I decided that the New Year was a good time to start charting our move to France. Although we’ve already talked about it with friends and family, it’s still not completely public. Indeed, until it is these posts won’t be going live. Just in case.
So come with me now while we take a quick flit back to the origins of a move overseas.
It’s fair to say my family has a bit of a tradition in not staying put in the UK. My oldest sister emigrated to Australia when she was 18 (without ever having visited there). My other sister had a spell working in Canada as an au-pair before meeting her future husband and deciding to make it her home. And my parents, well into their retirement, decided to make Canada their home too (although that only lasted 2 years).
If that wasn’t enough, my wife took European Studies at university, which entailed spending a year living in Germany, my in-laws bought a house in Brittany, my brother-in-law is from Venezuela and my son-in-law is from Jordan.
That itch to switch also infected me a few decades ago. With family overseas I had ambitions to move to Canada or Australia, but beyond writing the odd letter these were unformed plans that never developed into anything solid.
The itch didn’t go away, and in 2014 after a couple of holidays in the Netherlands we hit upon the plan to move there. This one felt more real as it was more a choice of destination based on a place that reflected our values and lifestyle rather than just being somewhere where there was family. Importantly, it was Europe-focused, as we both felt a strong affiliation to the EU and its mission.
The plan was given a name: Project Windmill, and it began to get discussed with friends. We got advice about renting out our house. We had a costed budget for the house improvements that were needed to rent out, and we had a timetable.
But the barrier that kept coming up was how we’d make it pay - we could only do that by both finding jobs there. Somehow that just felt like a step too much for us. So it began to get scaled back. Firstly to a 12 month leave of absence, but then we weren’t sure we could swing that with our jobs, and then to 6 months with the project funded by savings. There were five costed options on which way to make it work.
But there it remained, as a set of spreadsheets, and after a time we stopped talking about it. Little did we know that in just 2 years time the option to just pick up and move to a European country would be taken away from us as a right.
Fast forward to 2019, and while no moves to live abroad have taken place, the ambition is still there. Still bruised from the fallout of Brexit, we decided that we would at least have a 3-month break in Europe somehow.
We’d recently been on a cruise to Norway, and this gave us the briefest of tastes of this beautiful country, so we wanted to see more. With limited time always the enemy of holiday, this would involve unpaid leave, a chunk of camping and a road trip. The route would take us through the Netherlands and Germany to Denmark, where we’d get a ferry to Norway, plan a circular tour around it and come back via Malmo and Copenhagen. We upgraded our tent and equipment, sorted out camping stops and got ready to put in our leave requests.
And then Covid-19 hit and the world changed.
No one was going anywhere any more. But also, everyone was working from home. We both changed jobs and moved home during this turmoil, which in a sense showed us that it was actually possible to break away from Oxford and do something new with our lives. Although we’re now feeling Dorset wasn’t the right place for us, it did show that there are other worlds and maybe changing location isn’t that scary.
Importantly, we were no longer tied to going to an office every day. In our new home we had better space than in our Oxford home, and we thrived on the change in working pattern. After another job change 2 years later, suddenly I was working for a company that had international staff working everywhere; Spain, Greece, Italy, South Africa. They didn’t really care where you work, so long as you did your work. Colleagues took long holidays in different parts of the world and built working into these too.
Looking back now we wish we’d taken this opportunity to make a shift to Europe to work as all the pieces were in place to do so. But in reality, the stability of the job wasn’t that great and in the end I took another change that gave me better job security.
Something happened in 2024 that had a huge impact on my life and finally set us on a course to live in Portugal.
I reunited with a long lost friend. The story behind this is a long one that merits its own post, but the shorter version is that in September 2024 we headed on a driving holiday through Spain to Portugal to visit him.
We’d never been to Portugal before, but quickly found we loved it. We’d been enticed by stories of the low cost of living, the fabulous weather, the friendly people. Going on a holiday by yourself and staying in a hotel doesn’t real give you the feel of living somewhere, but we’ve always used the option of self catering and staying put for at least a week in one location to force you to shop locally, buy local foods and be part of a location.
Also seeing a country through friends’ eyes gives you better vision. The year-long impact of the local climate and how they adapt to it was important. Where you are in the country is important. How close you are to the sea is important. How close you are to main travel routes is important. There was so much we picked up in a short time.
More than that, just seeing how my friend was living day-to-day made me hugely jealous. On our journey home, and in the days that followed, all we could talk about was finally making our long-held ambitions into reality. It is no exaggeration to say that every day since returning that September involved us either discussing or planning the move. This one wasn’t another well-intentioned plan that would fade away in time; this time it would happen.
Extremely detailed plans were set in motion. The visa situation worked in our favour, and this felt like a certain route back into Europe and possibly (eventually) EU citizenship. The timetable was set and we started joining forums and having explotatory talks with experts that could help us get there. Next step was a scouting visit to find exactly where we wanted to live.
Admittedly, Portugal was never sold to us on its winter weather - we had been warned. But our 2 week holiday in March 2025 was a difficult one; there were unseasonable storms with wild winds that were unexpected. Our holiday cottage we so looked forward to staying and having friends over was stone cold, and the landlord didn’t want us to use the heating, so we needed to have the fire on all evening along with using the bedding from other rooms to supplement ours to stay warm. Our Lisbon hotel had water coming in through the walls, and we had to run the air conditioning to clear the windows.
We started in Lisbon and enjoyed our time there, but really as tourists. We knew that this was a hugely popular destination for people moving to Portugal, but that rents were high. But more importantly, it would be far harder for us to end up in a similar house to what we own in Lisbon - apartment living was the norm.
Nearly every day involved exploring a new town or city from our list of potential options. Some we liked, in a conditional way. Others were a disappointment, and some we didn’t even get out of the car for. Lots of places showed years of underinvestment and decay. By the end of the holiday we had explored 20 places and had maybe one potential place.
A key turning point during those 2 weeks was when Rachel turned to me in the car and asked “can you see yourself living here”, and my response was an instantaneous “no”. That was the catalyst for honest conversations about what we were seeing and feeling; it just wasn’t for us.
We came home disillusioned, with our planned new life in tatters.
Reflecting on the trip and what we’d learned it did help us understand other things we’d come across; the webinar series on Moving to Portugal had a whole episode on dealing with the cold and damp. Internet forums discussed using dehumidifiers all through the winter, the nightmare of Portuguese bureaucracy (with some people suing the government just to get a visa appointment). And we could never quite line up how we’d have had an address for our visa application if the process took up to 6 months to process.
Laying in bed one morning, some days after, Rachel returned with breakfast and with news; she’d been doing some research the night before but didn’t tell me the results straight away as she knew I wouldn’t sleep after learning it. She’d found another option - France.
I’d always been dead against moving to France, but remembered the thoughts that went through my head as I’d looked at one disappointing Portuguese town after another: “In France all the towns and villages look so attractive as they invest in making sure they do”. We’d spent countless fabulous holidays in France (in all weathers) and I realised that France isn’t one place, it’s more like a collection of countries with one border. But how to choose where in such a large country?
Rachel had the answer. The Alsace region was right on the border of our beloved Germany (which had been ruled out on visa grounds some time ago). So the best of both worlds! Suddenly everything clicked, and our Portugal plans were pulled apart and reconstructed with a new destination in mind