Holiday home insurance from intasure - Click Here UK insurance for your property overseas

www.holidaylettings.co.uk online advertising for home owners abroad

Reserve your overseas currency online - for a high street beating rate!

Calculate how much you can earn - rent out your holiday home here


France: Limousin

Overview

Situated south-west of the centre of France, Limousin (population 710,000) is the name of the old province surrounding the town of Limoges. It covers an area of 16,942km2 (10,600mi2) and has a population of less than 725,000. It’s composed of just three departments: Corrèze (19 – the department of President Jacques Chirac and his wife, who is a town councillor), Creuse (23) and Haute-Vienne (87). The main towns are Brive-la-Gaillarde (19), Guéret (23) and Limoges (87). The region is world-renowned for Limoges porcelain and enamels and the tapestries of Aubusson. The region has also given its name to a school of painting known as the Crozant school, after the place where Monet painted his first series, and is home to the Centre for Contemporary Art at Vassivière.

Limousin is predominantly agricultural with very little heavy industry, which makes it largely unpolluted and unspoilt by modern industrial buildings. Being in the foothills of the Massif Central, the region features rolling hills and valleys (the lowest point, around Brive-la-Gaillarde, is almost 200m/655ft above sea level and the highest is 978m/3,200ft) without the bleakness of some mountainous areas, and almost 35 per cent of the area is forested (compared with 27 per cent nationally). Its mountains and forests, coupled with the many lakes, rivers and streams that flow into either the Loire or the Garonne, make Limousin a rural holiday paradise, and it’s also becoming increasingly popular with foreign homebuyers. Limousin also boasts a vast man-made lake, the Lac de Vassivière (1,100ha/2,700 acres), the largest used for water-sports in the country and featuring beaches and adjoining holiday complexes, and is noted for its chocolate and Golden Delicious apples (reputed to be the best in the world).

Limousin is also 25 per cent woodland, but only 30 per cent grassland and 10 per cent arable land, with 35 per cent of its land unused or built on. Economically, Limousin is a relatively poor area, Creuse in particular suffering from the decline of agriculture and an ageing population.

© Survival Books Limited 2005

“Buying a Home in France 2006” 6th Edition, David Hampshire.

Reproduced with the permission of Survival Books Limited.

Further information on this topic can be found in “Buying a Home in France 2006” 6th edition, by David Hampshire.

For extensive, annually updated information about buying a property in France, you can purchase this book at www.survivalbooks.net


More pages

Page 1: Overview

The best deals on car hire in the UK, USA, Europe and beyond Alamo has the car you need at the price you want!

Find your perfect holiday home - over 250,000 homes worldwide to chose from

Discounted Airport Parking - available across the UK

Book now, pay when you stay - 100's of hotel rooms worldwide with laterooms.com


Browse our articles written by leading industry experts:

Overseas Property Buying Guides

UK Property Guides

Gardens and Interiors

Cosmetic Surgery Fact Sheets

Looking Good Guides

Money

Business

Community

Travel