France Travel Guide

Posts Tagged ‘cost’

Buying a house in France is a serious business for anyone. Whether you’re selling up lock, stock and barrel and emigrating to France permanently, or you’re lucky enough to be searching for a French holiday home, the expense is still substantial.

So why do we notice so many folks treat buying a house in France with so little thought? It’s not a pair of shoes – you can’t take it back if it doesn’t fit right!

Yet too often we hear the same horrors. Someone who has bought a French house without thinking and is now beginning to find problems. Who are these individuals? They must be doing very well to just travel France buying French property as the fancy takes them.

The mad thing is, nothing could be further from the truth. Often – in fact more often than not – these are couples putting their life savings, their whole future, into their French dream house.

And a alarming number of them haven’t got the first idea. They’ve done very little research, they don’t speak any French and they’ve sought no professional advice.

Then when things go pear-shaped they start moaning about the system, the language, the French, the agent… just about anything and everything is to blame but themselves. They treated buying a house in France like getting a lottery ticket and now they’re complaining because their one-in-a-million gamble didn’t pay off!

Now perhaps you think I’m being a bit extreme. I’m not. I know a family who you would think of as very sensible and cautious who signed an agreement to buy a French property while on vacation. They weren’t even looking for a house when they left England but they fell in love with the house.

What they were unaware of was that by the time they got back to the UK ten days later, getting out of the contract would cost them 12,000 Euros.

I can give you another example of a couple who bought a French property to live in part and turn the rest into gites. They wildly underestimated the renovation costs (because they didn’t ask) and now live in a place that needs a new roof. They can’t finish the work so they’ve only got small pensions to live off. The house is in a bad way so they can’t afford to sell and return to England either.

It’s all very concerning, really. I hear one of these stories about every other month and it’s such a pity. Now I’m not perfect, I’ve made plenty of mistakes myself living over here and renovating an old French property, but fortunately my misjudgements have been quite minor because I’ve invariably checked and double checked the costly things.

Which is, when you strip it all back to basics, all anyone needs to do.

The French property market offers a wealth of opportunities and buying a house in France is neither particularly hard nor particularly complicated. The trouble is that unless you’re French or you’ve owned French property before it IS new to you. There will be things you haven’t met before. There will be things that don’t go quite as expected.

The essential thing is to get a degree of knowledge behind you. Search online, buy a book or two, ask questions – and don’t give up until you’re happy with the answers.

France is a great place to live but it’s not dreamland and miracles don’t happen just because you want them. If you crash around blindly in the French property market you will find trouble. Do your homework wisely and buying a house in France will be a delight – which is what it should be and what I wish for everyone who is looking.

When you think of a French camping holiday you may start to think of cold wet weekends away, you could not be so wrong, and with absolutely thousands of campsites in France, you have so many different ones to choose from, and whether you have your own tent, are touring with a caravan or a motor home, the choice of camp sites is endless.

If you were to pick an area of France, then you will not have any trouble in obtaining information on campsites in that particular province and in fact you would probably be spoilt for choice. But there is one place called Brittany that is one of the most popular destinations for a family camping holiday in France and this is due to sandy beaches, hidden coves, rock pools and the coastline that the children just adore.

Yet the Alps is a vast area waiting for the more adventurous camper with mountainous climbs, pretty villages and lakes to explore along with Chamonix, which is the highest town in Europe.

Then there is Paris, the capital city of France, which has everything a beautiful city can offer, and with several campsites around Paris, the closest is just a few minutes from the centre, you will also find others that are located near to Versailles and Disneyland Paris, let alone others near golf courses and fishing lakes.

And although most people end up going through the Rhone Valley without really much of a stop, it is well worth taking a detour either side of the river which is where you can find some beautiful countryside to explore, and in this area you will also be able to find some glorious wine produced on these slopes bordering the river, along with major towns like Lyon.

Most places will be able to provide hook ups for electricity from either 6 amps or 10 amps, plus many other facilities. And on a lot of different sites, rather just touring you can even hire out the caravans, chalets or mobile homes, but whatever you decide is best for you, this is a great way of touring through France.

As you can imagine, there are a vast amount of campsites with lots of different facilities, which you will find are rated with stars in a similar way to that of hotels, so the more stars a site has, the better it will be, although inevitably the more expensive they will be, especially in certain areas of France.

A camping site with one star is a basic site and there is no where near as many these days, due to competition from other campsites, whereas a two star camping site is rated for comfort and has some good amenities, then three star and four star campsites are of a very high standard, not only for the amenities and facilities they have to offer, but also for the quality of these facilities. For example, on a four star site you will often find top class restaurants that are even frequented by the locals for their phenomenal French cuisine, but also complete pool complexes and evening entertainment as a regular occurrence.

But apart from the typical camping sites available, you can also find places to pitch such as camping on farms, but lots of these do not have a wide range of facilities available, in fact some are so basic you will need to have all of your own facilities or they may just about have a toilet and hot shower for you to use.

One quick point, please do remember that it is only in authorised locations around France that you are able to camp and not in places such as woods, yet saying that, when travelling through France it can take hours or days, and we have seen many tired travellers putting up their tents on the grassy areas in the service stations alone the toll roads!.

Most people think of camping as purely a summer activity, but for an extremely reasonable holiday, which can be as low as 50 to 60 percent less in cost, you can go camping in the low season, and dependant upon the area of France you wish to go to, some campsites are even open all year round and still even have facilities such as indoor swimming available.

France can therefore offer you freedom and flexibility, whether you wish to stay in one place for the duration of your holiday, or why not try hopping from camping site to campsite, these types of holidays can offer you everything from excitement and family fun by the coast in places such as Brittany, through to the more sedate holiday staying in the grounds of chateaux in rolling countryside of the Loire valley, but for the more adventurous, you could even have a camping holiday incorporating adventures like kayaking in the Dordogne, or mountaineering in the French Alps

You will be able to get to see ancient ruins, quaint villages, monuments and scenery that you would never think possible in any country, but France has it all, and this is possible in many regions within only a few miles of where you have decided to stay, yet do not forget about the wonderful activities that are available to you on site, which sometimes makes it a hard job deciding on whether you want to leave!