We moved to rural France (limousin) in 2020 and already moved back to Belgium now.
We love the simple and slower life and had a nice property, just like in portugal/bulgaria, France also has those remote villages with a few people of an older age living there, but more empty houses.
Pro: if you move to one of those almost-empty villages, the mayor will help you a lot and people will be happy to help and be welcoming (if you speak French)
I believe permaculture and natural vegetable gardening is not weird at all, so no-one told us to spray something or do any of those bad thing to the soil. Mulching for example is almost standard. Even in very remote places you will find groups/organisations of eco-friendly gardeners who do plant-/seed-swaps and small events (and again, as long as you speak French, you’ll be very welcome!)
Cons: (the biggest reasons we are back)
-we have kids and didn’t know french governement has so much “power” over the kids who officially live in France. School was a nightmare (back to the 50s-60s in a bad way) and homeschooling is not allowed, you also can’t really choose a school.
-We couldn’t get the medical help we needed, on paper and when asking around before our move, we would have no problems finding a doctor, dentis,… in real life: nobody was accepting new patients. Even though we were less often ill, you still need a doctor sometimes.
-bureaucratie 🥴 don’t get me started on that!
We are back in Belgium, as that is what we know, but miss calmness of the french countryside so much! But also the old stone buildings, we alread did so much work and I love that old aesthetic!
We don’t think we’ll stay in Belgium (it is too expensive and over-crouded), but we needed to come back to what is comfortable and “normal” to us, and we are taking our time now to decide what we’ll do.
France wasn’t our dream-land to begin with, it just seemed easier than a lot of other european countries, as it is still kinda close to visit friends&family, and our french isn’t perfect (we speak Dutch/Flemish), but we had some basic knowledge from school, while other languages are an extra big thing to learn.
If we would fo it again, we’ld try to travel around more searching for a place and maybe rff ernt something and try living there for a while before buying something.
