Still in its infancy, this slow-growing page is intended to provide some useful starting-points for anyone else who may be planning to move to a ramshackle house in the French countryside, keep chickens, contemplate sheep, fly old aeroplanes, buy a wood-burning stove, etc. etc.  

General

**** French Entrée Useful portmanteau site aimed people interested in buying property in France, with a welter of articles on subjects both broad (eg. choosing a region of France) and narrow (eg. how to get the electricity connected). The design is busy and some pages slow to load, but for Francophiles eager to take the plunge, there is much here to inform and divert. The Limousin site is especially rich in colourful content. 

Finding a Property

*** France Property Shop  Alarmingly, there are people who buy properties in France solely on the basis of seeing an advert on a website. Crazy as that may be, this online property finder will at least allow you to gauge current prices in different regions (via private sales as well as a limited number of estate agents), and - for the die-hard Francophile - makes a good way to dream away an hour or so over a glass of wine in Blighty.

Buying a Property

Obvious as this may sound, it really does make sense to spend plenty of time in the region where you are thinking of buying, and not just in high summer. Even once you have settled upon a particular locale, please do not assume that you can just turn up in a French estate agents' office and be taken to see lovely houses. You are likely to have to make an appointment; may have to wait several days for viewings. In other words, be prepared for house-hunting to take three times longer than it would in Britain...yet for any sale to go through three times as quickly. Estate agents' fees are expensive in France, which adds to the appeal of buying from a private seller or from a local notaire. Estate agents tend to be closed all day on Sundays and Mondays, and at lunchtimes from 12-2pm. 

Renovation: doors and windows

*** Lapeyre  For windows and doors that you're planning to fit yourself, Lapeyre (stores all over France) are not the cheapest, but the quality is impressive - especially their solid oak range - and the choice of sizes and designs is vast. Good for bathroom stuff, too.

** Vial Menuiseries The doors and windows sold by Vial are more basic in construction than Lapeyre's, and the range is narrower. But for anyone on a tight budget, the prices are excellent. I wish I'd found them sooner; a good source of oak doors for built-in cupboards and wardrobes, too. 

Sheep

*** Ouessant Sheep  Ouessants, such as the dreadlocked 'Rastafarians' that I keep at La Folie, are thought to be the smallest breed of sheep in the world. This is the best site I've found for general information about them, although the linguistically-challenged will find the English language version more limited than the main French site.

Chickens

** Volailles Françaises  An illustrated list of the main chicken breeds of France, though you may find - like me - that those manky birds you've just picked up at the local market somehow don't appear anywhere upon it. Several readers have written to me asking where to find bantams in France; see the entry on Pictave chickens for the address of the Bantam Club Français.

* Chicken Hypnosis  Three ways to hypnotise a chicken, though I have never been able to bring myself to attempt it...

Flying

**** Fly in France  Splendid guide to flying in France, including tips on renting aircraft, understanding French airspace and finding info on weather, NOTAMs etc. Also an invaluable page devoted to r/t procedures in French, with an audio file which shows just how difficult it can be to decipher a foreign language gabbled fast over a crackly intercom. Salutory stuff...

French accents

***** All Characters is a small computer program that can be downloaded for free, and runs in the background on a Windows PC. I have found this the quickest and most convenient way of adding French accents (as in déjà and garçon) into whatever I'm typing. Also useful for æ and € and ©, too.

Ticks

*** Tick removal comes with the territory if you have dogs, cats (or very small sheep) in France. The best product I've found to do the job is called a Tick Twister; expensive for a small piece of plastic, but effective, too. Don't squeeze ticks; this tends to squirt their toxic contents into the host animal.

To Go or not to Go?

*** Don't Move to France Some people write to me, accusing me of encouraging yet more Brits to move to France; others thank me for presenting a more honest picture of the perils of such a move than some other commentators. One such is John Bradley, who became so concerned at the number of deluded Brits moving to France that he created this personal website. I recommend it especially to those unfortunate souls who have written to me, complaining that their husband/wife is desperate to move to France and that my book has only made the problem worse. They ask what I can suggest to quell their partner's rose-tinted idealism. Well, here it is...