Had to jump in on this one, having lived in now four regions of France. First location was many, many moons ago when i bought a flat in Pantin (edge of Paris still on the Metro). This was after a stint in the Middle East and I had made enough to buy a small flat in the place where my wife came from. To me it was down-to-earth 'real' Paris in the old sense. It also had a sad history as being the place where the deportation trains left from in the last war. It was as Spike Milligan once said, in a different context 'a cloud of garlic and Gauloise'. Tatty staircase, noisy, crowded, bustling and I loved it!
Went back to work in Australia for a while and sold the place for a profit. After a heap of travels came back for a Winter holiday (Summer in Oz) and one night ended up in an almost empty Sarlat hotel on a New Years' Eve. Bottle and bikkies in the bedroom for celebration! The memory stayed with me and when we came back we selected the Lot as it was cheaper than the Dordogne, and bought a tiny house alongside a Departemental road, that had belonged to Josephine Baker's gardener, and who still lived in the village. The garden was brilliant, but the road was noisy. The locals were OK, but a little cool, but we did make wonderful friends there - mainly full-time Brit expats with Gites.
Further travels (contracts) led us to Eastern Europe, and the house was left empty for large tracts of time, so we sold it, planning at some stage to return to the area. However the Eastern side of France made more sense for my car commute to Hungary, so ultimately we found a farmhouse on the border of Burgundy and the Jura. This was NOT a good move. Although the house was good, and we had the forr us obligatory 'borrowed view' of 30kms open farmlands, we found the locals more than cool (as cold as a penguin's bum as we used to say in Oz) ad for eight years there I never spoke to more than three people and only in French. Our immediate neighbours were very nice but a million years younger than us or so it seemed, and farming was their only conversation - about which I know two things - i.e. Nothing and Bugger-all.
We did find other friends about 40kms away, which was nice but not that practical. Time came for a change, and the Lot beckoned once again, but prices had changed a lot (no pun intended) and it became obvious that our budget wouldn't stretch that far.
Like many, we had always driven past the Correze on the way to somewhere else, and had never ever thought of it as a place to live. Complete Wallies!!!
We 'stole' an old house which had already had most of the conversion done, and have fallen head over heels in love with it, the region, the neighbours and everything. The 'borrowed view' is something spectacular (see pic.) I have a separate smaller house which is my Studio, and we just can't believe our luck. The Correze is astoundingly beautiful, the villages and towns fascinating and we feel so good about this place as to be amazing - and finally wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
At almost 73 now, I finally feel I have come 'home'.