husband’s old Citroen van. This was a Godsend as it meant we could not only move larger batches but we could also move the larger pieces of furniture (Nikki had not been happy at my earlier suggestion that she take one end of the sofa, I take the other and we just carry it the 300 meters to the new house!).

We unpacked as we went, feeling like kids at Christmas as we opened up boxes containing all those little things you take for granted and miss so much when you’re without them for so long. Sharp knives – oh, how I had missed my sharp kitchen knives!

We were all done by the 13^th October – eleven days ahead of schedule! That night was a cold one but we lit the wood burning stove and basked in its warm glow.

We were totally, utterly, at home.

All our worldly goods

Everything I had read about living in France had prepared me for the weight of paperwork that would be required to support most major transactions and renting a house was to be no different. Fortunately for us we had the services of Silke from Piegut Immobilier who carefully explained everything to us in her excellent English (one of the many languages she speaks).  She then jumped in her car and led us the last few kilometers to Busserolles.

 Having only ever seen a few photographs of the house we were renting we had deliberately set our expectations low. In our minds we were moving into a dirty, smelly house which would need us to spend the first week doing nothing but cleaning out grimy bathrooms, trying to make the kitchen into an area free of botulism and banishing spiders and lizards from their cosy haunts.

Talk about having expectations exceeded - they were blown out of the water. Silke opened the door to a sparklingly clean house that was furnished beautifully and was much larger than we had anticipated. The bathroom was immaculate with a Jacuzzi bath as a lovely surprise and the kitchen was modern and well equipped. The only thing that seemed strange to our English eyes was that the oven was installed in the utility room rather than the kitchen. Time would prove the sense of this arrangement – when the weather gets hot it is great to be able to prepare food in the cool kitchen whilst the oven churns out the heat in a separate room.

But the best discovery about the house was the basement – it was a cavernous wonder! Why such joy? Well, we were moving from a four bedroomed house in the UK to a two bedroomed fully furnished house in France. Clearly we would have to put much of our furniture and other belongings into storage but our tight budget did not allow for any kind of third party storage. We had therefore gambled on being able to store everything at the rental house and in our minds we were going to have boxes piled ceiling high in every room.

Only once we set our eyes on the huge basement with its fully tiled floor and wide access doors at ground level did we realise that when the removals lorry arrived in a weeks time we could simply say to the guys ‘just put it all in the basement’. Fabulous!

The centre of Busserolles village

 We were therefore able to spend our first week in Busserolles recovering from the journey and finding our way around the locality. Tess and Rolo loved the huge garden at the house and we discovered some beautiful countryside walks right on our doorstep. We also met our delightful neighbour Nadine who spoke no English but was happy to explain things slowly and to help us with our French. She soon became our guide to rural France and humbled us with her generosity as she brought us haunches of wild boar to try, vegetables from her garden and bottles of the local plonk.

Rolo discovered lizards and became obsessed with these charming little creatures who nervously scuttle away whenever they sense any movement nearby. They move so fast it seemed unlikely he would catch one but one day my wife discovered a twitching lizard tail and assumed the rest of the lizard had been swallowed by Rolo. We waited anxiously to see what effect fresh lizard would have on his stomach. 

One of our friendly lizards

Nadine was duly consulted as to how serious the outcome might be for the poor dog. She smiled knowingly at us and patiently explained that when these lizards feel in danger, they actually shed their tail which then twitches invitingly to distract their predator. Rolo would be fine she said but we would probably see a tail-less, but very much alive, lizard in the garden.

Relating this story (or should I call it a tale?) to another local we were informed that his cat was an avid lizard hunter and their garden was full of short tailed lizards!

On our third day we went to the local Credit Agricole branch for our meeting with Marie Lambert. Once again there was going to be copious amounts of paperwork to sign but Marie hit a problem. A computer fault meant that she could not get any of the documents to print. We sat there patiently whilst she called her IT helpdesk but the silent looks we exchanged between ourselves hinted at our increasing exasperation. We knew what was coming next, a grudging apology and a request to come back another day.

