Running a French Holiday Gite in Rural Brittany

Driving in France - hints and tips

2009-11-09T17:00:00.000Z

One of the things that I managed to do whilst we were on holiday in August this year was to finish writing the new 'driving hints' page for our Gite website.

I remember when I first registered the www.giteinbrittany.com domain name and I'd placed a Gite advert in the village magazine before the website was finished. The race was on to get the website finished before the magazine was distributed around the village and so I spent night after night churning out the pages of the site.

Since then my output of writing new content has slowed down somewhat ... ok, it's slowed down and awful lot, and the time between writing new pages has stretched into months and months.

Looking back in the Blog archives I can see that I added a 'what is RSS' page in February 2007, the PictoBrowser-powered photo gallery in March 2007 and details of the nearby world heritage site of Mont St Michel in June 2008. So looks like I'm averaging about one page a year - so this could be the only new page I actually finish writing this year!

Anyhow, back to the plot (such that it is) ...

Although we've had a holiday travel options and routes page on the Gite website since launch which has some details about driving in France, it's mainly focussed on whereabouts in Brittany the Gite is, and how easy it is to get there whether you choose to go by plane or ferry, and from wherever you want to travel across the UK and Ireland.

I thought that I ought to supplement this with more specific details of what it's like to drive in France and what the key rules and regulations are for both you and your car. I spent quite a lot of time trawling through different sites on the internet to put this page together, including the AA and RAC motoring in Europe pages, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth 'advice for travellers' and various leaflets and brochures I'd picked up over the years.

There's details of French speed limits (which vary according to whether the road conditions are dry or wet), important things you need to know when driving such as 'Priorité àDroite', how and where to fill up with fuel (and what the different pumps contain) and the legal obligations for taking your car to France such as carrying a warning triangle, spare bulbs and a reflective jacket.

Finally I've included English/French translations for dozens of the most common road signs you could see on your holiday so you're not baffled by Toutes directions, Suivre Rennes or even Cédez le passage!

Hope you find useful the new Driving in France - Hints and Tips.

And as a bonus challenge, test your knowledge of driving in France with the roadsign above. Do you know what it means? On a holiday programme I saw last year they quizzed people on the cross-channel Ferry and hardly anyone knew what this sign meant - do you?

And if you don't know, suggest you surf over to our French motoring information page!!

Ferry news from Euroferries, LDLines and a maritime disaster

2009-11-05T09:00:00.000Z

White Cliffs of Dover and Dover Castle

Three different bits of ferry related news that I picked up whilst surfing through Google news today ....

First up, after all the long delays of getting the Euroferries service from Ramsgate to Boulogne up and running it was good to read on thisiskent.co.uk that the Euroferries ferry service is due to start on time on the 14th November. The article reports that the Bonanza Express which has been languishing in the Canary Islands for most of this year has finally been repainted in Euroferries colours, work on the dockside ramps has been completed, and the Ramsgate tax free shop is also ready for customers.

Last month I wrote about LD Lines transferring the Norman Arrow fast cat from Boulogne onto the LeHavre service and thisiskent leads with news of some of the fallout from this service change as a number of the LD Lines Norman Arrow crew are being made redundant. Some crew will transfer to the conventional ferry and some will be retained whilst the boat is laid up for the winter, but presumably they could then be at risk afterwards?
The article closes with commenting that a number of those affected were previously employees of SpeedFerries which of course went bust a year ago.

And finally KentOnline describes a major maritime disaster exercise that took place on Wednesday when volunteer members of the UK Maritime and Response Group practised some of the emergency drills they'd have to invoke were there to be a major marine emergency. The simulation covered a fire and cross channel passenger ferry evacuation in the Dover Straits. Let's hope they never have to do it for real.

Oddest 'contact us' holiday rental enquiry yet?

2009-10-28T16:04:00.003Z

We get some pretty varied emails via the holiday home booking enquiry form. As well as the booking enquiries that of course we are hoping to get sent to us we also get a mixed bag of spam and scam attempts (some of which I have written about before - see previous postings about Scam rental enquiries).

Of course we also get a fair number of let's just say "adult" emails which are stuffed full of links to dubious websites that I have no intention of visiting. Fortunately Thunderbird's Junk email filter has now got pretty good at spotting and automatically filtering those out so I only have to go through the Junk mail folder every week or so and double check that nothing has slipped by.

But this email has got me stumped as to what to do with it, here's the full enquiry as I received it:

Hi - I was just wondering if you would be interested in buying my property in Brittany with a view to letting it out? Look forward to hearing from you. Regards Natalie Jones

And that's it. There's a return email address (with a number 2 in it and hosted at hotmail.co.uk - so that gets me suspicious), but there's no details of the property, where it is, how much Natalie might want for it, etc.

I think I won't persue it any further; I've enough 'fun' with looking after one Holiday Home and renovating the second, and even if it is genuine methinks I couldn't cope with another property - and I'm sure the bank wouldn't want to extend my line of credit even further.

Any thoughts?

