I lived in France and England concurrently for fifteen years, left for UK permanently just before Covid (dodged a bullet there). We spent April to October in France with a small break in the middle as we could not insure our English house for absence of more than 180days.
I think what you are proposing would actually be more difficult in some ways moving outright! The costs of two properties should not be underestimated, you have double the outgoings and when we were there it was difficult to secure a no use no fee system for telecoms or utilities ( they are keen on packages). We found it more difficult to employ tradespeople for maintenance or improvements than in UK , as population density means there are just fewer people to do jobs like this; plus the taxation system means that there is -ahem- rather more reliance on untaxed labour. You don’t have access to this until you have been accepted in the local community, and that takes a while ( and fluent French, often with local variations).
Things like gardening and cleaning were very expensive, because the government subsidies for elderly people means that the prices for everyone rise to include the subsidy ( taxi the same in our area).
we never rented out our house , because we lived in it or shut it up totally in the winter. I did know a few English people who did, though, generally rather unsatisfactorily. Clearing and locking up your stuff so renters could use the house is a drag, and some damage is pretty much inevitable. Plus of course, most people want to rent your house at peak times when you want to live there (midwinter In rural France can be bleak). People who ran gites from their property did rather better, though it was hard work.
We loved it, those years were probably the best of our lives! But what enabled it was having enough money to keep everything running smoothly and to cope with emergencies, fluent French ( I still sometimes dream in French) an acceptance of differences between cultures, and plenty of wine. But basically, being able to afford everything without the need for income.