Lost in the maze of streets in Ville-franche-de-Rouergue in the Aveyron, I ended up trapped in the tail-end of the morning market.

Typically, every street surrounding the stalls was barred but I'd followed a speeding white van whose driver seemed to know what he was doing. He didn't, so now we were both barricaded in until the market closed.

Abandoning the car, I went for a coffee. In the space of the next 10 minutes the tables filled up with English people and the accents of the Home Counties penetrated the loud commerce all around us.

Every time, I am taken by surprise at the extent of the expat invasion, still slightly shocked at realising English, not French, is being spoken.

God knows why - official figures suggest there are between 300,000 and 400,000 of us spread around the country.

It also stands to reason that on a market morning they congregate in their little groups, escaping for a while from the stone cottages and beamed farmhouses, so bleak in the winter darkness.

Listening to their chat I could have been at any of the favoured cafes in my own area two and a half hours south.

It was depressingly familiar. So-and-so still hadn't sold and never would at that price; X was taken to hospital after a heart attack; Y inviting all to a "kitchen supper". Dreary banalities uttered by garrulous women as their men gazed into some distant land where females hold their tongues.

They even looked like many of the ones around here. Average age 70; full makeup and neat, easily-managed haircuts; sensible shoes for navigating the cobbles, liver-spotted hands grasping the large straw baskets filled with vegetables and probably "a nice bit of fish".

The men, legs turned from the table, read their day-old Telegraphs and Times, no doubt itching to get home and solve the crossword.

Later that day, in a village a few miles further away, my curiosity as to Aveyron expat life got the better of me and I started to chat to two couples who'd come for dinner in my hotel.

The countryside here is very different from my own. Densely forested, slashed by the famous gorges; its perched towns ravaged through centuries of religious wars and royal campaigns against heresy and treachery.

It's an area filled in the summer with both French and foreign tourists seeking active, outdoors holidays, and the narrow, ancient streets are frequently clogged with the huge campervans beloved of the Dutch and the Germans.

It's an area I discounted on my house search, having spent one night in SaintAntonin-Noble-Val in a chambre d'hotes backing on to the monstrous slab of stone forming the gorge. Life sapped from me at the constant brooding presence - a melancholic memento mori of which I have no need.

Anyway, my animated fellow diners, obviously quite thrilled to have new blood to engage, tried hard to answer my questions but, beyond the obvious, had little or no insights into either the history or the lay of their chosen land.

Their knowledge was of the kind found in any tourist office with no insider tips on "secret" treasures.

Yet both couples retired here more than 10 years ago. So I turned to their lives and sought out the rhythms of their days and years.

A picture emerged of lives lived in a foreign country but detached from it. Lives lived within a security shield of comforting reminders of "home".

When they close the shutters of their houses they retreat to all they really love: British TV, Radio 4, cups of tea, Skyping the grandchildren, planning the next dinner party.

Few, if any of their French farmer neighbours have ever crossed the threshold and, in the wilds outside, the sound of the chasse elicits shudders.

They favour Ukip and Farage, but can't name the contenders for the leadership of UMP to battle Hollande.

They admit to sympathy with Marine Le Pen and her stance on immigrants.

They make no tax returns because they don't work in France, and anyway they keep "an address" belonging to their daughter so they're not really here.

They gave up on the language after a year of lessons and know a "lovely woman" who deals with any official letters.

When they left, they attempted to kiss me and fervently wished I lived near them. I can be lyingly charming.

I ordered an Armagnac. All became clear. After a certain age, not all, but many of the Brit expats are a tribe.

They seek only each other, or rather those of their perceived class, and while they rhapsodise about the food and the culture they would rather be in the Cotswolds but can't afford it.

In truth am I any better? I couldn't live without Sky, I love oven chips, I find French food mainly merde and I came here because it was (then) cheap.

I am better than them, though. I speak French. I have French friends. I understand the politics. I'm legally here. Many of the expats ignore me because of this column. And I'll never, ever do a "kitchen supper".