French repairs required a trip to B&Q

2009-10-26T18:24:00.004Z

Sometimes (well actually quite frequently it seems) running a Holiday Gite can be quite time consuming dealing with a long list of little things that either need repairing or are not quite right.

Of course having the Gite in one country when we live full time in another just adds to the fun of the whole experience and every time we leave France it's with a list of things to bring back/buy/repair, and every time we go back to France it's with a car boot full of things accumulated since the last trip.

This week I had to go to B&Q to buy a new lamp holder for one of the bedside lights. When we were over last I noticed that the bulb holder in the light was damaged and as a result the bulb kept on popping out - unfortunately not a job for sticky tape, glue, wire and screws which are my usual staple diet of repair materials for the Gite. So I unwired the bedside light, left the lampshade over there, and brought the lamp home with me.

After dismantling the light I worked out that the whole of the inside mechanism (including switch) needed to be replaced, but that fortunately it looked to be pretty similar to a corded lamp holder. B&Q came up trumps, the mechanism was the same and the screw threads for the existing shade holder and the bottom of the lamp base fitted a new lamp holder perfectly.

£1.78 lighter than when I entered the shop the job was done and I was able to reassemble the bedside light ready to take it back to France when we're next over. I do wish at times I could get little things like this in France but electrical and plumbing fittings are often subtly different between the two countries and some of the prices in France are absolute extortion (see my earlier posting about the cost of replacing a toilet flush mechanism in France).

Last week it was the turn of a broken garden fork that needed replacing after some vigorous French garden digging broke the old one in two. Bought a new (OK second hand) 5-tine one from a car boot sale so that's another job ticked off the list ...

Postie brought me Windows 7 today

2009-10-23T12:13:00.003+01:00

In July I wrote about Windows 7 being available to pre-order and this morning I received a couple of copies through my door.

They would have been with me yesterday which was the official global release date but we were out so they were re-delivered this morning. Actually getting the software on the day it was launched is impressive so hats off to all those involved.

I'm intending to move up from Windows XP to Windows 7 (having missed Vista) and am hoping that it proves to be as good a release as all the reviews say. By all accounts this is the operating system version Microsoft should have shipped 3 years ago when Vista was launched and hardware requirements are reduced and stability (including backwards compatibility) much improved.

The upgrade version of Windows 7 is currently selling at £75.73 from Amazon or £114.98 if you want the full version.

Google Checkout lets us back in - we've been approved again!

2009-10-22T23:00:00.000+01:00

Google Checkout - Content Policies

Reader of my blog from 2 years ago will 'of course' remember the spat I had at the time with Google Checkout which resulted in them suspending my merchant account.

Saying it like that sounds far more grand an event than it actually was, so perhaps I'd better back-track a little and recount the story a little ...

Google checkout launched in the UK in early 2007 (as a competitor to paypal and other e-payment vehicles). I thought they'd be a good alternative way for guests to pay for their rental of our holiday home and so I registered and was approved for a merchant account. Then just as I was about to launch Google Checkout on our Gite website I was informed by Google that my Google Checkout account was being suspended because I had contravened their selling policies, and that selling Travel and Travel related packages was not allowed. I wrote to Google to appeal this decision but was told that Google Checkout determines its policies by focussing on providing a positive user experience, and that they had sole discretion in setting and exercising these policies.

And that was that. After my grumpy Blog postings I removed Google Checkout from the payment options and forgot about them.

So I was somewhat surprised to receive an email from Google a couple of weeks ago:

Subject: You Google Checkout account is now active
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:12:52 -0000
From: Google Checkout Team

Hello Geoffrey,

In our continuing effort to make Google Checkout more useful to our users, we review our policies on a regular basis to keep them current and effective.

I am pleased to inform you that we have revised our content policies. Going forward, we will be allowing the sale of Vacation Rentals, Timeshares, and Sight-seeing tours through Google Checkout.

As a result, you are now eligible to use Google Checkout to process transactions for these products and services as permitted by the revised policy. We have therefore reinstated your Google Checkout merchant account.

Please visit http://checkout.google.com/support/sell/bin/answer.py?answer=75724 for more information on our revised policy.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Please feel free to reply to this email if you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Pavani
The Google Checkout Team

Looking on the Google Checkout link to their content policies didn't really tell me much more, it still says that 'Travel packages and offers' are not allowed, and more specifically that Google Checkout doesn't allow the sale of "Travel services, including hotel, flight, cruise and car reservations; travel clubs". Looking back and very carefully comparing against the original Blog entries I wrote I eventually spotted that "Timeshare properties" was removed from the end of dis-allowed sale items. I wish they'd made it a bit clearer as to what is allowed as by not allowing the sale of 'Travel packages and offers' I initially was very confused.

There is also a posting on Google Checkout's Blog about the new Update to checkout policies which repeats much of the email I received but additionally states that sellers must have a valid public business URL (i.e. website) - so not a problem for us with www.giteinbrittany.com.

