Is France expensive? (1 Viewer)

[RockieRV]

EEK

Just had a look at currency converter and 1 Euro is about 80p, or a £ is 1.25 Euro.

 

[Geo]

Grab it while you can Sharon, you will be lucky to get that rate, its been hovering around the 122- 123 mark for a while now
Geo

 

[Camperian]

Is France Expensive?

I suppose if you're thinking about buying the whole country then yes!

Today the rates are around the €1.19

Ian

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[Teasy2007]

France is more expensive than we anticipated. Food especially is more than at home. We have paid 1.38 for diesel on the way down to the south of France, the cheapest we have paid was 1.36.

By the way, every petrol station on the motorways we have called in sells Propane!!!! so much for having Gaslow fitted because we would not be able to exchange our cyllinders!!

We went to Lidl, which is very good value at home, their fruit much more than at home, although the wines were very cheap and the Pastis was 9.33!!

Having said all that France is great!!! The weather on Sunday was horrendous! snow, blizzards, motorway closed because of multiple accidents and cars aquaplaning all over the place.

At the moment we are in Tuzac and we are moving down to Perpenion tomorrow for a few days. Then we will be going to Carcassonne, Pau, Laruns and then dawdling up the west coast stopping at all the little village coastal areas. The weather is good; warm, sunny and showers.

Ginny and Michael :thumb: :thumb:

 

[RockieRV]

Well I finally got my Euros from a travel agent because my bank had run out.
Rate was 1.20 to the pound.
Thanks for your info Ginny. We are off tomorrow morning..........:Cool:

 

[ruffingitsmoothly]

In Ireland at the moment sites have been 23.5 22 and now 30 euro a night (although do have free wifi) deisel is around 1.23 euro a litre more importantly guinness has been 3.50 up to 4.20 a pint but near Dublin now so expect it will be dearer!!!

Regards Pat

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[RockieRV]

Well now I can answer my own question, and the answer is YES.
Things are a lot more expensive here compared to last summer, and it is not all down to the weaker pound.

BTW diesel is 1.32 Euros per litre, but chardonnay can still be purchased for 2 Euros a bottle

The price of food is more than back in the UK for the same, but I can live on chardonnay if I have to

 

[Road Runner]

Help

Last September use my card for most things abroad and was getting exchange rate of 1.38 to the pound.

Now i got a much lower rate for cash euros to pounds

Which way was i better off?

 

[michaelc]

In answer

Hi, food in France as been on the up for sometime now, and in some cases, yes its more expensive and dare i say it, not as good as food in the UK, I am not talking prepackage supermarket meat which in France is not very good at all, but a good butchers in the UK to my mind can beat a good butchers in France, and I have a very good local butcher both in France and in exmouth,
What makes france is there are less people and the pace of life is slower.
michael

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[vanessa]

Food prices took an immediate overnight hike in France when they introduced the Euro ... and have continued to climb ever since:Sad:. Quality of food varies from place to place; French supermarkets buy fresh produce more locally (for the most part - I know there's some imported stuff) than UK supermarkets do, and so a lot depends on what's available locally. It also depends on how good the stock-control is!

The pace of life is FANTASTIC here, as are (most of) the people; and the roads are far, far quieter. Basically, you've got space here, which you haven't got in the UK. Roughly the same population, roughly 3 x the land-mass.:Cool:

 

[Jim]

What are the winters like in your region, are they getting warmer and wetter like the UK?

 

[vanessa]

They certainly seem to be, Jim. We normally have "real snow" which lasts for a few days - around 6-8 inches. This year, we only had a dusting, not even 1cm!! Frosts were not as hard as previous years, either ... and we had a glorious February with sunshine virtually every day, and warm daytime temperatures, too (around 14 or 15 most days).

