Getting the Carte Gris in France

Taking your car with you to France when you make the move
may be the cheapest way of going and it's not as hard to do as
you'd think

If you're making a permanent move from the UK to France and want to take your car with you - even if it is right-hand-drive, it's not as difficult as you may have been led to believe it to be.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's a piece of cake, because it's not. There are hoops to jump through, but what you have to remember is that you're taking a foreign car to a foreign country and there are the inevitable rules to follow, as well as having to deal with France's seemingly favourite pastime - paperwork!

There are many people who have gone down the route of taking their UK registered cars with them to France to get their Carte Gris, and basically, what they're doing, is importing them.

It may seem daft to take a knackered old jalopy to France, but it can be a damned sight cheaper than buying a car there, as second-hand cars in France are a usually significantly more expensive than similar cars in the UK.

Ours is a '99 Volvo V70 2.5 diesel. It's done 218,000 miles and still purrs like a kitten, as fortunately for us, it was well looked after before we bought it, both inside and out. Also - touch wood - the VW engine seems virtually indestructible, has bags of poke and returns phenomenal mileage to the gallon. Its value in the UK would come nowhere near the value of pretty much anything else in France because of its mileage - even though it's barely been run in.

So despite being right-hand drive, we weighed up the options of getting rid of it and buying something else and came to the conclusion that it would have cost us an arm and a leg to begin with and would have left us owning a car that could possibly have been far less reliable. Besides, driving a right-hand-drive in France isn't so difficult.

What you will need in place before you go

There are five things you need in place before you can take your car with you to France.

• Valid car insurance
• At least three months of valid car tax (Road Fund Licence)
• At least three months of valid MoT
• Log book (V5)
• Invoice for the purchase of the vehicle

Insurance

Whether you drive in France or the UK, you need insurance - or 'assurance' as they call it here.

We discovered that UK insurance companies won't insure you if you don't have a UK address, so we needed to get French assurance set up to cover the few hours between leaving our rented UK house and getting to our French house.

Warnings about the cost of assurance for cars abounded, but we didn't have any choice. If we wanted to be able to drive in France - and being able to drive in rural France is more of a necessity than a luxury - we needed car insurance. Surprisingly, we discovered that whilst our no claims bonus wouldn't count in full to begin with, it didn't make that much difference cost-wise to what we were both paying in England for the two of us to go on the policy as drivers.

In addition, the cost of insurance is no different whether you have a right-hand drive or left-hand drive. What is more likely to make a difference is if the vehicle is classed as a commercial vehicle.

Anyway, get your insurance sorted out before you go so that there's no gap between one ending and the other beginning.

MoT and Tax

A valid MoT and tax are necessities, even if you're planning to import the car and get the Carte Gris. The insurance companies have got wise to Brits and probably other nationalities trying to continue with their cars on their original plates that we were warned by our broker that if we hadn't got the car re-registered within three months, our assurance would be cancelled..

Therefore, it's imperative that your MoT and tax will cover the potential three months you need to get the Carte Gris, possibly longer.

Having said that, if you do have time left on your car tax after the Carte Gris comes through, you can send your disc back with this form and you may be refunded for tax unused.

Log Book (V5C)

Saying that you'll need to take this may sound a bit like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, but it's part of the set of paperwork you'll need, so it needed to be on the list.

Invoice for the purchase of the vehicle

If you've bought the vehicle from eBay, some other on-line auction site or through a private sale, it's probable that you didn't get an invoice.

In order to get the Carte Gris, you will be asked for this and not having it may well hamper you getting the Carte Gris if it doesn't stop you altogether.

Things to get once you're there

We were hoping we could at least get some things together before we left for France as far as paperwork is concerned, but we were told that that isn't always possible and would have to be done once in place.

Certificat de conformité (C of C)

Many if not most départements in France insist on the C of C being in French, although sometimes, you can get away with English versions. This is just as well as Certifauto charged us 200€ and sent us an English C of C and not a French one.

We weren't sure afterwards whether we had stipulated that the one we wanted should be in French, so couldn't argue the case, but even if we had been sure, we only realised the fact the day before we were due to put our car in for its test at the Goron Contrôle Technique and the people at Certifauto told us that if we wanted one in French, we would have to pay another 200€. No doubt they would have expected us to wait another three weeks too. We had to go with what we had.