I'll have to go and do some comparison of the credit card fee structures that Google Checkout charge compared to other providers we use today. I prefer to take rental payment by cheque as it doesn't cost us any merchant fees that way (and most customers seem to be quite happy with sending us a cheque), but we do accept card payments if the customer asks, and especially for overseas customers such as from Ireland it's usually the easier.

Travel updates - new services from Euroferries, Celtic Link, LD Lines and RyanAir

2009-10-19T22:46:00.005+01:00

Been making some updates to the French ferry and airline routes page for our self-catering Brittany cottage.

First up, thanks to Richy who left a comment on my last Euroferries posting, as at long last Euroferries finally launch their Ramsgate to Boulogne service with a crossing time of 1 hour 15. Bookings are now being taken for sailings from November 14th and a few searches indicate that Euroferries are being quite price competitive with return crossings coming in for £66.50.

You can book up to April 2010 (but not beyond) so whilst the peak summer crossings are not yet available you can at least book a Christmas or Easter break.

Next, I've also added newcomer Celtic Link who are operating LD Lines' Roscoff to Cherbourg service for them and additionally running a Portsmouth to Cherbourg service of their own.

There's also some been some changes to the LD Lines service as they've moved their fast cat from the Dover/Boulogne service onto Portsmouth/Le Havre - slashing the journey time from 5 ½ hours to just 3 ¼ hours. Dover/Boulogne still continues with a conventional ferry but obviously takes a little longer without the fast cat.

I also noticed that RyanAir have introduced new services from Birmingham to Dinard, Bournemouth to Nantes and Leeds Bradford to Nantes so more updates there as well.

Phew !

If anyone actually travels with Euroferries or Celtic Link then please do leave a comment to say what you thought of the new services.

Been solo Microlight flying again

2009-10-13T21:55:00.003+01:00

After my first Microlight solo flight

Just over a week ago I wrote about finally throwing off the shackles of the flying instructor and taking my first solo flight in a Microlight, and the above picture was taken immediately afterwards - just look at the mad grin I've got!!

Well today I've been back up there again.

I fortunately didn't have any meetings to go to today and the wind was forecast to be 2mph all day, so after taking the kids to school I was off to the Microlight centre for the day.

Although it got a bit bumpy in the middle of the day as with the unseasonable October sun heating the air up and causing thermals, it's been a beautiful flying day.

As I've still got limited solo experience the instructors still want to take me up for a check-flight before they let me go up again on my own so I did a couple of successful take-off's, circuit's and landings before they let me go up again solo this morning. I'd been warned that the second solo flight is the most dangerous I'll ever do; and like the first I had quite a bit of difficulty in getting the plane to land where I wanted it to land as it was so much lighter with just me in it.

But I did get down OK after a couple of attempts and go-arounds and the dread momment was over.

Later in the afternoon after the thermals had died down it was up for another check flight, all still looking good and I was cleared to do 4 circuits of take-off, fly around, land, then take off again - 4 times in total.

It's been drummed into me that if I'm not happy with the landing then it's OK to put the power on, abort the landing and go around for another time. As I'm still a bit lacking in confidence of my own flying abilities I've been putting this into practice with 3 attempted landings for both my first and second solo flights. This afternoon though I was much more happier and confident and brought the first three circuits straight back onto the runway each time with no abortive landings. The fourth and final time though it wasn't right (twice) so two more enforced circuits before I was down and safe.

So I've now done a massive 1 hour 10 minutes of solo flying and 6 successful take-off's and landings all on my own. I feel I'm really starting to get more confident now so hopefully this'll be "full steam ahead" towards my cross-country navigation and general flying test.

Happy happy day !!

Quick mention - October half term 2009 still vacant in our Brittany Gite

2009-10-13T14:24:00.000+01:00

The title pretty much says it all. We've still got October half-term week vacant in our lovely French self-catering holiday home (and in fact much of October is free as well).

Normally we ask £350 for the week's rental, and that includes heating, electricity and all bed linen (unlike some other Gite's we don't think it's fair to ask our guests to bring their own bed linen or be surcharged for us providing it - so bed linen is always included as standard in all our rental prices).

But as it's you and I'm in a happy mood after flying again today (see my next post), make me a sensible offer and you can stay in the Gite for less than the advertised price.

Remember we can sleeps up to 6 in two double bedrooms and a twin bedroom.

Is this a cut-price holiday rental special offer reduction, or what?

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to .... a French hospital

2009-10-11T21:00:00.002+01:00

Sorry for the lack of Blog postings over the last week or so but I've been really really busy writing a bid at work. I've had the unenviable task of being the bid manager so whilst I've not had to write any sections of the bid myself I've had to proof read all that the rest of the team have written (and correct what they've written, and point out all the bits of the requirements that they've not answered, and re-review the sections, and in many cases re-write them as well) - some 260+ pages in all !

So consequently I've been working stupid stupid hours, 7am to 1am most days.

Well finally all done, the bid was submitted on Sunday evening and I can now relax a bit more. Flew a few more circuits of the airfield on Monday but the weather was a bit too marginal for me to go up for my second solo flight so will have to wait for next weekend now.

