Where to live in France?

My work is offering to move me to Europe (france or germany), with my choice of location. I am looking for a location that is the best for climbing, but France seems to just have too many options.
My restrictions are:
1. Can't do the "van life" thing, I need a home base
2. I keep normal work hours (mon-fri 8-4), so a long difficult approach (ex, rapping into a gorge) is less preferred.
3. Sport climbing would be best, but I'm ok with trad. I haven't done alpine, so I wouldn't want to commit to a place like chamonix.
4. Access to reliable high speed internet

Nice to haves:
- A long season is preferable
- A local bouldering area would be nice in case I can't find partners or just have a short day of climbing

I've been looking at ceuse, marseille, Toulouse.
Are there any magical places that are perfect to live in and climb a lot?

Gap, maybe?

Granted, the approach at Ceuse is nothing short...

If I could live anywhere in France it would be either the Nice area or the Perpignan area.  To me the beauty of Europe is the ability to access tons of amazing places within a somewhat short drive or flight.  Even weekends are easy and cheap to fly places.  

Nice, France because it's on the Mediterranean, there's an airport, it's within 2-4 hours of other major airports and cities (Milan, Marseilles, Genoa), it's close to Italy (my personal favorite country), and it's near the Alps and tons of climbing spots including Verdon Gorge, Calanques, Finale Ligure, and within 4 hrs of Ceuse.....oh and not too far to skiing.  

Perpignan because it's on the Mediterranean, Barcelona is 2 hrs away, it's low key and has great cuisine, it's cheap, and it's close to all the northern Spain sport climbing and the Pyrenees (awesome skiing as well).  Remember France is pretty huge, I have a lot of wine business friends who live in the interior and it definitely becomes a headache traveling out from there sometimes.  Toulouse isn't far from Perpignan but I have never been so I won't comment.  

Good luck!  

Nate Tastic wrote:

It's huge like California and Nevada huge. 

Actually France is closer in size to Texas. Germany is just smaller than Montana.

Having lived on the Cote d'Azur it is a great place for climbing, skiing, hiking, biking, and diving. But it is expensive. You will want to have a car as well as decent language skills. 

If your German is better look at Nuremberg (Bamburg) as Frankenjura is close by. Being on the interior the cost of living  will be less and with a continental climate you will have a bit of winter. 

With teh exception of Fontainebleau, climbing in france is restricted to SE and is not so huge. Looking for an extended season means SSE. (The so called Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region - AKA PACA). For job, life, facilities, language ... considerations, it's mean large cities.

As a result, Nice, Marseille  & Aix en Provence. Nice is expensive and the climbing possibiities are not as important than expected. Marseille can be OK but take care, some areas are really far to be sicure. Definitely, aix en provence is the best; Smaller city than the two others, and very nice. A plenty of cultural events. And close (less than one hour) from Calanques, sainte victoire, Buoux, Dentelles,   .... Max of two hours from verdon and Nice area and Ceuse. Close to Marseille Airport.

Four bouldering i dont know, But for limestone sport and multipitches, that's a really good place. Only one problem, the people "singing" accent need some practice!!!

If you are satisfied with just bouldering, living near Fontainebleau will give you access to lifetimes worth of world-class bouldering. With the bonus of being near the metropolitan area of Paris.

I wouldn't write off Chamonix just because you haven't done any alpine style climbing. The European Alps tend to have a lot of bolted alpine routes, which are basically multipitch sport routes on perfect granite in an alpine environment. There's even bouldering in Chamonix.

Good luck with your choice anyway. Sounds like a great position to be in.

http://www.cartesfrance.fr/geographie/cartes-france-climat/carte-ensoleillement.html

A good start would be this site: https://climbingaway.fr/en/rock-climbing-areas/find-20-rock-climbing-areas-close-to-you It'll help you locate the 20 closest areas to a given place.

Some suggestions:

-Millau: small-ish town with maybe 2,000 routes within a 10 to 40mn drive (Tarn, Jonte (single and multipitch), Boffi, Cantobre), bouldering at Lodève is a 40mn drive, trad multipitch at Caroux is 2 hours. Pyrenees a bit further (4 hours).

-North of Montpellier: Thaurac, Hortus, Pic Saint Loup, Claret... I guess closest bouldering is again Lodève.

-Buis-les-Baronnies: small town and slightly remote, gets hot in summer but a lifetime's worth of climbing within a 20mn drive: Baume Rousse, Saint Léger, Ubrieux, etc etc. Dentelles are 40mn. Céüse maybe 2 hours, Orpierre 1h I think, Buoux 1h30, and so on. Barely any bouldering though.

-Foix/Tarascon-sur-Ariège: lesser known yet hundreds and hundreds of routes, Dent d'Orlu is not far for long multipitch. At the foothills of the Pyrenees.

Closest crag to Toulouse is an hour's drive so not really good for after work sessions.

Corsica! 

Millau, France. Sooooo much rock, right close-ish to Spain. Freaking gorgeous.