← Back to Pimpernel
← Back to Pimpernel
The Pimpernel Community
A warm, well-kept forum for Britons making a life in France — the daft questions, the hard-won answers, your local crowd, and us in there too. The forum comes with Pimpernel Life membership, which is exactly what keeps it civil, real, and free of the usual internet.
A members’ room · post, reply and the full archive with Pimpernel Life
The forum comes with Pimpernel Life. It is a members’ room — because a room where everyone's invested is a room worth being in.
Inside the forum
Organised the way life actually happens, so you can lurk, learn, or leap in with a question — whatever you need that day.
🗂️
Visas, the carte de séjour, the ANEF portal and the whole admin maze — with people a step ahead of you.
💶
Tax returns, UK pensions, moving funds, inheritance — the bits that keep newcomers up at night, demystified together.
🩺
CPAM, the carte Vitale, finding an English-speaking doctor, the mutuelle — real experiences, not brochure-speak.
🏡
The notaire, the diagnostics, landlords, selling on — swap recommendations and cautionary tales.
🐐
Fosse septique woes, wood versus heat pump, la chasse, the potager — the countryside stuff nobody else covers.
📍
From the Dordogne to Brittany — find the people who live where you're headed, and the local knowledge that only they have.
🥖
The mairie, the bins, la bise, and actually learning French — the small stuff that makes or breaks the settling-in.
🧒
Schools, friendships and settling little ones — plus "a word from our lot", the kids' own take on the move, relayed by us. A parents' space; children don't post.
🍷
Off-topic, small victories, terrible French mistakes, and — inevitably — photographs of everyone's donkeys.
You won't be shouting into the void
This isn't a forum we set up and abandoned. Will and Jenny are active members — answering where we can, learning from the people who know more than us, and keeping the place civil. When you post, real people read it, including the family who built all this. That's the whole point of Pimpernel, carried into the community: a knowing friend you can actually reach.
How it works
01
The forum is a members’ room. One membership unlocks posting, replying and the full archive.
02
Say hello, find your department, and dip into the rooms that matter to you today.
03
Everyone posting is an invested member and it's moderated to our house rules, so it stays useful and decent — never the usual internet.
The tone is everything to us — here's how we keep the place decent (our house rules) →
The forum is open. Reading a selection is free. To post, reply and unlock the whole thing, you join as a Pimpernel Life member: one membership, everyone invested, which is what keeps it civil and genuinely useful.
Join Pimpernel Life →Curious what else membership includes? See the plans →