Anyway, back to the subject in hand, French hospitals!

When we were over at our holiday Gite in August I noticed that one of the prior guests had made a suggestion in the 'Gite Diary' that we provide for our guests to write about where they've been, what they've done, places recommended, or ideas for the Gite. The suggestion was that we ought to add some details in the 'Gite Guide' folder about where the nearby medical facilities were - just in case anyone needed a doctors or the hospital.

Fortunately in over 70 different sets of guests staying in the Gite over the last 4 years we've only had to help one party of guests out previously with details of where the nearby doctor is (who speaks good English), so we'd never got round to writing up the emergency contact details.

Little did I suspect that this suggestion would turn out to be prophetic for us!

We'd been at the Gite for a week and on the Sunday night I'd taken our dog Dexter out for a walk in the evening and the kids had come along with me as well. They were walking and I was riding on one of the bikes we keep in the barn.

After we'd got back from the walk I found Liz had had an accident whilst we'd been out and had tripped whilst rushing up the stairs into the house, had put her hands out to save herself, and as she fell over she'd bent her fingers on her right hand back, so much so that she thought she'd broken them, and was now in agony.

Nothing for it but a trip to the hospital to get Liz's hand x-ray'd and strapped up. I wasn't expecting the medical treatment would be that much different whether it had been broken or not, Dr Geoffrey predicted that the hand would be strapped up and immobilised either way!

I wasn't actually sure where there was a local Accident and Emergency unit but as I knew there definitely was a hospital in Pontivy and since Pontivy was a big town I guessed (correctly) that there would be an emergency unit there so off we set.

The Urgences unit was deserted and unlike a British A&E it wasn't full of drunkards and their police escorts.
Once the medical staff had assertained that we were not French nationals (and thus didn't have a French medical insurance policy) they didn't seem all that bothered about Liz's passport our our EHIC European reciprocal health cover cards. Liz was quickly booked in and sent off in the hands of the medical staff leaving me to look after our children in the waiting room.

Fortunately we'd brought their DS's and some books with us so they were kept quiet whilst I watched CSI overdubbed in French on the TV! I was also struck by the coffee vending machine that only charged 50 cents per drink; quite decent coffee for me and hot chocolate for the boys - in the UK this machine would have been another money-making scheme for the NHS ...

An hour or so later Liz came out, as predicted with her hand all strapped up, and fortunately the X-rays had shown that it wasn't broken merely badly sprained and bruised. We were given a prescription for paracetamol for the pain, given a sheet of paper with hospital telephone numbers on, and told to make an appointment with the doctor for later that week for a checkup.

And that was that.

Next day trying to book the appointment was a "laugh" (not) as the telephone number I'd been given didn't work, so after several fruitless attempts I phoned the main hotel number, got a recorded message in very rapid French telling me to dial a new number (so took me two attempts to correctly right it down), and then I finally got through to the hotel switchboard.
Lots of fun and games trying to explain in French that I wanted to make an appointment - firstly to the switchboard operator, and then the minor fractures unit secretary. I of course couldn't pronounce either the 'secretariat''s name (i.e. department name) or the doctor's name correctly so it took some time to make myself understood and book the appointment.

The paracetamol turned out to be almost exactly the same as in the UK, only difference was that it was 1000Mg of active ingredient (instead of 500Mg) and you take one tablet instead of two. So no difference. Except for the price .... paracetamol in the UK are 16p for 16 in Tesco, in France they were €1.08 for 8 - a massive 675% uplift!

Over the course of the next week Liz's hand slowly got better, she was able to take the support off after a few days and start using her hand again, but even now (some 2 months later) she still gets some pain in her hand.

Finding our way round the hospital for the checkup was a bit different as well. We firstly made the mistake of going to the fractures ward, to get sent back down to the fractures outpatients unit, to be sent back to get to get booked in at the central bookings in desk (again once we'd shown our EHIC they weren't interested in our paperwork), to then go back to the fractures outpatients unit where we were seen almost immediately by the doctor who spoke pretty good English and talked us through what the x-rays showed and prescribed some anti-inflammatory cream to help reduce the bruising. Then back to the central booking-in desk again to settle our bill for the doctors visit (another €8) and we were finally all complete.

I think in theory I could claim for the medical treatment and the two sets of prescriptions but it just doesn't seem worth the hassle. Main thing is that Liz is OK and her hand wasn't broken.

Flying Solo at last !!

2009-09-27T22:00:00.002+01:00

I have only mentioned a couple of times before about learning to fly a Microlight aircraft back in June when instead of flying to France we ended up flying to the Isle of Wight.

Truth is there's not been much news to tell.

I've continued to fly round and round in circuits round the airfield, not really getting much better, and seriously thinking of jacking the whole thing in.

And then the Chief Instructor at Bedford Microlights took me under his wing and I've been flying with him for the last couple of months; and have finally been making progress.

A couple of weeks ago I had some really good landings in the morning but couldn't fly in the evening as the instructor had hurt his back. Then yesterday I was flying really really well but it got too dark, and then this morning it all came together, we did some more circuits, I landed it without any help from the instructor and when we taxi'd back to the clubhouse he announced he was going to get out and let me go off on my own !!

