Would love to know what peeps who have returned to the UK feel. What they consider is better than in France? What is worse? What they miss about France - if anything. I get homesick. Would love to go back for a few weeks. Does anyone have a pad in the UK I can rent?
I went back to visit family in June. While it was great to see them, I couldn’t get over how expensive, busy and dirty the place was compared to my quiet little corner of SW France.
A permanent return to the U.K. is just below having a one dozen pineapple enema on my to do list.
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perhaps you’re missing some of the things listed here… ???
I have been living in France to long to ever think of visiting the UK. I spent the last 3 weeks driving across France , Italy and ending up in Greece far more interesting and less expense.
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Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back there, been here too long to understand the place it has become now and its not for me.
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I don’t go back often, maybe once a year at most. And it has changed. However I still find the multicultural aspect of the UK far superior to France, whether attitudes to people of different background or the availability of different foods. OH is vegetarian and it can be difficult here, but not in UK.
Animal welfare standard are (were?) higher, as are (were) energy standards in buildings.
Plus the sense of humour!
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I live in France for the summer and the UK for the rest of the time. I love both very much, but the call of the mothership is the UK rather than France, and I know that as I get older I want to be old in my own language. I love France, which I have visited regularly since I was 3 years old in 1961. I still just remember my Dad carrying me around the walls of Carcassone. But in the UK you can eat really well in lovely village pubs, with a much broader menu than you will find in small french country restaurants. And however well cooked the meals, they are always local, rather than international - no bad thing for a fortnight, but after a few weeks I am desperate for something a bit more international. Also, beer! Not eurofizz, but good honest bitter. And I would agree that the UK is dirtier than France (I deeply regret the inability of my compatriots to put things in bins) but more expensive? You have to be joking! For the price of a polo shirt in France I could get a proper shirt from Lewins or even Turnbull and Asser if I wait for the sale. And any Tesco will knock Carrefour into a cocked hat.
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Will be going to the UK at toussaint with my kids, first time in three and a half years, I like it because I get to speak English and everything’s a bit exotic for my kids. I get to watch a bit of UK TV and see how things have changed generally.
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Should have shopped at Lidl!
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I’m not a Carrefour fan to be honest, I find it expensive compared to the LeClerc I use more regularly, the veg etc is not as nice and as against travelling 11kms each wayto visit, LeClerc is only 4kms each way so save on using petrol too.
Problem with Tesco is that you cannot buy meat or fish that is not wrapped in plastic. Or at least it was last time I was in the UK
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I wouldn’t shop in Lidl or Aldi in the U.K. but here in France I look forward to it. But then shopping is a whole new experience here.
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Why not? When I’ve been in in the UK the food has been excellent quality and much cheaper prices.
It’s the opposite where we are. The Carrefour is brilliant with really good fresh fish and butchers and reasonably priced. We have a brand new huge Leclerc which is awful, with loads of out of date or a few days from date stuff on the shelves and really expensive. We only went once, on a Saturday afternoon and it was like a ghost town. The other Leclerc is a bit better, but still not a patch on the Carrefour. When we were in Deux Sevres, it was Leclerc always the best, so it really seems to differ around the country.
I agree. We had a Lidl close by in the UK and the fruit and veg were better than any other supermarket, and what could be got locally was. And much cheaper.
Edit: Just to add that we use Lidl here as well, for a lot of the staples and the ‘middle aisle’ stuff. We keep an eye out for stuff using the app. We actually have 3 Lidl stores, why I don’t know but they must do loads of business to have three stores in what is not a large place.
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Within my experience people usually return to the UK for family reasons rather than for cultural ones
It’s nearly three years since I last went there and that was to visit my mother, who’s since died (le confinement stopped me going back for the funeral and her ashes were scattered in her garden, so there isn’t even a grave to visit). Won’t go back again and my younger brother, who’s lived in Spain for the past twenty years, feels exactly the same. We’re first generation Brits and so don’t have ‘the ties that bind’ (Springsteen, B, 1979) . 
My S African born wife, who only got her UK nationality ten years ago, now wants a French passport.
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Sorry if that upsets you. I imagine it’s less the ashes than not being able to be back for the funeral that you regret. We scattered my mum’s ashes (perhaps illegally) in the fougère at Tarn Hows. Haven’t been there since, but have many memories of her.
Thanks very much for your kind concern, but it didn’t upset me as much might have been expected, there was nothing I could do, except write a eulogy, and that was sufficient. It had to be!
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Strange isn’t it how one branch can differ so much, never seems a continuity like Lidl who are all the same in most of all they sell and price.
Same here, 4 stores within a 10km range of my house, Aldi have two stores but I don’t like them so much. Two of the Lidl stores service thousands of holidaymakers in the camping villages so they keep going all the time with that amount of clientele.