Thank you - this is brilliant! We are near durham, so this is useful!
I didnt think of contacting owners direct- especially if we go for a longer period like a month it might help keep costs down
We used to live just north of Lancaster and bought a second home (now our only home) in HĂ©rault. Itâs about 1000miles from one to the other. We used to start very early (3am) and drive down the M6, round the M42, M40, M25, M20 to Dover where we caught a ferry about 11am and were able to have a rest and a sit-down meal. We then drove to just south of Rouen for the night. The next day, we started at about 8am and arrived about 6pm.
When looking for houses, we started in Brittany and then went down the west coast in stages to Toulouse then eastwards as far as Uzes. Brittany too cold, wet and why not just stay in Cornwall? La Rochelle a possibility as was the Dordogne. Toulouse impossible, far too big and industrial, Bouches du Rhone and further east - very hot, floods, wind down the Rhone valley. The south-west is wetter and affected by proximity to the Bay of Biscay. All lovely areas, but we chose to be near BĂ©ziers in among the vines. We have wonderful medical care, good schools, supermarkets, two boulangeries, an active village life with an excellent demographic distribution and 300days a year of sun. This year it just touched 39 degrees for a couple of days, but so did quite a lot of France.
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Absolutely. We as owners prefer it as donât then pay the massive commission. And you should be able to get a good deal as long as not in peak months - basically the school holidays in France/uk/netherlands/germany
Crikey - that is organised. I would be too impatient and just do it.
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Thatâs what we did - thought about it in December, moved in following July.
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I got my redundancy confirmed in September and was installed on the 30th. 
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Iâve been hoping to be impatient since before Brexit, but I have family commitments in the UK (my mother is 99) which mean I canât move yet!! 
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My finishing date was the 30th, but I actually left a week earlier, because I had a holiday booked for that final week. And the penny pinching multi-national bastards refused to pay me for that week which, as a salaried person, I was entitled to take with full pay.
They gave up in the end, they had reckoned without my letterwriting, email writing and telephoning skills. I pestered the life out of them so in the end they gave in out of sheer exhaustion. 
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been there, know how it feels⊠things happen, when they happenâŠ
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You missed a trick.
Anyone taking leave during their notice period (or forced to) should remember that on your leave days, you are also earning further holiday pay as your leave days are stil days that count as employed days.
If you accept a payment in lieu of notice, also make sure that accrual is included. Depending on how many daysâ leave they owe you or you are forced to take, it can add up. One guy I helped squeezed another 3 daysâ pay out of his employer for this, which was a tidy sum as most months have around 20 work days so 3 days pay is another 15% of a monthâs pay gross. Helpful if youâre leaving.
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Good for her! My mum didnât want me to leave so I think that actually motivated her to hang on for a few extra years. (Although I had actually left but thanks to easy jet flights and two sisters she didnât realise)
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I would absolutely love to move sooner- but the visa process will involve us opening a french branch of our company, and our accountant has advised we need two more years accounts to do this. We also need to become more established in the UK so that we are certain the UK company will keep on going when we move. Plus we are renovating our current house in order to fund our move- if only we could to back in time and just move over and find a job!
Donât wait too long. Thereâs a risk of political change and time increases vulnerability to risks.
Thank you @JaneJones - she is doing really well (still doing some gardening, and I only managed to get her to stop driving last year - though she was hardly going anywhere).
Hopefully she will make it to next August and get a 100th birthday card from Chas and Cam! Itâs been good that I have been able to be here so she could stay in her own home without worry.
So my plans are on hold for now, but thatâs OK.
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We managed to keep Mum in her own home (except last 6 days), and she and my FIL were both competing to get a card. Sadly both went at 96.
Note if she doesnât get a state pension for any reason she needs to apply for her birthday cardđ€·ââïž
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Seems bizarre, but yes she does get a state pension so that should be automatic - thanks for the heads up though.
Are you sure, for someone who is salaried? I donât remember getting any holiday pay as such, simply got paid as if I was working. But it was a long time ago.
Why? Surely she should have been ok, as long as you were on the pillion. 
We did our most recent move here 9 years ago with a teen, a 9 year old and a baby. This is something you really need to take into consideration. Firstly you donât want to be driving an hour when you are in labour! My 2nd we had a 35 minute drive to Carcassonne as theyâd shut the maternity at Castelnaudary between our first and 2nd! Not pleasant at 3am! Also imagine having a sick baby, tiddler, child and being so far. The second issue is schools. You donât need a big town for that, we are in a hamlet near a village of just under 1000 souls and we have maternelle through to end of primary (around 11). After that itâs a bus s, 20 minutes or so to college. However ours is so awful that we are gong to have to do car share 25 minutes the other direction to get the 3rd somewhere decent. LycĂ©e if you are in the sticks youâll probably have to send your kids to board. Just a few things to think about and happy to answer any questions 
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