We're just hoping that we don't get another summer like last year's - which was pretty-much the same as the UK's. That was the case for all of France, except the far south-eastern corner (the bit that's near Italy), which had a drought and blistering heat!!oh:

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[olley]

By the way, every petrol station on the motorways we have called in sells Propane!!!! so much for having Gaslow fitted because we would not be able to exchange our cyllinders!!


Ginny and Michael :thumb: :thumb:

Hi isn't the gaslow a refillable system? and don't you fill it at UK petrol stations? if so you simply need an adaptor from the french to UK fitting. Autogas is all Propane in the UK and often a mixture of Propane and Butane abroad.

Olley

 

[dobby]

as you lot are in france what is the best way to get on the net and cheapist i will be geting a sat dish for the camper

 

[MikeandCarolyn]

Is France expensive-how subjective is that.

Just back from 2 weeks in Camargue/Vars/Auvergne.
We think that prices are comparable with uk now-however,if you buy food in local markets and wine from the domains you can still do very well.
Lunch menus are still very good 13.50 Euros for an excellent meal with house wine
evening meals seemed to be dearer and wine was priced about same as in UK,but was better quality.
A meal in a Michelin starred restaurant in Cahors was certainly cheaper and better than it would have been in uk.
The big question is 'what is L'Hexagon about-for us it always an experience which cannot really be quantified-hence we have been going back and forth for about 20 yrs now.
I brought back 100 ltrs of wine from Domain Beujeu nr Arles-it works out at about £1 per litre and is good every day wine .We also brought back a lot of Cahors wine which could not be found in UK.
We had French cheeses after dinner tonight-we love France and the way of life,so cost is really a secondary consideration-'Life is too short to drink bad wine' Vive la France

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[michaelc]

In answer

One of the best things about French are the low service costs for cars, motor homes etc, beats DIY all the time. sorry don,t know anything about Internet for campers.
I just use sites in post offices or large book shops etc, when away.
m

 

[Teasy2007]

We have moved to Spain, from the South of France; which was sunny but bitterly cold in a wind which never seemed to stop!

We have booked into a site just outside Saint Pere Pescador, just north of Barcelona. It is a really good site, free unlimited wifi! and all the facilities you could want - together with being on the beach. Aquarius (1143 in ACSI)

Near Perpignon the diesel was 1.41 although we managed to find a cheaper one at 1.28. We were expecting Hypermarkets and petrol stations as we moved into Spain, but we must have missed them on our way down the motorway.

We found meat and cheese especially expensive: a small cooked chicken was 8.00, we bought a relatively small piece of cheese and paid 7.86. Onions are 2.80 per kilo.

In reply to the Gaslow post, we fitted it because we understood we could not replace our propane cyllinders in France but there are loads of places to exchange and we are even thinking of exchanging our old heavy propane for one of the new light weight cyllinders with the guages.

Ginny

 

[Beachbum]

Hi Ginny, Know that Campsite at Saint Pere Pescador very well. Though I have not camped in it, I park up at one of the two car parks near the beach. Get my water from a tap just outside the back entrance of the camp. Do our shopping at the front end where the small supermarket is. We have sneaked in to have showers and wash clothes at the troughs where the showers are. Must say they have a massive beautiful beach. Very windy in the month of May. We will be there again around middle of June as we head along the coastline all the way to Portugal. I hope I don't get a bit of stick for trying on the freebies but as you can see I am a beach bum.

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[Teasy2007]

Good luck to you Beachbum!!!

You obviously have much more confidence than we do - we are still at the 'green' stage and are enjoying the ACSI card and the discounts it brings together with the security of the camps and lots of people around us.

I hope we will become more confident as we travel around and see more of France and Spain.

Ginny

 

[Teasy2007]

Beachbum, do you know of a good supermarket, or hypermarket where we can stock up - the supermarket on the camp is a bit limited, and expensive??

Ginny

 

[Beachbum]

Hi Ginny, you are out of luck with the supermarket. The closest is in ROSES. Campsite shopping is always more expensive. I always load up from large Supermarkets like Eroski, Lidl (a lot of them in Spain)

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