The Recce to France

What a weird stupid word "recce" is. I've only seen it written down recently and I really think it should be spelt "recky" like Becky.

If you can get over that, you might be able to tolerate this blog. Over half term we spent 6 days in France visiting 3 locations in the hope that we would "get a feeling" for one and decide to move there. It felt pretty extravagant to go away for half term, given that lots of people haven't been abroad since before the pandemic and we went to Greece at the end of August, but I made myself feel better by telling myself this wasn't a holiday, this was a recce. We were going to go to a bank and an estate agent, not just sit around all day eating pain au chocolat. Although we did a lot more eating pain au chocolat than visiting banks. We flew to Carcassonne and as were were going through the baggage check they asked us if we had any ipads or electronics in the kids bags. We we said "no they don't even own an iPad." Then Dan started saying about how we're pretty old school and they just have books and card games and stuff, and they guy seemed surprised and maybe a bit impressed. Then Dan went to far and said we just have chisels and stone and I had to reassure the man that we did not have a bunch of chisels in our hand luggage.

The places we visited were all quite close together in the middle south, which is the more affordable bit of the south coast. We basically just wandered around looking at the town centre and then a bit at the outskirts, trying out public transport, and places to eat and parks and then judged them all against each other like a game of top trumps. Why don't you play the game yourself? I'll give you a paragraph of description and 3 photos for each place and then you tell me which one you would choose...

1) Carcassonne.

The furthest away from the sea (an hour by car) and the smallest population, but the cheapest place to live. There's an airport so you can fly directly there from Manchester. There were lovely old city walls on a hill with nice touristy shops and cafes inside.  It had a river and a canal, it had a nice square with loads of restaurants and a fountain. The streets were very narrow. Only one car can fit down at a time so a lot of the roads were one way.

2) Narbonne.

Slightly bigger population than Carcassonne. Only a few miles from a lovely sandy beach, so you can get there on the number 8 bus from the city centre. No airport, so you would have to fly in from Carcassone or Beziers. Big square in the centre by the river with restaurants all round it. There was a permanent indoor food market and an (I'm guessing weekly) outdoor market.

3) Montpellier.

A much bigger place than the other two. A city with a tram network so that you can easily get all over the city, just like you would get a tube in London. City bikes that anyone can hire, (you get two hours for free) a lot of students, a very young aged population on average. Not far from the beach but you can't get directly there from the centre on public transport. You'd have to get a tram and then a bus. Lots more things to do just because it's bigger. Not many houses with outdoor space though, the majority of people live in apartments and it's more expensive to live there than the other two places. There is an airport but they don't fly to the north of England, so you would have to go to Beziers to fly to Manchester.

So which one would you choose?

I'll tell you our thoughts later, but in the mean time here's some of my general observations about the differences between the French and the English that I spotted on this trip:

The French are much more likely to have very round Harry Potter style glasses, especially children.

Red trousers are more common in France especially among men. You don't have to be a hipster to wear them, or maybe all French people are hipsters?

Smoking seems to still be cool in France. There seemed to be a lot more people doing it publicly in parks and stuff.

Gingers are pretty rare in France, although people did still assume I was french before I spoke, so I don't stick out as much as I have done when I was in the Middle East.

The places we went in general all seemed a bit more multi-cultural than Liverpool.

Public transport was really good value, but we got 3 trains and all of them were delayed. 

Food in supermarkets was generally more expensive than in the UK. A french homeless person asked me to buy him cheese... I don't think that would happen here.

Restaurants don't open till 7 at the earliest. So if you want to go out to eat at 5 or 6 you have to eat from a lunch place, so you could get a sandwich or a crepe, but not a proper hot meal. 

Loads of shops shut for a hour or two around lunch time!

The french were a lot more stick about covid, we had to wear masks everywhere and show that we've had a vaccine in order to eat out.

Deciding where to live

Before we left we had emailed a few international churches, because it is important for us to find a good church there. We got responses from all of them and they were all happy to have us and very helpful and welcoming, but the one in Montpellier seemed to have a better mix of people, i.e. not just old people, some families and stuff. So I went into the trip thinking "I hope Montpellier wins and that we can afford to live there."

We liked Carcassonne, and then we liked Narbonne even more, but all the time I was hoping Montpellier would be amazing. We weren't the on a Sunday unfortunately to go to the church, but I did go to a ladies thing at the church, which was food, chatting, a bit of Bible study led by a really nice American lady. I met women from all over the world, a lot from French speaking Africa, some American, some other Europeans and one other Brit. There was a good age range and they were all really lovely and welcoming. So I would really love to be part of that community, but there are two major things in the way:

1) It is quite expensive to live there. The problem with Liverpool being so cheap is that everywhere else seems expensive. So we could probably only afford a 2 bed apartment, or that kind of thing.

2) I don't love the city that much. It was fine, there were lots of nice things about it (like I love the trams). There was nothing wrong with it, but I just got a better feeling about Narbonne. 

It's really hard not to be influenced by the weather though, it was 19 degrees and sunny in Narbonne and I swam in the sea! Whereas in Montpellier it was grey and rainy.

So our next steps are to look into the towns near by Montpellier. Is there somewhere we could live quite near the city, that is more affordable? Then maybe we can get a bit of outdoor space and still be a part of Montpellier international church. That's the next thing we will research. Nothing's decided, we might completely go back to the drawing board and look at another city that we previously discounted for being a bit far north, for example, but that's where we're up to. Thanks for reading.