Ulp ..

I'd been warned that the aircraft would take off and fly much faster with only one person on board instead of two and despite having a big container of sand as ballast behind me it certainly made a big difference to the handling with just me onboard.

Did my checks, lined up at the end of the runway, taxi'd along and then I was off - beyond the point of going back.

The Microlight shot up in the air like a rocket with just me in and before I knew it I was at 500 feet circling the airfield.

Round the airfield circuit once, twice then a third time, having to reduce the engine revs as with less weight I kept on climbing higher and higher.

Third time round I lined up for landing, aimed at the runway and down we went. Everything lined up right on the centreline and the aiming point, cleared the trees and then shot past where I was intending to land. With less weight on board I'd mis-judged how much more the aircraft "floated" and I wasn't where I wanted to be to land.

Put the power on and climbed up to 500' for a second attempt.

Second attempt the same happened, I mis-judged the weight difference and had to abort the landing again.

Third time lucky I deliberately aimed short to take account of the different flight characteristics, and this time I was in the right place at the right time. A bit of a bounce on landing which I thought wasn't perfect but those that were watching said it was a fine landing.

Anyway I was able to walk away and the aircraft wasn't bent so I call that a success !

Taxi'd back for the obligatory photos and a grin from ear to ear.

Even now (some 12 hours later) I'm still really excited about having gone solo for the first time. We of course had to have the champagne at the end of the day and I'm looking forward to my next flight which unfortunately won't be for a couple of weeks as I've got work and a visit up North in between times.

Still some way before I fully qualify as a Microlight pilot. I've got 4 exams to do, more practice at the core skills, cross country navigation to learn, plus a "fitness to fly" practical to pass with an examiner, but at least I'm on the way now.

Two Brittany news items - Seaweed and Students

2009-09-21T23:00:00.001+01:00

A couple of quick Brittany-related news snippets I came across during the last week ...

Firstly the BBC leads off with news of rotting poisonous seaweed on a beach in Brittany is suspected as being the cause of a lorry driver's death.
Each year there's an annual cleanup of the beaches at Binic on the North Brittany coast (fortunately some distance from our Brittany Gite) to remove up to 2,000 tons of rotting seaweed and it seems that this driver collapsed and died after removing three lorry loads of rotting seaweed.

Yuck!

Secondly, and more lucky for this person, the Telegraph reports that a drunken French student who lay down to sleep on the railway line escaped unharmed when a high speed TGV from Paris to Quimper ran over him.
The man passed out between the rails and despite the train driver applying the emergency brakes the train didn't come to a stop until 900m afterwards!

I love the way that the story reports that they were "unable to wake him afterwards" and that "police were hoping for an explanation when he regains conciousness" - a lucky student methinks.

Mending gates in France (again)

2009-09-17T19:00:00.000+01:00

Driveway and gates

I've written before about emergency repairs after the gates to our French holiday home broke and how I spent time doing more repairs to the gates in 2007, and when we arrived in Brittany in August this year I could see yet that more repairs were needed.

Previously I've built a new side gate and a large gate down the back of the 'second house' to separate the garden into two and make it easier for guests in the house that we currently rent out to keep an eye on their kids.

These new gates have all been built with 1" thick pressure treated timber so they won't rot for a while and even if they do, the gate's sufficiently thick and strong that it'll hold together for a good few years.

The existing gates to the gate, both the two sets of double driveway gates and the little single gate by the letter box, though are not so lucky. They're built of much thinner 1cm thick wood, I think it's pine, and they're slowly rotting away and falling apart.

I noticed that several down-bars on the single gate had rotted through as had the cross-bars and the whole gate was holding together by luck and friction on the screws ! Needed urgent repairs. The two double driveway gates had a few down-pieces that were in poor condition as well and one of the cross-bars was gone as well.

Off to the timber merchant to buy some more treated timber for the cross-pieces and start the lengthy job of cutting them to size and painting them up.

Painting the gate pieces takes ages as each piece needs to be primed and undercoated on two sides, then turned round and primed and undercoated on the opposite two sides, then it needs gloss painting again on two sides, turned round and glossed on the other two sides, and then the whole process repeated again for a second coat of gloss paint.

Of course I have to leave the wood to dry overnight after each coat of paint before I can do the other side so it all takes a week to do. Plus time taken to unscrew the old pieces and to rebuild and re-screw together the gates afterwards.

I have got slightly ahead of myself by building the down-pieces to all the gates in advance at home in England and as they're all the same size on all the gates I can saw, shape, sand, prime and gloss paint a pile of them in advance ready for when we next go over to France. These were easier as I had them prepared and all I needed to do was to screw the pieces onto the gates and job done.

When I put the gates together I re-discovered the old maxim of "measure twice, cut once" as one of the new large cross-pieces I'd made for the double gates was a perfect 10cm too short and so didn't now reach from the hinges to the centre of the gate -argh! A bit of judicious 'adjustment' (i.e. I bodged it with another bit of wood behind) and it was all finished just as it stated raining again.