Helpful Hint: Make sure you're specific when you order yours.

We were lucky here as the man at the Contrôle technique was okay with the English C of C, so the car went in to be tested for the French version of the UK's MoT, although we still weren't positive that the people that issue the C of C's in Alençon would accept it.

Contrôle technique

With the C of C, the next step was to get the car tested. 

In preparation for this we found some V70 European standard headlamps on eBay for £80, when other people were charging £250. We decided to have them changed at a local Volvo garage back in the UK, where they would also give it a once over. It was more expensive than we anticipated and we could possibly have saved money by taking the car somewhere else, but afterwards, we felt confident that our car was in tip-top shape.

The test was 60€ - more expensive than in the UK, but lasts two years, so I think that's cheaper. We needed to produce the V5 log book, proof of address in the form of a utility bill and I think a passport. It's always wise to keep the passport to hand in these cases whether you're asked for it or not.

The test took less than an hour and much to the technician's amusement, we were visibly overjoyed that the car passed - waving our arms in the air and cheering probably gave the game away. He dutifully stuck a little clear, self-adhesive pocket inside the windscreen and slipped the CT ticket inside. Yes, it, like the insurance is displayed on the windscreen.

Had the car needed work to bring it up to standard, we would have to have got that done before taking the car back to be retested.

Half way through what we needed to do to get our car accepted for importation into France, we were happy that things were moving in the right direction and since receiving the C of C, it had only been a week, or nearly four weeks since we arrived in France. 

Helpful Hint: Get the car up to MoT standard before you go in order to negate or at least reduce the amount of work needed at a French garage. If you can get the lights changed too, you will probably find you'll get them cheaper than you will when you're there, but be careful using headlamps (full and dipped beams) in the UK before you leave, as the beams will shine at the on-coming traffic and not the roadside as UK ones will. Also, make sure that the headlamps you buy are European Standard or you'll end up having to change them.

The Blue Form ...

You will need:

• Log book (V5)
• the current mileage in kilometres, but they may convert miles to kms as they did for us
• Proof of address in France (bank statement, utility bill)
• Contrôle technique certificate
• Registered owner's passport

This form is actually green - or was in our case and we got it completed in Domfront - the Orne sub-prefecture at their Centre des Impots. We thought we might have to go to Alençon, which is a good hour and a half from us and a bitch to park in, so that part was easy. Getting this will take about fifteen minutes providing you can provide the information they need.

Helpful Hint: When we were told we'd need to go and get this form, we didn't know that it was not a form for us to fill in, so do remember to take the documents listed above with you when you go to get it.

You are now ready for the prefecture

You will need to find out where the offices you need to go are, and of course, that's all down to where in France you live. Anyway, if it's anything like Alençon you'll need to get there as early as possible, which for Alençon was 08:30, otherwise it's a real pig finding a parking space.

Getting the Certificat Provisoire d'Immatriculation, which is issued on the spot, providing your car passes, allows you to get your new number plates and the official Certificat d'Immatriculation will arrive in the post a few days later.

All in all, this part took us less than an hour.

The new number plates

These are available at some of the hypermarkets and you'll need:

• Certificat provisoire d'Immatriculation that you got from the prefecture or the Certificat d'Immatriculation if you're prepared to wait
• Proof of address (utility bill)

They'll make them up while you wait and supply both plates and four or six white-headed pop rivets to fix them to the car.

Helpful Hint: If you're going to fit the plates yourself, you'll need a pop-rivet gun. If you haven't, do not use screws to fix the number plates to the car as this is illegal. I would advise taking the car to a garage as it's only going to cost you between 5€ and 10€, the plates will be fitted as they are supposed to and they'll probably do it while you wait.

Finally

You'll remember that you have French insurance or 'assurance', which is in a little clear wallet that's stuck to the inside of the windscreen. You'll also notice that it's specific to the car and will therefore have the registration number that you gave upon arrival - the UK number. 

You'll need to get this changed as soon as possible to reflect the new French plates and what we've done is to have left the old UK number plates in the car - just in case!

Oh, remember that you need to send back the part of the V5 (V5C) to Swansea to tell them that the car has been permanently exported.

