Limousin - warm welcome?

Yes from what I’ve seen it does look really beautiful.

Plenty of radon from the granite, and all the old folk here in the Creuse probable avarage age 90 ish, it kills then the odd one. Lovely place to live.

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@anon3065310 I don’t think there are many SFers living in the Limousin to be honest which is why there may be a gap in the flow recommendations.
We live fairly close by in the East Charente and when we ave ventured out in to indian territory, we have managed to get back without being scalped :wink:

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Cheaper probably because it is in the middle of nowhere, relatively wet and doesn’t attract the casual second home owner. At least there is the TGV, which is more than can be said for the Auvergne. There is also an airport that serves a number of destinations in the summer .

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Thanks guys for the helpful feedback.

If you go a bit further south down the A20, I think you’ll find that the Aveyron/Lot/Cantal border is cheaper, the vernacular architecture is more interesting, the landscape is more spectacular and the climate is certainly better.

It’s not on the TGV and is a couple of hours more to drive to Paris, but on the other hand, it’s a similar amount closer to the Med, Spain and Barcelona .

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Cheers Mark, I’ll definitely take a look.

I am a grumpy French person not from the Limousin, who happens to drive through every so often. There is a huge amount of stuff online but I’m not sure how many people here actually live in Limousin. I live 155km south of Limoges and the prevailing winds are from the west so I don’t feel I need an NBC suit to go outside. I believe you can get a Geiger counter quite cheaply nowadays :grin:

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We lived in a village in the Limousin, about 30 miles north of Limoges, which had a closed down uranium mine right on the edge of it. The mine was finished and was being left to fill up with water, and the land surrounding it was being returned to it’s natural state. The village had benefitted greatly from the taxes paid by the mining company and had used the money to make lots of great improvements including mains drainage, underground electric cables, a fabulous new village hall and football pitch. The village’s water was supplied from a local spring and there was no contamination whatsoever from the mine. Nobody seemed to have suffered ill health because of it. We were made very welcome in the village and integrated well with the locals, joining the Comite des Fetes and helping to run the football team. The Limousin is a beautiful, very rural area.

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Beautiful and warm in the summer but very wet in the spring and autumn and freezing during the interminable winter… as well as being a long long est from anywhere. As elsewhere there are are always good reasons why property prices are lower than generally expected.

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I do not recognise your description of the weather/seasons. Perhaps you live in other parts of the Limousin. We are 45km north of Limoges, it is not particularly wet in the spring time, the summers are long, usually well into October. The autumn is mild and the merge into winter is hardly noticeable. Whilst winter can sometimes be cold it is not terribly so. The spring flowers are spouting and some are even in bud and some in flower. I have not yet found a reason to move out of shorts, in fact the last time I wore a pair of trousers was last January and that was to go to a Michelin starred resto.
I do not quite get the comment about it being the “longest from anywhere”, three hours to Paris, four hours to Lyon, three hours to Toulouse and another couple to Spain and less that three hours to the coast. Seems pretty central. That apart, it is a beautiful area with low property prices and a low cost of living. I highly recommend it.

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Thank you Geoff. I was really wondering about other posts talking about it being wet and cold and miserable and miles from anywhere… Not what I’ve read about it anywhere else!

This is a good thread if you have not seen it already

I spent five months looking for a place to live in the Limousin. We visited a lot of places! We stayed in @Mark gite for part of that time, which is beautiful. It is close to Felletin which I really liked too.

It can rain more than other areas of France, but I think there have been bad droughts too in recent summers. To be honest the rain didn’t bother me, and where we were in the Creuse it didn’t seem to rain that much.

We also stayed in the Correze for a time. Again very beautiful. Maybe more rain there during that time.

Anyway it is more isolated than many other areas of France except if you are near a bigger town. Villages losing the only remaining shop or baker can happen anywhere in the countryside but it will hit harder if there is little else around.

I certainly don’t regret the time I spent there. The countryside is stunning and the people very friendly.

We moved to Saone et Loire in the end. Also a rural area but it does feel more connected and I am not sure that the property prices are that different if you take into account the amount of work required.

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That’s a very useful and informative thread, thank you @almondbiscuit

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Quite a number of people seem concerned about it being isolated. To us that’s a huge plus! We don’t want to be anywhere near noisy towns or shopping centres or hypermarchés. A little place with some land and trees at the end of a dirt track… that’s our idea of heaven :slightly_smiling_face:

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Then the Limousin is probably what you’re looking for (depending on what sort of climat you’re after, that is) :wink:

Thats exactly what we’ve got. Come have a look when you can/if you’d like. Even in the Limousin they are a rare find these days.

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That’s very generous of you Mark. I’ll give you a shout closer to the time, lockdown dependant.

Thé Limousin area is vast and the climate on the west side where I lived is totally different to the east.
The climate close to the Charente /Hte Vienne borders is mild compared to somewhere like Aubusson or Ussel getting towards Clermont Ferrand.
Mind you Andrew, the climate differences between say, Lisle sur Tarn and Lacaune in the Tarn are like chalk and cheese too !

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Exactly, Peter, and it’s very hard giving any advise as what suits one person very nicely may be hell for somebody else : the summer heat here in the Tarn would kill off many living in Brittany but I couldn’t cope with the wet windy winters up there! Horses for courses :wink:

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