So the gates are now all repaired again and we've a pile of broken gate pieces which will go for firewood. All the new timber will of course be OK but about half the gates are still made up of the original wood so I expect I'll have to be replacing and repairing some more gate pieces next year. I've been back to the timber merchant in England and am already making some more down-pieces ready for our next holiday ...

A Place in France, an Indian Summer - Book Review

2009-09-15T22:00:00.001+01:00

A Place in France

One of the advantages of having been away on holiday was that I actually got some 'me' time to sit down and enjoy a book (or two).

Of course I just had to find a France-related book, ending up with Nigel Farrell's 'A Place In France - An Indian Summer' which I thoroughly enjoyed.

A few years ago I watched the original Channel 4 series "A Place in the Sun" which follows the up's and down's (and frequently argumentative down's) of Nigel Farrell and Nippi Singh as they try to find and buy a holiday home in France.

The pair eventually settling on a small hamlet in the Ardeche region of Southern France. Nigel and Nippi eventually did find a house they both liked but which required an enormous amount of work to make habitable. The fact that they ever got there in the end was a testament to the builder's determination more than Nigel and Nippi's as they seemed to flap from one set of problems to the next.

By the end of the series though 40-something year old divorcee Nigel had fallen in love with Celine, a young French single parent who worked in the nearby bank, and had decided to try to live full time in France.

And so to the second series from Channel 4 which follows Nigel trying to start his new life in France. And of course if you're going to live somewhere you need an income, so Nigel hits on the usual and different 'big idea' to open and run an Indian Restaurant in the Ardeche region, despite having had no prior experience of working in a restaurant at all !

The book follows extracts from Nigel's diary for a year from having the original restaurant idea through to the winter after the restaurant opened. Having enjoyed watching the TV series I initially thought that the book wouldn't add anything, but having now read it I've been proven wrong as the book gives a far better personal insight into the actual story and shows more of Nigel's own relationship with the lovely Celine. Although the TV series follows the popular 'fly on the wall' documentary format, the way the story's been edited to keep the viewer interested and ensure cliff-hanger endings to each episode does result in Nigel appearing to be a bit of a fool.

Nigel's sunny optimism that the Indian restaurant idea is a sure-fire winner takes a battering when Nippi refuses to invest in the business and so Nigel is forced to find a new business partner, which he eventually does by joining up with the outrageously camp and excitable Reza Mahammad who already runs a successful Indian restaurant in London. Nigel certainly struck gold with Rezza and together the pair battle through trying to find a location for the restaurant, finding an Indian chef, decorating and equipping the restaurant and sorting through the inevitable French red-tape and bureaucracy.

There's a delightful part of the story that recounts how Nigel fails to tackle registering the business with the local Chamber of Commerce - without which he can't trade, pay bills to suppliers or even take card payments from customers. Nigel ignores the task until the very last minute before the restaurant opens and then has to scramble around trying to get copies of his UK birth certificate and UK divorce certificate ... and then is told that they're not acceptable because they need to be translated into French! I'll leave you to read the book to find out how he gets round this particular problem (spoiler is that it's on page 211).

Nigel is particularly outraged (and rightly so) when Nippi waltzes in towards the end and tries to take credit for the restaurant concept, but once the squabble was over Nippi assists the duo with publicity and by brilliantly suggesting getting hold of an Elephant to help promote the restaurant's opening night.

Reza contributes occasionally to the story with his own little diary 'interjections' and it's clear that he thinks Nigel's 'big idea' is as mad as a box of frogs, but he'll go along with the idea "because it's fun, darlings!".

I wouldn't say that this book isn't written as a "roll around on the floor, laughing" story (unlike, say, George East's tales of life in France), but it's well written and easy to read and good holiday reading material.

Only £5.99 (RRP £7.99) from Amazon.

Free tickets to The France Show 2010 (8th to 10th January)

2009-09-09T19:03:00.002+01:00

What better way to banish the new year blues with a bit of French experience ?

From 8th to 10th January 2010 The France Show is running at Earls Court, and for a limited time free tickets are available if you pre-register.

Some of the event attractions include:

* Novelli Food Theatre with cookery demonstrations from Novelli and his chefs
* Travel, Language and Property seminars with speakers including actress Carole Drinkwater and author Kate Mosse
* The UK’s largest French property exhibition
* Property renovation feature learn from an experienced renovator
* Petanque terrain to test your skills at this traditional French pastime
* Top French restaurants to eat at - Mon Plaisir and Café des Amis
* Artisan Theatre with cheese, cured meat and fine chocolate tastings
* Wine and champagne seminars and tastings
* Renault Classic Car display
* French Market selling produce and fashions
* French regional tourism boards to meet and find out about
* and so much more...

Enjoy!

Not going to return this missed call

2009-09-06T22:25:00.002+01:00

Picked up my mobile phone this afternoon to notice that I'd had a missed call.

