Foreign Perspectives

When we first bought our place here, one of the things that we immediately recognised was that it was an area that wasn’t terribly well known outside France. Not because there wasn’t loads of stuff to see and things to do here but that it was an area of the south of France that was relatively difficult to get to. When we arrived, Ryanair had only been flying into Perpignan for a few years and the bridge on the A75 at Millau hadn’t been completed so it was more than a day of driving to reach here from Paris.

Anyway, we figured that it would be a good idea to build up a tourist guide to the region and that’s what became Pyrenees Themes which we created over the course of around two years travelling around the region.

Roll forward a bit and ’tis now high time that we started updating it which we’re making a start on by revisiting some old places and adding some new ones plus there’ll eventually be a whole lot more information about the various sites and sights that we get around during the update.

As before, we’re starting with the closest places and working out, so we were off to the Hermitage of San Antoine over the weekend. This is an extremely popular location with a number of different activities. The hermitage itself is built right into the rockface as you can see with a small church built into a large cave along with several grottoes with some quite impressive carvings. There’s no entry charge.

You can reach the hermitage from the main car park (the first one you reach from St Paul) or continue on round the corner to the smaller car park which is much closer to the hermitage and leads you down a set of normal steps, through a short tunnel and into the hermitage. From the main car park, it’s a much longer walk along a poorly maintained path; the rocks are VERY slippery so watch your step on this route.

There’s even a gite d’etape as part of the complex (dorm style accommodation).

The Gorges de Galamus surround the hermitage and offer the chance to explore underground caves, walking trails and the like. One thing to avoid is the exit from the main carpark in the direction away from St Paul during busy days as it’s strictly one way for quite a distance and can be completely blocked with cars.

There’s a small gift shop in the main carpark which has quite a range of items but seems to keep fairly short hours. The much smaller gift shop cum café within the hermitage complex confines itself mainly to religous items.

A number of people have pointed this site out as the highlight of the places they’ve seen in the locality.

This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

My parents were asking for a passbook account for their grandchildren as they aren’t keen on card based accounts.

Almost all accounts these days are card or internet based and the initial couple that I came across weren’t great as the building societies concerned didn’t have that many branches. Finally, I settled on the National Savings Investment Account which only requires a £20 deposit to open and also pays interest gross at quite a reasonable rate.

Opening it is a little peculiar as the Post Office branch doesn’t ask for any proof of ID or address and instead National Savings do the whole lot electronically. That worried me a little as I wasn’t sure that we’d turn up on their records but the books have arrived so we must do. Even stranger though is that they didn’t ask for any proof of ID from the children (normally you’re asked for a birth certificate) and one of ours was born in France so I can’t seem him appearing on any UK records.

Anyway, my parents are happy that they’ve a book for the grandchildren.

If you’re used to the wide variation of mortgage offers in the UK, the French marketplace is child’s play: as far as we can tell, all mortgages are either fixed or variable rate and they are all the repayment type.

If you are buying your house “subject to mortgage”, you will need to see the bank before you see the notary as you will need to say “subject to obtaining a mortgage from X bank at Y% over Z years”. If this isn’t added to the “compris” then you will lose your deposit if you can’t get a mortgage.

French investments are incredibly simple too. The only problem with them is that you need to buy them through an advisor which is even more of a pain than trying to do something banking-related through your bank advisor. Due to this and the very limited range available, it’s best to continue to do your investing through the companies that you are already using.

This is part of our series on buying a house in France; next week we start venturing into French administration.

It was bound to happen sooner or later of course. French drivers driving tractors on a road where 100km/hour is sometimes far too slow for the people behind.

Anyway, we were tootling along this morning at quite a low speed as we’d just left the village, slowed down even more as there was oncoming traffic, moved out to overtake the tractor in front and, of course, he decided that was the time to turn (naturally without indicating that he was planning on doing it).

So we are sans voiture at the moment and likely to be so for a while I suspect if insurance claims move along at the usual pace of French administration.

Fortunately the insurance covers us for a replacement car so we’re picking up a rental car tomorrow afternoon.

Given the level of damage (both sides nicely smashed in, roof caved in, windscreen and side window broken, some wheels punctured and broken, plus it looks like the axle ain’t straight either), I think we’re talking write-off but we’ll know better after the assessor sees the car (possibly later today).

If you are intending to buy a property in France at some point, it’s pretty much essential to open a French bank account before you get to the point of purchase. 

For non-residents, the internet banking companies are not an option. Indeed, they are, on the whole, not an option unless you have been resident in France for a year or two as they ask for proof of French income. An exception to this is Ing although that’s purely a savings account and also requires you to already have a French account.

If you bank with HSBC, the easiest option for you is to open an account with HSBC in France. Those with Premier accounts can ask their relationship manager to do this but otherwise it’s best just to pop into an HSBC branch whilst you are in France (they’re not currently set up to open non-resident accounts outside the Premier arrangement). Although with Premier accounts in two countries you get free transfers between them, HSBC France is one of the highest charging banks in France so this may not be the best option for you.

Before starting the opening process, you should have a look at the French banking practices section of our Living in France guide.

Both Barclays and LloydsTSB offer a French service. However, their branches are clustered around Paris and the Cote d’Azur and not particularly cheap.

A number of French banks offer English speaking services and, on the whole, these are much cheaper than those on offer from the British banks (the American banks in France only cater for high net-worth individuals and not suitable for most people).

Of these, the most popular is Britline which is a English speaking phone & internet banking branch of Credit Agricole based in Normandy. The service from them is excellent but the services of most other branches of Credit Agricole is between dire and truly dreadful; you can however use the Britline across France so usually don’t need to bother with the local branches. Credit Agricole is a regional bank so, unless you live in Normandy, your local Credit Agricole is a different bank from Britline which limits the facilities available in branches if you’re using Britline as your bank but in practice this merely means that you can’t use the automated deposit machines.

More generally useable is Banque Populaire which has a number of English speaking branches in various regions around France although the most targetted at the English speaking community is that in the Cote d’Azur. This is also a regional bank so you can expect some limitations to the services on offer through your local Banque Populaire. The biggest plus of this is that the service in the branches is, on the whole, much better than Credit Agricole and the charges are significantly less too.

The two national banks,  BNP Paribas and Societé Générale, also have a number of English speaking branches but they don’t promote these actively. An account opened with any of these can be used anywhere in France with the same level of services as they are not regional banks. The other plus point is that they are much larger banks and therefore offer a much wider range of services.

To open accounts in any of the above, use the contact details here and they’ll send you the necessary forms (you can’t open any non-resident accounts online in France). In terms of documentation, all that is normally required is a photocopy of your passport and an original electricity bill. If you are opening the account some time in advance of needing to use it, don’t bother getting a debit card as these cost from EUR 20 to EUR 200 per year. It’s quite easy to stick to using cheques in France as everyone takes them with proof of ID (passport or driving license). Finally, don’t be caught out by inactivity fees which are around EUR 50 per year if you don’t use the account.

If you are moving to France, do not wait until you are in France before you try opening an account here as you won’t be able to provide the proof of address required for several months. If the account is opened before you move, you can simply change the address which in turn will provide you the required proof of French address required to get a French mobile phone. Opening an account whilst you are living in France is, for the most part, a nightmare best avoided involving making appointments with your conseilleur and getting signed up for expensive and useless additional services which are next to impossible to cancel afterwards.

Before opening your account, you should read the French banking practices section of our Living in France guide.

This is part of our series on international banking which covers how to open and use accounts in various jurisdictions around the world including America, Switzerland and various offshore banking centers such as the Channel Islands, Isle of Mann and Bermuda.