Moving to and from France

If you’re thinking about moving to or from France – or even about moving a lot of furnishings to or from your French holiday home, it may be more cost effective to find a matching service for removals.

This is where a removal company waits until it has clients matched

on either side of the English Channel before agreeing a removal date with you. The upside, of course, is that the cost is thus halved, in theory anyway. The reality is that the removal company makes slightly better margins, but it is still saving clients on both side of the English Channel a substantial amount of money – so everyone is happy.

The only downside is that you may have to wait to find a partner, but the companies specialising in this kind of removal can usually give you a few date options for the removal a week or two in advance.

It’s particularly useful if you’re moving single large items. If you have a large display cabinet to move, for example, but simply want to transfer the beautiful French antique over to Angleterre – or you want to take your favourite comfy sofas and chairs that you’ve had for years over and which may be looking a little worse for wear, over to your French holiday home, then the service is ideal. Usually, in such circumstances, there is no particular urgency, so the two way exchange removal company can usually tack it on to a previously booked larger load very cheaply indeed.

Some of the cheapest operators in this field are very small companies or maybe even one man bands. They tend to advertise sparingly to keep costs down, but you should be able to find them on websites with forums specially for Francophiles – the many thousands of English speaking people who enjoy “la vie en rose” in France – whether permanently or just for a few weeks or month each year.