On 2007-07-16 18:48:22 +0100, Attanagh said:

On 16 Jul, 18:35, wrote:
A friend needs a couple of lorry loads of gravel in Northern France

So whats the french for builders merchant ?

Brico Dépôt France

Similar to B&Q (owned by Kingfisher too!)

Kingfisher owns Castorama as well as Brico Depot.

Bricolage is the French description for DIY (roughly meaning fiddling
and tinkering).

Castorama is roughly like B&Q. Brico Depot is down market and looks
more like a poorly presented version of Wickes. It claims to have
more of a trade focus and certainly in one that I went in recently had
aggregates etc. However, they were prepackaged like Wickes and
certainly not inexpensive.

A Google for keywords "materiaux" "construction" will yield a number of
places that sell bulk materials.