How wrong we were. Marie instructed us to waste no more of our time at the bank, we should go and enjoy the local market, have lunch and she would call us on the mobile when she had found a solution. What emerged was the proposal that she would come out to the house later in the day and we could sign everything there. Just tremendous service, I can’t imagine any British bank employees leaving the cocoon of their branch office and making home visits.

The following Friday afternoon we had a knock at the door. I was taken aback to find a large white Britannia Appleyard removals wagon outside with Nigel and Jonjo, the two men assigned to our job, standing on our doorstep. “I wasn’t expecting you until Monday” I blurted out. Not a problem they said, because French laws meant that they were not allowed to drive at the weekend, they were going to spend the weekend locally and thought they would come and see where the house was so as not be late on the Monday morning. They were clearly chuffed at the idea of unloading most items straight into the basement and so, despite the heavy showers that blighted the day, they cheerfully set about unloading our worldly goods.

By the end of the day, everything we owned in the world was with us in Busserolles. Project Cinquante was complete; the dream was now a reality.

Project Cinquante comes to life

I always felt that one of the flaws in my plan would be that if we completed the move in the summer, finding a long term rental property could be a serious challenge. Why would anyone rent their house to me for €600 per month when they could get €600 per week if they let it as a gite over the summer months? And now we were going to be moving to France in June, right at the start of the summer season!

I trawled the internet for long term lets and my fears were realized – every property owner came back with a similar response – “yes, we’d love to rent our house to you, it will be available from September”.

So I tried another approach and contacted a number of the French estate agents in the Perigord Vert whose sites I had been bookmarking for several months. Bingo!

A photo received by email of our rental property in Busserolles

An email landed in my inbox from Nigel Barette of Piegut Immobilier. He had that day been asked by a client to find a tenant for a two bedroomed property in Busserolles, a small village situated bang in the middle of our property search area. A quick exchange of emails and a few photographs and the deal was struck – our initial base in France was sorted!

With a date and a destination fixed, the rest of the plan started to come together.

We booked our removals with Britannia Appleyard of Rotherham – they were the only company who seemed willing to come out and actually see what furniture we wanted to move before providing us with a quote. The others wanted to base their quote on an estimate of volume provided by yours truly. This seemed a risky route to go down as my ability to estimate volumes is, well, non-existent! I suspected we might end up either paying way over the odds or getting stung with penalty charges when they realized there was far more to load on a van than Mr. Morford had suggested.

Everything I had read suggested there were two things that would particulalrly infuriate me when trying to deal with French business processes – arranging a French bank account and setting up an internet connection. In reality, it could not have been easier to do either of these things. The secret lies in the fact that many Englishmen have gone before me and the amiable French have recognized that most of us are rubbish at speaking la francaise. As a consequence a number of French businesses have set up English speaking help lines and are no doubt capturing a big slice of the expat market as a consequence.

 Here are two examples that left me delighted me with the service from French organisations.

Coming from an agricultural background I was drawn to the idea of doing my banking with Credit Agricole. The Charente-Perigord division not only has an English speaking department it also has a slogan that appealed to my Yorkshire roots – “The Bank of Common Sense”.

You know, if there was a political party called the “Common Sense Party”, I’d vote for them – perhaps I should be the founding member and one day get I’d elected to the European Parliament? Maybe President of France? Anyway, back to Credit Agricole...

I gave them a call (and we’re still in Cheshire at this point) and spoke to a very nice lady called Marie Lambert. We exchanged some e-mails, I sent her copies of things like birth certificates and passports and we agreed to meet her as soon as we arrived in France. Marie’s office was over an hour away from Busserolles but that was not a problem she said, she would drive out and meet us at our local branch in Piegut. Far from being horrendous, this was proving to be real smooth sailing and I’ll tell you more about the lovely Marie in a later post.

So, to telephone and broadband. Nigel from Piegut Immobilier passed me the number for the English speaking customer service team at France Telecom (or Orange as they have now become) which is +33 (0)9 69 36 39 00

Once again I was blown away by the friendly and helpful manner in which my request was dealt with and within 10 minutes an order was placed for a landline, an ADSL broadband connection, a wireless router plus a TV package giving us access to 54 channels. All would be set up within a few days of our arrival and all the necessary equipment would be delivered to a local collection point. They were as good as their word and we have not had cause to fault them.