I've a meeting first thing tomorrow morning with a new customer so was partially expecting that I may get a work call today about tomorrow's meeting so wasn't all that surprised by receiving a call on a Sunday afternoon.

The caller's phone number hadn't been recognised and I didn't immediately recognise the number either .... +2348064296xxx ...

Did a google search of country code 234 as it wasn't one that I recognised immediately.

Ah-ha, country code +234 is Nigeria. I don't know anyone in Nigeria but I think it's highly likely that it's someone trying to scam me about something - probably the Gite.

I'm usually pretty good at spotting scam email booking requests like this one in February this year and this attempt last year to book a 'honeymoon'. But I've not had a telephone scam attempt before and I've no intention of having my first. No idea how the person got my mobile phone number as I don't publish it on the website.

Ferry news snippets from Euroferries, Condor and P&O

2009-09-03T22:00:00.000+01:00

Three little ferry-related news snippets:

First up is EuroFerries where the news is there is no news. I've written a few articles about EuroFerries proposed new service from Ramsgate to Boulogne, most recently on 1st August when at a press conference they announced that "service would commence during August".

Well it's early September now and the Euroferries website remains unchanged, still saying they'll launch in August so it's a bit of a poor reflection if they can't even update their own website.

There's further speculation and commentary over on Kent based 'The Big Blog', most recently on August 25th with a video of the Bonanza Express still sitting in Tenerife, not painted in EuroFerries colours, doing nothing. Most recent suggestion is that the boat will arrive in the UK by September 10th.

Don't hold your breath on this one methinks ...

Secondly following on from P&O's €360m contract for two new Dover/Calais 'super' ferries, there's a press release on P&O's website announcing that they've completed the keel laying at Rauma shipyard in Finland for the first of the new boats which is due into service at the end of 2010.

And finally, spare a thought for Condor Ferries who according to the Jersey Evening Post managed to let a door fall off a ferry whilst it was enroute to France. Apparently passenger safety wasn't compromised and a temporary repair has now been made.

New format french car number plate

2009-09-02T21:17:00.003+01:00

Whilst we were on holiday over in France I spotted for the first time a 'new style' French car number plate.

Since April 2009 newly registered cars in France have been issued with a numberplate of the format XX NNN XX with the X's and N's being issued in strict chronological sequence nationally. The department code that represents where in France the car has come from now appears in a blue box on the right (so in this case, department 56 for Morbihan - South Brittany), and no longer forms part of the number plate.

This'll reduce the amount of paperwork that the old licence plate scheme caused with cars having to be issued with a new registration number if they were bought by someone in a different department, or if you moved home you'd also have to re-register your car. The new number plates are now issued for the life of the vehicle.

Also on the right of the plate is an optional regional name, Bretagne (i.e. Brittany), the regional flag, and to doubtless keep any Brittany separatists happy, the regional name for Brittany in the Breton language - Breizh.

I first wrote about France changing the car number plate scheme back in early 2008 and even since then new scheme's introduction ended up being delayed a further year.

2010 Holiday dates and prices now available for our Holiday Gite in France

2009-09-01T20:22:00.007+01:00

I've spent a bit of time over the last couple of days since getting home from our holiday by busying myself with updating our Gite website with a 2010 booking calendar and prices and availability for next year.

In essence we are keeping the rental price the same as 2009 with peak season (i.e. school holidays in July and August) at £500 per week, and out of season (i.e. November to March) being just £225 per week.

We've simplified the pricing scheme as well and instead of two mid-season price bands there's now one which applies to Christmas/New Year, April to June, September and October - this mid season rate is only £350 per week.

All vacation let prices are for the whole of our holiday home (i.e. up to 6 people plus 2 babies) and we include all utility costs (water, heating, electricity) and also all bed linen in the rate so there's no unexpected additional costs for our guests.

Details of current holiday availability for 2009 and 2010 are now available on our website as are the holiday gite rental prices in both pounds and euros and full booking conditions.

Whilst we were away at the Gite ourselves I wrote about a number of booking enquiries we'd received for 2010 and one of those has already booked. I was thinking that the end of August was about right to launch next years holiday prices but I've received nagging emails from RentalSystems for the last couple of weeks reminding me that I was missing out on next years bookings by not setting our prices for 2010, and looking back on the Blog I see that I launched 2009 holiday prices on August 5th last year so if anything I'm a bit late!

LDLines moves Irish ferry service from Le Havre to Cherbourg

2009-08-31T09:00:00.000+01:00

LD Lines have just announced that they're replacing the LDLines service from Rosslare to Le Havre with a new crossing service from Rosslare to Cherbourg.

By doing this they'll be able to cut sailing time from 20 hours to 17 hours, offer an increased service frequency and pickup more freight service that goes through Cherbourg.

Cherbourg is a new port for LDLines so it'll be interesting to see if they look to expand their services further with crossings from the UK into this part of Northern France.

Of course this service now directly competes with IrishFerries route from Rosslare to Cherbourg, but LDLines are offering a slightly quicker service crossing time with 17 hours vs. 18 ½ hours so I expect there'll be a new price war looming. LD Lines have already kicked this off with an opening offer of €79 each way single crossing price.

