Ahhh, but there’s the rub David, it’s not one race, island or not, it’s many races. Even putting aside immigration over the last thousand years. The Welsh and Scots are Celts (as of course is Brittany ) and the “English” are Anglo Saxons, Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe. We’re all Europeans 
Well maybe except for the ERG, they are nutcases. BTW, I liked Alice Springs.
Ahh, well.
The rural French in Brittany are a bit nervous because they think we are all beer-swilling wreckers who will do mad renovations and violate land boundaries while having noisy drunken parties. But when you speak to them a few times they go ‘Phew, these English are a bit mad but harmless!’.
It seems like in the 80s or some long ago time, there was a wave of naughty Brits, so people are a little bit reticent, but they are nice natured people, the rural Bretons, and very forgiving. What matters is the people, it seems, and if the Brits are nice and neighbourly, the French can be too. My neighbours are really nice, but there has been a history if Brits here in the impasse for decades; well-behaved Brits. The other English in the village are the same as me, they integrate but are happy to spend time with other English people.
Integrating is an interesting one, there are some Brits who have been here for decades who take advantage of the big English community and English-speaking services to avoid interaction with the French altogether, and live in their little isolated castles, and have tendency to think that they are lords and it is easier for them not to integrate, and there are many who despite the expat community, integrate really well, not all Brits like the expat community, some prefer the French and to speak French, and those who prefer the French or a mixture, seem to have a happier life, less restricted.
I would say that there are too many non-integrated and non-French speaking Brits in the region, and the shop people tend to assume that you won’t speak French if you are English, so they try their English but that can be a temptation to me and others to not speak French, which I resist and politely speak in French.
I like a mixture of the cultures, I love Fest Noz and French events, I love the French outlook on life, I am not here to just be with British people and speak English and to turn parts of France into a little England, but to integrate and live life. I have English friends and French friends. But my French still needs some work, however, I will never be one to speak loudly in English to the French.
I saw a couple in a supermarket in Normandy last year, they approached the manager and said ‘Have you got any waste bread for our chickens’ loudly in English. He shook his head in confusion, and they walked off saying ‘He probably didn’t understand us’. All the English families I worked for in Normandy spoke good French, and there was a lovely bi-lingual church, hymns and prayers, sermons and talks in French and English. Wonderful.
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Haricots blancs sauce tomate s’il te plaît 
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I admit to being surprised at how low the overall figure was. I have been under the impression that there are/were some 2 Million Brits living on Continental Europe ‘mainly in Spain and France’? Obviously I was completely and utterly wrong or misled. If I read the numbers correctly just 160,000 +/- Brits?
How many live in Spain then? Any ideas?
Iain Duncan Slime’s number-crunching as to how much we collectively ‘cost’ the UK also seems in the realms of either misapprehension OR more likely misinformation (otherwise known as falsehoods)
Can there ever be an end to this lying toad? Those who vote for him in Churchill’s old seat should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - although I realise that is a pious hope.
Around 1.2 million people born in the UK live in the EU, 300K+ in Spain.
Anglo-Saxon, Scots, Welsh or Irish, John, still not far from the sea and most, including the Celts, fled from the interior of Europe. The very name for the area in which I now live, Le Perigord, is Celtic in origin.
I had nothing against The Alice, or its distance from the sea, but I have always been the world’s worst tourist and have missed out on so much. I lived, and worked from, Katherine for a time and never visited the gorge. I look at it wistfully now, but only on the telly. ;-(
Me too. Haricots blancs that is, not the other thing. 
Yes, I was much the same - loads of business trips but just in and out rather than take a half day for a look around. Back in 1980 I turned down a opportunity to spend a week driving a camper across the US because I thought it more important to get back for a (CICS ) course.
I also live in the Jura, we discussed Ogerlet before. 
we too like being in a department with few Brits.
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It is funny, I live in a département where there are lots, and we don’t really notice them or distinguish at first sight between the residents or the visitors - it is (as I have probably said before) just the ghastly monoglot shouty ones one actually notices (the same goes for any foreigners or indeed French people), but normally the anglophones are background noise, like other foreigners.
The impact might be different if I were not a française de souche though.
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Why? Sounds like a touch of reverse snobbery? Or is it the Jura syndrome? We lived on the edge of the Jura for ten years - it literally started 50 metres from our gate. We noted the ‘anti-English’ English as well, something we have not noted in Paris, Lot, and now Correze.
We left that region as apart from our French village neigbours, we did find the Jurassiens a bit cold - we think it followed the Winter weather; Cold weather, cold people? Obviously the Poms to the fore.
Only once did we get direct rudeness here in the Correze, from an Englishman in Argentat when being asked if there was a bridge over the Dordogne further upstream (downstream?). His reply ‘I didn’t come here to live or talk with English people’ and stalked off. Arrogant pillock didn’t even noted the question was posed by my fluently bilingual French wife!
The only other comment I would make was the multiplicity of second home Hoorah Henries and Henriettes who infested the Prayssac Market in the Summer. Couldn’t mistake them with their loud voices always talking down to the locals. Used to set my teeth on edge.
Yet the permanents there were great, as they are here.
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Like Vero, I am anti-monoglot British, especially those who take advantage of France without contributing and live in pre-covid bubbles. Normal English are fine. I actually would like a few more permanent foreigners here, as the population is not very mixed - which is what I’m used to. Just not shouty, arrogant pompous ones.
As a sweeping generalisation we have found the people here lovely. A touch reserved perhaps on initial meeting, but extremely warm and generous thereafter.
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…which might explain an initial reluctance to speak English for fear of not getting it right or making themselves understood 
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Yes, Graham… that is what I have found. My neighbours were very understanding/long suffering from the beginning… and, when I suddenly found out that one or two could speak a little English… I was gobsmacked…
why not speak it to me then… oh no, Stella, I’ll get it all wrong… wish I could speak English as well as you speak French…
(they couldn’t seem to accept that I would “enjoy/accept” their mistakes, as well as they did mine… )
Nowadays… I might get the occasional “good afternoon” bellowed to me at 9am… who cares (I have previously gently corrected, but they still forget, so I let it pass…)… I know well enough that they are making a great effort… 
I’ve not met an Irish person here in Burgundy.
Why should they need to speak English? We’re in France?
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Who said anything about needing 
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Welcome to our very cool area as a new Irish person Mat!!! I don’t get Pommy humour (well after 20 years married to one I’m getting better!) but us Aussies I think have a special love for the Irish!
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Am I the only Anglo-Perigordin who gets just a tad tired of the so often automatic comeback ‘oh, that’s where all the English live’ on being told I live in the Dordogne? Or that silly word Dordogneshire?
My commune of 500 souls has, including us, 6 English, and one of those is now conveniently, Irish. At just over 1%, hardly overrun with us, is it?