After struggling for a while, I have learned to use the WONDERFUL geoportail website. It isn't the most user friendly, but is improving all the time.
First of all I have to turn off my firewall and suchlike, otherwise the pictures and maps do not load. There must be a better way around this. Then to find places, I have to translate into degrees, minutes and seconds from decimal degrees.
But it is possible to search for community names as well as coordinates, and there are the 1:25000 maps as well as fantastic aerial (and satellite) pictures, where individual stones and buildings etc can be made out. One day I'll get round to posting a userguide for French sites here.....
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road