The weekly shop

Having gone from England to France, I am well aware of the differences between supermarkets in England and those in France.

For about the last fifteen years, Pen and I have been nipping across the channel for the odd day trip to buy products from places like Auchan just outside of Boulogne.

We have also shopped in numerous supermarkets during our many househunting trips, but shopping whilst on holiday - or as often was the case, on a mission, is very different to doing the weekly shopping.

So how do supermarkets in France really differ from their English counterparts?

Size

This is one noticeable aspect of French supermarkets. Sure there are 'Viveco' stores, which are the equivalent to English Spar, Nisa or the corner shop, but the majority of supermarkets are huge compared to most Sainsbury's, Co-op's or other British supermarkets.

Of course, that's not saying that all French supermarkets are bigger than all British ones, but the majority of them probably are. They cover many more lines than most British stores, with white goods, TV, video and telephony sharing space with garden supplies, garden furniture and barbecues. Clothing, bedding, office supplies and kids toys share space with magazines, kitchen utensils, car spares, DIY products and kitchen electricals. Footwear, watches, cameras and computer equipment share space with bicycles, fishing tackle, heaters and of course all that edible or drinkable stuff as well.

In fact, if the store you shop in is not a supermarket, but a hypermarket, then the product lines increase and you could easily spend a day looking through everything there. Sometimes the range is just plain mind-boggling.

They even have cards similar to Tesco's Club Cards or Nectar Cards, but just what you get from these, we have yet to ascertain.

Quality and price

Although the average French store outdoes almost all British stores in size, in many cases, the quality is also better. Of course, the adage 'you get what you pay for', rings true more often than not for some products, but that doesn't mean that the supermarket's own products are generally to be steered clear of - unlike in England.

As someone who prefers to make my own sauces rather than buying tinned, packet or jars of ready-made bolognese etc, I tend to get through numerous tins of tomatoes and when I was doing the weekly shop before we moved here, I was astonished by the price of them.

There seemed to be two types: expensive (Napolina and any other brand with an Italian-sounding name) or cheap - supermarket's own or some other obscure brand you've never heard of. Now the former are reliable and tasty. They don't contain too many bits of skin or the bits of the tomatoes that don't cook down or taste nice. The others conversely, tend to be watery, tasteless and do little more than add liquid and a slight pinkish tinge to the dish. Of course, one could always by the less expensive brands, fish through, remove anything that is yucky and supplement the lack of flavour with extra purée, which means paying just forty-odd pence for a tin, instead of over £1 for a 400 gramme tin ... er, plus the purée. Here however, you could spend 1€ on a 400 gramme tin of tomatoes, but you'd probably do just as well paying just 60 centimes on a 800 gramme tin, which actually doesn't really need any purée at all.

There are many products that are like that.

We tried a branded version of ravioli - which was just under 25% more than the price of a tin of Heinz Ravioli in England. However the tin we bought here was nearly twice the size of the Heinz variety. Even cheaper was the supermarket's own brand, which was barely distinguishable from the more expensive brand. This was cheaper than a tin of Heinz half its size in England.

Coffee too is cheaper and better than the majority of coffees on sale in British supermarkets. That has meant we've had to stop drinking instant (Quel Dommage!), but we don't pay more than 1€80 for half a kilo of coffee anymore. True, that wouldn't be to everyone's taste, but it suits us. It also means we can drink it as often as we like and brings it in at well under half the price of even Tesco's own - which wasn't a patch on this stuff.

Beware though. Not all own brands are as reliable. In many cases it depends upon which supermarket you're using and in some cases, their own brands should be avoided at all costs. British supermarkets are guilty of this with the ubiquitous Baked Beans a prime example; the sauce being weak and pretty tasteless and the beans often hard and something akin to chewing cardboard.

One shop that for us turned out to be like that and is a lot like Asda was in England. Both advertise a lot about how inexpensive they are, yet we have found the reverse to be true. Yes, you can buy products that are less expensive than named brands, but then you may not want to eat them. An example would be buying Asda's own Ginger Beer that didn't taste remotely like Ginger Beer at all and had to be thrown away. We have fallen victim here to buying non-branded stuff and finding the same to be true.

Like I said, not everything's better, but the majority of products we buy are. The quality of what the average French person - and now us - puts in their stomach is of far better quality than the equivalent palmed off on the English in their supermarkets.

