BUYING A HOUSE OR PROPERTY IN FRANCE - TRAVEL TO FRANCE

U.S. Version

If you're looking to buy a property in France, there comes a time when you've explored all the French Property websites, learnt all you can about the way the house buying transaction works in France, and began to get a feel for the relative house price values. At this point, there is really nothing for it, but to actually travel to France and begin to view some properties. The information on this page may be of some use to you when you come to plan your trip.

FRANCE BY FERRY

Since P & O withdrew from the majority of its GB - France routes it has left a situation on some crossings where Brittany Ferries is now in fact in a monopoly or near monopoly situation. This can only be bad news for the direction of prices on those routes and it is to be hoped that in time some competition will be forthcoming. In the meantime, once you have purchased your house in France, Brittany do offer a facility called the Property Owners Travel Club costing around £55 a year which offers some useful discounts on fares. If you are going to travel to France frequently you can save the £55 in a very short space of time.

All the major sea crossings to France from the UK and Ireland are listed In the table below.

FRANCE BY RAIL

If you're looking to buy in North East France, the alternative to using a ferry to get yourself and your car to France is Eurotunnel:
Eurotunnel.com

If you're looking further afield and are going to hire a car in the region of France that you are interested in, one alternative to flying is to travel by high speed train with Eurostar.com
The high speed network across France has been undergoing a major expansion and it is now possible to book through Eurostar to link up with these new routes to destinations all over France. We took advantage of this service recently to travel to Marseilles and, if memory serves me right, it took about 6-1/2 hrs from London to Marseilles. The UK leg of the journey time has become shorter as they have finally opened the high speed track from London to Folkstone. You can find a map of all the cities you can get to by high speed trains at the English version of the site at: tgv.co.uk

You can rest assured that the high speed trains used on these routes will be a bit more up to date than the train I've pictured on the left.

FRANCE BY AIR

With the growth of no frills airlines and the opening up of small regional airports in the UK and France to commercial flights, flying conveniently and cheaply to different regions of France has never been easier.

A current list of commercial airport destinations in France are shown immediately below and the details of the main airlines providing flights from the U.K. to France are shown below that.

• Poitiers
• Rennes
• Rodez
• Strasbourg
• Toulon
• Toulouse
• Tour

• Marseilles
• Montpellier
• Nantes
• Nice
• Nimes
• Orly
• Paris
• Pau
• Perpignan

• Chambery
• Carcassonne
• Dinard
• Grenoble
• La Rochelle
• Le Havre
• Lorrient
• Le Touquet
• Lyon

• Angers
• Avignon
• Bastia (Corsica)
• Beauvais
• Bergerac
• Biaritz
• Bordeaux
• Brest
• Caen