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Thought I'd say allo allo here..
Madame and I first visited this part of France in 1991 and it hit me like a train.. It wasn't long (ie, as we were driving away) before we were making plans to revisit the area. And from then on, we quickly progressed to dreaming about living here. We would return to the same small village every summer and it became the highlight of our year. English winters never seemed so long!
We both retired in 2006 and sold up in the UK in 2007, putting the bulk of our household effects into storage. We then drove a rental van down to Pyrénées-Atlantiques (64) where we rented a gîte at Villefranque while we searched for a house. (called "burning our bridges")
We started looking in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, then Biarritz and finally Bayonne. I'd made a list of all the features we wanted and I passed it across to the lady in the first immo we visited in Bayonne.
She said, "I have just the place for you..". The property she showed us fitted our wish list to a 'T'. We returned the following day for a second visit and, taking a deep breath, we decided there and then that we'd have it.
Ten days after arriving, we found ourselves signing the compromis de vente.. We moved into the house about 5 months later after the initial work we wanted doing (kitchen, bathroom, decoration, electrics etc) had been carried out.
Yes, we were lucky and it all worked out perfectly for us.
We've since become really embedded here to the point where we think of Dax as the North! We've yet to have a day where we felt we had nothing to do.
I applied for French citizenship in 2017 and it was granted last year.
Contrary to popular belief, we've made good friends with people in the local community - they've been so kind to us.
If I had to do it all over again, what would I do differently? Very little - except perhaps I'd put more effort into working on my French.
I have still to meet the mythical "surly French waiter" beloved of the UK tabloids. In reality, our experience of them has been the exact opposite.
Mcn

tooboocoo

A great story! Is there a catch...?

dmu

Wow, I didn't expect such detail, thanks for your introduction!!
In all the years I've lived here, I've never come across a surly French waiter/waitress either ....

cyrian

@ mcn
Welcome to the forum.
Your experience should be a lesson to any potential expats.
You knew the area that interested you.
You rented first to get to know the area and the property market in detail.
You knew what you wanted in a property, location etc.
We had French friends in the area who introduced us to their circle of friends.
We have super friendly neighbours who look after our property when we are not there.
We have the occasional 6 - 7 hour lunch with our neighbours and friends.
We converse in French virtually all the time and don't assume that someone will speak in English to us.
What you described is - do your comprehensive planning beforehand and reach out to your neighbours to integrate into their community.

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Thanks!
I joined a local rowing club on the Adour when we arrived here (and my first Saturday with them was a story in itself!) - and after a brief initial struggle with the commands and the names of all the bits and pieces, I was fine..
I then joined an association that commemorates the Comet Line (a WWII escape & evasion network for shot-down aircrew) and I started a blog (in French & English) for them. I can't post a link to it as I haven't made 5 posts here yet - but if you Google: cometepaysbasque - you'll find it. I'm the only English speaker on the c'tee..
Finally, I sing in a local choir.. we sing in four languages: French, Latin, German & Basque and I only know what we're singing about in one of them!
Each activity has its own particular vocab.. I was determined to jump in at the deep end, to do things on my own as I thought that way would speed up the integration process. Madame is French but I didn't want to stand behind her like a spare part while she did all the talking - I wanted to be independent. I know that in the choir that there are a handful of people out of the 60+ choristes who speak a few words of Angliche - but that's only in extremis that I'll use English with them.
We don't have a satellite dish for UK TV and I don't miss it.
Now, if someone stops me in the street with a question, I can understand it first time and they can understand my reply first time. I remember the first time that happened - very rewarding!

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A catch? Why?
When we've had friends from the UK with us here, it wouldn't take long before the classic negative questions such as, "What do you miss about etc etc" or "Do you have any regrets?" would be asked.
I lived in the UK for most of my working life - so I really looked forward to the challenge of moving here. It's been a wonderfully positive experience.. and the truthful answers to the above questions are "Stones Ginger Wine*" and "No, not one"..
* A friend came out to visit last year and he asked me in advance if there was anything he could bring.. I mentioned the Stones GW and he brought me a box of 6!
So now, all is well with the world!

Rosecampion

That’s a very inspiring story. Sounds like you have a really good attitude.
Do I understand that your wife is French? If so, that makes things MUCH easier.

tooboocoo

Great stuff - wishing you continued health & happiness in your adopted home, Monsieur!

