In the heart of the Dordogne, there’s a small town where the Union Jack flutters merrily alongside the French tricolore. It’s a place where you don’t need a phrase book and where you can read your English newspaper while enjoying a lemon curd sandwich with a cup of strong tea. Eymet is France’s best example of the cheery interchange of two cultures where quiz nights and steamed puddings merge with fresh herbs and vin rouge.
No one I spoke to knew quite why this particular fortified town has become such a bastion for the British. Denise Masters at the local English-owned estate agents, Eymet Immobilier, told me it is about as far as you can drive in a single day from the north coast and people like the countryside – ‘it’s the Cotswolds with vines’.
In the town’s arcaded Place Gambetta, you’ve got Karen and Lisa at home furnishings store Kismet, just up from Stephane and Anya at Le Gambetta bar and then there’s Dean at MCD Informatique on the corner. English books and wrapping paper come from the newly opened Frederic’s Bookshop just up the road, Farrow & Ball paint or oak flooring comes from Michele at Fabrica Design and Tony Martin’s Eymet Ordinateurs can supply you with reconditioned PCs and satellite dishes. You could do your entire week’s shopping and never have to speak a word of French.
Michael Rice took over the local English grocers last June and has brought in a few speciality products such as Tiptree jams and Walker’s Shortbread biscuits. ‘Cheddar cheese sells very well as does corned beef,’ he says. His shop typifies the town. It’s fun, lively and welcoming and while it’s great to see baked beans and Shreddies on the shelves when you are abroad, it’s very much there for the French locals too, a chance to experience the delights of British cuisine.
The French represent about a third of Michael’s customers and adore the marmalade, tea and biscuits. ‘They seem to love ginger nuts, which are very different to French biscuits,’ he says. ‘We’ve tried to increase the range in the shop with a view to what French people would like. The curry sauces and Thai products are very popular as they not so readily available in France.’
Part of the attraction of Eymet (pronounced ‘aimez’) is that it looks like Stratford-upon-Avon. The main square is flanked by wooden-beamed houses and the thick stone walls show why the British never managed to invade the place in the Middle Ages. Today, Eymet really is thriving. Locals have covered their houses with baskets of geraniums and down by the River Dropt, some swans have begun to nest. It won’t be long before some English names start appearing in the churchyard.
Wonderful community
Keeping up with relatives back home is easier since Simon and Karen Colebourn opened the Internet café a couple of years ago. They came to Eymet when some friends who owned a place near their holiday home in Brittany recommended the town as ‘on the up’. They considered buying a hotel near Bergerac but with broadband arriving in Eymet and with French people having a much lower level of Internet access at home, decided to convert an old grain store into café-eymet.com. ‘We came here to change our lifestyle but we’ve ended up working longer hours than we did in the UK. The difference is that we’re not lining other people’s pockets,’ says Simon.
They are both very active in the local community and their children have settled in well. ‘We had no idea about the vast number of English people that were here,’ he told me. ‘It’s a terrific town with a wonderful community,’ and is impressed by how accepting the French people are towards the English. The café holds a pig roast in the street during the summer night-markets, competing with the cauldrons of moules frites off the main square.
Also on the square is Eymet’s wine shop, now run by Mitch O’Sullivan. She is half-Irish and speaks fluent German. ‘The French are unbelievable; most of them want a recommendation for a wine to have with a particular meal. They really do listen. They expect a caviste to be a professional and they trust me.’ Mitch does a lot of tastings and supplies some of the local bars and restaurants. After all, a short drive away, she has the delights of Cahors, Duras, Bergerac and Armagnac.
Lives are changing and re-changing in Eymet. In a way, it’s a sort of halfway house to living abroad. Many people I spoke to were divorced and most had made a decision somewhere along the line to start again. Someone had drunk his business away, someone ended up living in his brother’s empty swimming pool, someone else ran off with the estate agent – the usual mix of despair and hope when you are living in a foreign country. The thing about Eymet is that people always seem to end up there regardless of their original plans. It even has its own English eccentric in James, a former teacher and chess champion, who rides around the bastide on a pink girl’s bike, chased by his pug.
‘Twenty years ago,’ says Denise from Eymet Immobilier, ‘you only had out-and-out Francophiles here. They were brave people who didn’t mind the state a property was in. Gradually, people have moved out here with greater expectations. Today there are a lot more young families with children who want to start a new life but don’t want a big renovation project.’
Cheap flights
New families also need educating. The local primary school has around 20 British children and has a ‘bilingual buddie’ system to help them. It can be especially difficult for teenagers who suddenly arrive in France and don’t know what is going on. Not all shocks are unpleasant though, Terrie Simpson, now an Eymet estate agent but who used to run a local B&B, said her son couldn’t believe there was no graffiti in the school toilets and that the lockers didn’t have keys.
Antagonism towards the English in Eymet comes almost entirely from other English people – especially those who moved out years ago and want to be ‘French’. The town’s deputy-mayor, Serge Gameiro, is delighted about the English in Eymet. ‘They have been very good for the local economy. They like the lifestyle, the food and the wine and the French are very happy to see them here.’
Henri Peyre owns the Château Pechalbet a couple of kilometres away and appreciates what the English ‘invasion’ has achieved. ‘If it wasn’t for the English coming and buying up old places and restoring them, Eymet would have been a ghost town. They buy wine, food, bring trade to the area, they have revitalised the region. The English who are here seem to love France and the Aquitaine locals are very warm people by nature,’ he says.
It was a struggle to find any negative feelings towards the British in Eymet. A local French hairdresser said she believed the recent cheap flights to Bergerac had brought a lower class of English to the region and that estate agents were not really interested in her when she was looking to buy a place because she wasn’t English, but generally, Eymet is a twinning of two cultures that get on well.
Eymet is a strange mix of things. It is a beautifully preserved Mediaeval fortress town in the middle of France yet has a cricket team. It doesn’t appear in the Rough Guide to France but you won’t see more British cars in one place until you catch the ferry home. The success of the place is that the English are happy living there and want to fit in with ‘a better lifestyle than they had back home.’ They may not speak the language very well, they may prefer shopping in the English grocers and eating sliced bread, but they are abroad and have transformed Eymet into a vibrant and charismatic place to live.
GINI COOK
Gini Cook opened Bizare, a shop selling gifts and fluffy pink things a year ago. ‘Around two-thirds of my customers are English and sometimes if there’s a local party, I’ve ended up selling every single present! The French people like the fact that we work, pay costs and that the kids go to the local school. The big difference from the retired English set who come here is that we really get involved with local life.’
MEL PRETT
Mel Prett runs a herb farm a few kilometres from Eymet and sometimes feels like a lone dissenting voice against the cheery patriotism of the British in Eymet.
‘It’s the invasion that didn’t happen in 1200! . . . a lot of British people come here because they know there are others here like them. The older French locals think it’s fun and a novelty but it’s hard for young people because they can’t afford to buy their first home and I’ve sensed a certain amount of racism against the English from the younger generation. Another thing people don’t realise when they first come is that this area is very rural and it can be very hard in winter.’