Meat products however are a different kettle of fish. If you want good quality pâté, you have to pay for it and you will find that you will pay more for many forms of meat than you might in England. You won't find many places selling three pound chickens at an average of £3, but then, you probably won't have nightmares on how they're kept either. Pork products won't have 15% water and other additives to increase their shelf life and sausages won't be 80% rusk and 20% fat.

Having said that though, once you start to appreciate the quality of the food you're eating, going back to bland, nuked, hormone-infested British food will be difficult and paying more than 60 centimes for a 200 gramme packet of crisps instead of fifty or sixty pence for a 35 gramme packet will I'm sure, be something you're going to be unwilling to do.

British products

For those of you who absolutely cannot live without your Marmite, Digestives, Hob-Nobs or other British products, many of the supermarkets we've been to have a section especially for you - at a price. Expect to pay several times the price you'd pay at home for all those mentioned above.

However, before you go off at the deep end about the prices , try what they do have as alternatives. We can both thoroughly recommend the biscuits - especially Génoises Fourrées that are the French equivalent of Jaffa cakes. To our minds, the French versions are ten times better and probably only a fraction of the price.

You'll no doubt miss classic English - or should that be Danish? - bacon, as this is not something the French do ... at least, it's not as widely available as it is elsewhere. They do use belly pork - 'poitrine' and if you ask a butcher to slice this thinly, you can have your bacon, but it's not available everywhere and probably wouldn't be as cheap as you'd find it in England.

Bread is probably one of those things people recognise from France. Everyone who's ever been on a day trip with the school will remember trying to get their 'baguettes' back home without either breaking them and probably failing miserably. However, as we have discovered, what the British call baguettes are actually 'pain'. Yup, you've got it, plain, simple bread! Baguettes are actually smaller and would probably be called 'batons' in England.

You can get sliced, square-shaped loaves, the like of which British people like to slip into their toasters, but take it from us, the pain the French make, knocks the socks off that.

Most of all, I would urge people visiting France to try the food. We often wonder why people would go to a foreign place only to eat and drink the same stuff they would at home, but they do. It's just an opinion, but I feel they're missing out on an awful lot.

The costs

Shopping in England was all about keeping the costs down as far as possible and in so doing, a large proportion of what we ate was possibly not as healthy as we'd have liked. Here it's more about balance. We're still somewhat unsettled and haven't fallen into a particular routine as yet, so the costs are somewhat higher. This is partly due to the fact that there doesn't seem to be as much convenience food here and we're viewing that as a good thing. 

Having said that, what we are buying is not that much more costly than we were buying before we moved here. 

We're adopting a more French way of eating, where meat - which whilst better quality, is more expensive here - is not necessarily the most important part of the meal and therefore are eating a lot more healthily compared to our diets in England. With fresh vegetables and fruit having more flavour than what is generally available in British supermarkets, it's very easy to make dishes with a lot less meat that are interesting, tasty and filling.

I would have to say that once we've completely settled here, our food costs will level out. Our change of diet has meant that whilst the cost of food here is slightly higher than we've been used to, it's a small price to pay for the increased quality and the fact that what we're eating is generally better for us.

A walk around the lake

St Frambault

We've been in France now for about six weeks or so and we haven't taken any time to just sit and let the world go by in time-honoured tradition - sitting outside with a beer, wine or even coffee as everything moves around you.

Oh sure, we've spent a little time sitting outside in our garden on one of those rare occasions this year where we've actually had hot, sunny weather. However, that's not the same as actually being out.

So imagine my surprise this morning when Penny suggested we go to St Frambault and have a wander round the lake. Usually, there's something that needs doing to the house and let's be honest, there's no shortage of that, but with the promise of a tennis final to watch this afternoon, a walk around the lake in the sunshine sounded brilliant.

There are quite a few things to do in St Frambault including pedalos, crazy golf, camping, picnicking, as well as restaurants and bars, but all we wanted to do on this occasion, was just take a quiet wander on a Sunday morning and I must say, we weren't disappointed.

To begin with, we were able to park for free - unlike most attractions in England - and taking a random path from the car, we began walking down the hill and on this occasion, was towards the lake.

