We’ve spoken several times about an organization called Accueil des Villes Françaises or AVF for short that is kind of like a Welcome Wagon for new arrivals in about 250 cities across France. Thanks to our local branch we’ve taken numerous French language courses, volunteered to lead English conversation classes and given the chance to learn painting, dancing, bridge, and cooking. For physical activities there are groups for exercise, historic walking routes, and hiking. The common thread through all of these is that you get to meet local people who are either new themselves or have lived in the area for a while and are anxious to help others settle in their city. This works well for city-dwellers and it appears that now there is a similar group for people who are moving into the countryside.

The idea behind Mes Nouveaux Voisins (My New Neighbors) is simply to bring together residents of rural communities with people planning to move to the countryside. Apparently 80% of the French think that country life would be ideal, yet only 20% of them live there. At the moment the program is limited to 10 communities in Dordogne, in the southwest of France. In each location there are families who are either willing to take overnight guests (at 20€ per person per night) or organize an activity such as a village walking tour or an apéro hour where locals and potential newcomers can meet over drinks and snacks. The concept is to show what living in a rural location might be like by trying it out for a few days.

One success story I read was about a business consultant in Bordeaux who now lives in one of the participating communities, Saint-Aulaye-Puymangou, with 1500 residents. His farmhouse is only about 90 minutes from where he used to live but a world apart from the 265,000 others who surrounded him in downtown Bordeaux. By staying with host families he could better imagine what life would be like there and he got to meet other residents, business owners, and town officials.

When we lived in the US and were deciding where in France to one day retire, we too found the idea of country life appealing. Fresh air, birds singing, sunflower fields swaying in the breeze, babbling brooks sliding by our vine-covered stone house, star-filled skies at night. On vacations we would rent a car and drive out into the countryside to spend a week in a holiday home that gave us all of that ideal life. Once it came time to actually choose a place to live, our priorities changed, especially after going car-free. Currently we can walk to everything we need—shops, market, music venues, river, medical needs, train station—in about 15 minutes and local buses run every 20 minutes to outlying shopping centers, the lake, and walking routes. This works for us yet we know others who do indeed live in the surrounding countryside and don’t seem to mind driving, even for a fresh baguette each morning. I’m just happy that we have a boulangerie (bakery) at the end of our street!

AVF website: https://avf-union-nationale.fr/

Mes Nouveaux Voisins website: https://www.mesnouveauxvoisins.org/

Photo notes: The featured photo across the top of today’s post is Fayrac and in the first paragraph is Limeuil.