I LEFT THE UK FOR PROVENCE – WE’RE MORTGAGE-FREE AND CHILDCARE COSTS £9 A DAY

Around half a million people left the UK to live elsewhere last year, and it’s not just retirees. A survey of more than 3,000 young people by the British Council showed that 72 per cent of people 18-30 would consider living and working abroad, with destinations in Europe, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and South East Asia proving popular.

Many expats are seeking a better quality of life, and cite varying factors – cold weather, high cost of living, extortionate childcare, stagnant wages, dwindling opportunity, lack of work-life balance and even poor romantic prospects – among their motivations for leaving the UK. The i Paper’s Expat Files follows Brits who have taken the leap and settled elsewhere, detailing the ups and downs of their journey.

Lucy Werner, a writer and PR expert, left London for Provence in 2021. She tells Maybelle Morgan why she could never imagine going back.

In 2019, I began seriously contemplating leaving London. It had been rough – my son had been born with random heart defects, requiring multiple surgeries, and my parents had gone through bouts of illness. I realised life is so short and wondered: what is the best life I can give to my family?

My husband, Hadrien, is from Nice in the south of France. When we had our first child we toured around France together, and toyed with the thought of moving there – but I had a fun, but all-consuming, job running a PR agency and Hadrien was a designer and brand strategist, which made it impossible.

We were living in a three-bed terraced house in Hackney, which was already a financial stretch as I was self-employed. Hadrien was made redundant soon after we moved in. During the pandemic, after our son got the all-clear, we took a short break to the Isle of Wight and I remember saying that it would be nice to live by water. “If we’re going to do that, it’s going to be by the sea in the French Riviera,” Hadrien replied.

So, in the winter of 2020, we decided to try living in France to give ourselves a break from the pace of London. We sublet our house and did a three-month trial where we rented a place in the beautiful region of Pays de Fayence, a string of hilltop villages about half an hour’s drive from where my mother-in-law lived in Provence. We thought if we could live somewhere like that when it was quiet, grey and miserable, we would also be able to do it in summer.

We loved every moment of it: the rustic traditional villages, the calmer pace of life, the heartbreaking sunsets even in winter.

We came back to the UK and sold our house within a week after it went on the market. Within three months, we were back in France in April 2021. We hopped around rental apartments and even lived in a mobile home for a whole summer until we found the four-bedroom house we’re living in now, complete with a breathtaking view and a rugged forest terrain that the kids and the dog love playing in.

I had tried to have a third baby in London and suffered two miscarriages. The day we put the offer in on our house and it got accepted, I found out that I was pregnant. It felt like a sign from the universe that we had made the right decision. Everything fell into place.

We’ve now lived full time in France for three and a half years.

Moving here has given us so much more financial freedom. Back in the UK, I had paid £400,000 for my first home, a small, 50-sqm, one-bed flat in Hackney. In comparison, we bought our 200-sqm house here in France outright for the same amount. We no longer have a mortgage, just a small bank loan we took for purchasing costs and renovations – along with our bills and living costs.

Without the stress of money on our necks, it felt like I could afford to daydream again. Growing up, I had always wanted to be a journalist. When we first got to France I began pulling back on my PR work, and started to get approached by brands for content creation and teaching opportunities online.

I started a paid newsletter business, and then I became a Substack Top 50 global business bestseller within six months – I’ve now just moved to posting on my own online community Hype Yourself. Not long after we arrived, Hadrien managed to snag a dream role working for Adobe in France, so we also had the security of him having a full-time French job.

The kids are now eight and six, and our youngest daughter, who was born in Cannes, is two.

Historically, Pays de Fayence was a bit more of a retired community but now there are a lot of people who moved from Paris, Nice or Monaco after the pandemic. In my sons’ class last year, half had one international parent: English, German, Argentinian, Spanish, Vietnamese. I was scared about a lack of diversity when we first moved here, so I’m really pleased about the mixture.

A massive thing for me is that the schools here do affordable wraparound care in the holidays. France has an eight-week summer holiday compared with the UK’s six. For €550 in total, we get three weeks of full-time childcare for both boys, including snacks, lunches and excursions.

Our daughter goes to the village crèche (where it’s €10 a day compared with the £90 a day I would be paying in London) next to where the boys go to the village school, and it’s a seven-minute drive from my house.

The cost of my shopping has increased because food – although fresher – is more expensive here. My biggest cost after that is the car – I never bought petrol in London, but there isn’t much in the way of convenient public transport where we live.

The health system is excellent. In France, when you’re a resident, you have a Carte Vitale, which is the official French public health insurance card. You can also top it up with private insurance. I’ll make a GP appointment on my phone, which is so convenient. If I want to book a scan or see a specialist, I can just book it directly rather than going to the GP waiting for a referral.

The visa stuff hasn’t been easy and it’s definitely getting harder. I had a spousal visa for a year, but then, to remain, because I arrived post-Brexit I had to do a medical test, an academic test where they assessed my language and immigration training, where I had to learn about French cultural values to integrate into society. I’m working towards nationality, which I am hoping to apply for at the end of the year because the rules are changing again. You need to be fluent in verbal and writing, which I’m slowly getting to as I do French classes twice a week.

The language element can be frustrating. Most of the time I can understand what’s being said but certain slang words catch me out. I’m very chatty, and I like to think of myself as funny, but in French I’m not funny at all – I can’t make a single joke. One of my best friends is English, but married to a Frenchman as well.

Most of all, I love the pace of life here and the beautiful landscape. I hike every day with my dog, we have a view of the mountains and the nearby lake. At some points during the year it’s so quiet that you have it all to yourselves, so we’ll pack a picnic and go paddle boarding at the lake as a family.

There are beaches and nature parks nearby, and my father-in-law lives in Nice so when I need my city fix, we will go for a day to a museum or have lunch together at a restaurant.

Living in London, everything was convenient – I sometimes miss Uber Eats and getting a takeaway as there is none of that here, and no walkable supermarkets.

When I was running my PR agency, pre-children, I lived my London life very hard. I went to so many events, parties, red carpet events, pop-up restaurants and had so much fun. I don’t think I’m in that place now. I realised that I’m actually way more of a hermit, an introvert and a homebody.

Another part of the reason we left London was because we didn’t have a support network there. I didn’t have any relatives in the city, and a lot of our friends had left to move to other places in the UK. But here, when my daughter had an accident, we were inundated with neighbours and friends asking to help us. Another time there was a really bad storm, and I had a car accident, and three people just turned up at my house to help. There is an incredible sense of family and community.

I do find that remote working, not being around people and having to drive everywhere all the time really hard at times. And I miss the culture, the creativity, and museums in London – when I go back with the kids, it’s really nice to get that fix. But when we’re in the city, I really notice that we’re all a bit more highly strung. Behaviourally, the kids are much more calm being in nature and running out in the fields.

I am so much more in tune with nature now – the changing seasons, the moon and stars at night – tiny moments of joy and beauty that make me feel happy and connected.

2026-01-06T06:34:05Z