There were few people - just a runner and one or two others, which meant that everything was quiet. The only sounds we could hear was the rustling of the trees in a wonderfully gentle breeze, the wildlife and the sound of the water as it ran over and round the little rocky weirs that appeared at various places along the way.

The little ducks were probably disappointed as they were clearly used to being fed by the tourists and not only got nothing from us, but were also being expected to pose for me with my camera. As you can see (right) this little fellow was having none of that.

We finished off embarrassingly devoid of battery power, which is why I can provide no further pictures of the lake, the pedalos or the fine surroundings where we stopped for a cold 1664 while the sun shone.

In short, this has marked our first visit to St Frambault, but it won't be our last. We fully intend to explore further and when family and friends come to see us, providing the weather's fine, it will make an excellent place to visit.

Hopefully next time we visit, the weather will be equally good and my camera batteries won't give up long before we've got to the end of our walk, or I will have more to replace them.

French Television

If there are two things I can't stand, it's having to put up with the adverts taking up almost as much time as the programmes you're watching and trying to watch a film or programme that's been so heavily edited that it's no longer watchable.

ADS

A while ago - while we were in England, we tried to watch a programme about teenage girls who were being given an object lesson in what prison life was really like. Ten minutes of programme was followed by ten minutes of advertising. Half the time I had trouble remembering which programme we were watching - whether it was the programme I've just described, or one of the programmes repeatedly shown in the adverts.

France's free TV is much better than that.

Well, it's not exactly free, but is what's freely available for anyone who has a digital aerial, a French TV and pays the 125€ in their local taxes for the TV licence. There are even HD channels too!

France TV stations show many English language films and programmes in English by outputting various language options - usually French, English and occasionally German. Series such as Body of Proof, The Closer, Drop Dead Diva, CSI (various versions), Dr Who and many, many more plus oodles of films are shown on a regular basis.

So despite us paying to have an English TV dish for Freeview stations installed, we actually watch little of it, simply because what's shown on French TV has less advertising and what it does have isn't pumped out at an ear splitting volume or with such mind-numbing repetitiveness as to make you wish you'd never turned the damned thing on in the first place.

I realise that many ex-pats cannot do without their English TV and from what I can gather, it's mainly to watch the soaps, though heaven alone knows why. I also know that when you're not proficient in the language, trying to get your head round a foreign tongue can make things particularly difficult, but what better way to learn?

Programmes like Mot de Passe, Money Drop and Questions pour un Champion are brilliant vehicles to learn words and to a degree, the grammar, while other programmes can help to hear French spoken as it should be, not as it comes out of a book.

I know that French programmes cannot compete with Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and other drivel that passes for programming in the eyes of many, but we couldn't be more pleased to have got shot of it. Nor are we displeased at having to let go of those interminable adverts for bingo or other ways to lose your money on your mobile. Let's face it, what could be more pointless than the programme of the same name? Can you really say that programmes with a top prize akin to a Blankety-Blank chequebook and pen are actually worth watching?

Uncensored programmes

The biggest difference I think is the fact that nothing gets edited. There's no showing movies that are cut to shit. Whether they're dubbed in French or shown in English, they show the whole film - warts and all. What they do is put a warning at the bottom right of the screen suggesting that the programme may be unsuitable for children below a certain age.

I think they call it common sense, which  appears to be being taken away from the British public. I once set my video to record Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest after setting the Digibox (I didn't have Sky+ at the time). I returned home hours later to find that my video had actually recorded two hours or more of the message "Please Enter Pin".

Despite only myself and Penny living at the address with no children, we couldn't turn this off because it was the law. I argued that since neither Penny nor I had children, why should we have to enter a pin before we watch something and were told it was the law; there might have been people under age able to view. How stupid is that? Did the British government think that truckloads of children were likely to invade our home while we were out or something? God forbid.

So, while we have to learn the language to understand the vast majority of programming, we are at last able to make our own minds up as to what is seen and what is not.

We have been a little taken aback when ads for future programmes contain nudity, but not disgusted. It's just we're not used to it. It's actually refreshing that what Britain gets all stuffy about, is seen as here as normal.

For us French TV is not only more pleasing to watch, but is a great way to learn at the same time - something a great many English speakers over here could take note of, since there are far too many who can't communicate even on a basic level.