EuroTrash

.'allo 'allo MCN.
Great to read such a feelgood post. That's what we need more of these days
Happily there are a lot of us on here who took all kinds of routes to get to France and make it home, be it permanent or part-time.
I moved in a very low key kind of way. Since my student days when I worked for a year in France I'd always assumed I would come back, but life got in the way, then when I was in my mid 40s I had a kind of "it's now or never" moment. I wanted to work for a good chunk of time in France before retiring because it seemed to me like a better way of getting "below the surface" and understanding what living in France involves. I'm not a sociable person nor a joiner of clubs etc so moving as a retiree wouldn't have worked for me. I've always been a bit rootless, I once counted up and from the age of 18 up to when I moved I'd lived in 16 different places in the UK, so although obviously moving to France was more complex in some ways, in another sense it was just another move. Having made the decision I.spent many months over several years exploring La Belle in my motorhome, staying for longer and longer, and eventually found where I wanted to be.
Then after 12 years - which is by far the longest I've ever lived in one place - for mundane reasons due to Brexit and the change in retirement age and random other unfinished business, I decided to return to the UK for a couple of years to wind up my working life, then go back to France to retire..
Then all this happened .and the job I came back for evaporated into thin air. Best laid plans and all that. But hopefully I'll be heading back September-ish as planned, before the Brexit drawbridge goes up..

There are lots of ways to move and settle. I think it's important to be able to communicate - not necessarily have great language skills but have the right attitude, because otherwise day to day life will be difficult. Beyond that I think you just need to find a way to live your own life, find your niche and be accepted for who or what you are. If you're not a sociable person there is no need to force yourself to socialise. I think sometimes people put too much pressure on themselves to somehow reinvent themself and turn into a new person to match their new home. For me that's not what it's about at all; it's about living somewhere where you feel comfortable and relaxed and able to be yourself. For some reason I found that easier in France than in the UK. But of course these things vary a lot person to person.

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Easier in that only one of us is learning French..! Seriously though, thinking back to when we arrived and we had to engage with the French bureaucratic machine, even though my wife had been away in the UK for 17 years, things hadn't changed here that much - so it made the first few weeks and months less problematic than they might otherwise have been. On that point though, we didn't meet one "jobsworth" - all the people we dealt with were - without exception - helpful and willing to take the time to explain the various procedures to us. Maybe that's just down here though - perhaps it's less friendly elsewhere - I don't know.
Many thanks - too kind! Just wish we could have moved here earlier..

@ EuroTrash - yes, I'm sure we all came at this from different starting points.. You said a few things that had me nodding in agreement.. Both of us have made more friends here than we ever did in England - and among the Basque community as well. Like you, I ask myself why that should be? I don't know either. People seem more open here.
I'd be the first to confess that my spoken French could never be described as fluent - I'm sure I mangle verbs and agreements but no-one has ever complained. I was self-conscious about it at one stage but life's too short for that.. When talking to people I can generally tell if they understand me. I try never to speak Angliche.. unless I'm really stuck.
I don't see the Brexit drawbridge going up - France is full of incomers from non-EU countries. Would it be in France's interest to exclude those? I don't think so. Think it will be the same for the UK too - once the froth has died down and reality sets in.
Mcn

cyrian

@ mcn
Have a look at the "bad jokes" thread in the stickies at the top of the page for a full translation method

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Is this the one you had in mind?

Here's another one in similar vein:

Jean Pierre trouve sa prof d'anglais tout à fait à son goût, aussi il lui envoie un texte message:

"Douillou sink it is envisageable crak crak wiziou this ivening?"

Scandalisée, elle répond: "Never!"

Alors Jean Pierre, en joie, lui renvoie: "Splendid, disons never, never et demie!"

dmu

G-J-B

That's a great story, sounds like all the pieces of the puzzle just slotted into place for you. Mine has been a pretty positive story too thus far (now 12 years in France); I never had any intention of living here though, and yet it now feels like I couldn't be anywhere else. I would like to say though I have met the mythical surly waiter, but that's because I first moved to Paris for a few years. Basically we got short changed, and we very politely mentioned it and assumed it was by accident. As we got up from the table another waiter behind us told us to 'vamoose' ! A little surprised by the unnecessary outburst, we explained we were waiting because we got the wrong change, to which they replied 'we are not thieves here', even though we hadn't accused anyone of thievery. We eventually got the correct change and left never to return.

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I think the hardest part of the whole move was actually taking the decision to move to France.
We'd been thinking about it for 15 years or so and as the date of our retirement moved closer and closer, we really started focusing in on all the pros and cons. We'd make lists of all the various factors and try to come up with an optimum solution for each one.. until the only open question that we couldn't control was the dreaded £/€ exchange rate.
One question that we found hard to answer was: would our pensions be enough here? In the end, I think we were so determined to move here that we thought that we'd just make it work. Quite apart from the attraction of moving to this part of France, England had ceased to be the country I'd grown up in.
Once we'd sold our house in the UK, we booked a rural gîte for an initial 3 months let and rented a van in which to load all the things we thought we'd need* for up to 12 months - and we set off!
What a great feeling that was.. It's not often in life that you get to live your dream and we'd been waiting a long time to realise ours. One thought kept us going - somewhere in France was a house with our name on it. All we had to do was to find it!

* Our photocopier was worth its weight in gold!