Required yet more changes to be made to our website of different travel choices for getting to our holiday cottage as a result of this new service.

Back home, unpacking, dealing with the post, emails and a long-term rental enquiry

2009-08-30T17:23:00.003+01:00

Oh the joys of getting back home from holiday.

There is something to be said for going on holiday by plane, and especially by RyanAir, as it stops you taking too much stuff with you. Taking your own car on holiday seems to encourage all amount of stuff to be brought (and bought) that you'd otherwise manage to have done without!

Spent most of today unpacking the car, putting the large sack of (unused) tile adhesive back in the garage as I never quite managed to find time to do some bathroom tiling, putting away my tools in the work shed, commencing the washing mountain (despite having used the washing machine in France quite a lot we still seem to have even more to wash), and of course putting away all the holiday souvenirs we bought.

And then of course there is the mountain of post to open and emails to deal with. I took my laptop with me and used McDonald's free Wifi to enable me to read some of my emails and booking enquiries whilst away, but there's still a massive pile to do.

Had a major calamity when I turned on my home PC to find that it wouldn't boot at all. Didn't recognise the hard disk as being present and there was a worrying rattle coming from inside the cabinet. Took the side off, fiddled with the cables to check they were all seated properly, swapped the hard disk power cable over for another power cable inside the cabinet and the hard disk is now working .... but it's got me worried now so I'm currently running a full hard disk backup onto my external lacie drive so that if it's really on the way out then at least I've got a completely up to date backup.

And in amongst the emails was a booking enquiry from our advert on alwaysonvacation.com. The inquiry was from a French gentleman looking to rent our house for 2 months in October and November whilst work is being done on his house in Josselin.

Some of these long-term rental enquiries can be scam attempts but this sounded genuine so with the help of Google translate I carefully crafted my reply email in French detailing the property particulars.

But what to charge for a monthly rental figure?

The normal weekly holiday rent for the Gite would have worked out at circa €1200 per month but I felt this'd be too high for a long term out of season rent - the Gite would be occupied for an extended period of time which is worth having and we wouldn't have the changeover costs normally incurred with multiple holiday lettings.

A bit of google searching brought me to ViteLoge a French equivalent of RightMove to find houses to rent or purchase.

3 bedroom houses and apartments seem to be rented for anywhere between €430 and €800 with most being around the €500 mark.

€500 seems just to low to me. This is only going to be a 2 month rental agreement not for 12 months, our rental prices normally include electricity, heating oil, water etc and it makes sense to do the same for a 2 month agreement so I can't make it too low as it could cost me more in heating oil alone, and I have to consider that I may incur additional cleaning costs afterwards.

So I've plumped for €750 a month and we'll see what happens.

Travelling back from our long French summer holiday

2009-08-29T19:08:00.003+01:00

We've just driven back from our french holiday home in central Brittany where we've had a great 3 week holiday. No work (well lots of work on the house but no real work), very warm and sunny, and a great relaxing time was had by all.

It's a long drive back from Brittany to Dunkerque but worth it as the ferry fares on the shorter crossings are much much cheaper than the routes into St Malo and Western France. We set off at 9:30am this morning and with lunch and shopping trip stops enroute (Liz went to buy more things for the home, I went to BricoDepot to look at DIY items!) we arrived in good time for the 8pm ferry.

When we stopped off at a giant Carrefour shopping complex on the outskirts of Caen I was amused by the different areas of the car park that were marked out with different countries of the world - Afrique, Australie, Norvège, etc.
Makes a whole different spin on the concept of having 'no idea where you left the car' .... I imagined a cross French wife berating her husband "what do you mean you left the car somewhere in Africa???"

I'm again using Norfolk Line's free wifi which I found on the way out but it's been a bit unreliable this time. All was working when we first got onboard but after half an hour or so I couldn't access any websites. A while later it was working again so I can finish off my blog posting, then just as I hit 'submit' it went off air - argh!

Running repairs to the swimming pool

2009-08-10T18:30:00.000+01:00

Got over to our French holiday Gite OK on Saturday night, a long drive down from Dunkerque but Liz doesn't like the dog being left "all alone" in the car for too long so it was the long drive for us this time.

When we got there I found that the swimming pool cover we'd fitted at Easter was torn and the water was looking rather green and mucky again.

Took the pool cover off, chucked in a generous amount of Chlorine Shock and Granular Flocculant and then changed the pump filter. There was a spare filter in the barn next to the pool chemicals but unfortunately none of the guests had changed it in a while so the old filter was rather slimy and blocked up.

Left the pump on overnight and by next morning a miracle had occurred, clean pool water ! It's amazing how well chlorine shock works at killing microbes in the water and turning a the pool clean again.

By that afternoon the kids were already in the pool enjoying themselves.

Later on we were sitting down outside when Liz noticed that one of the pool pump hoses was acting as a fountain and water was leaking out on the gravel. Looks like the plastic pipes get brittle with age in the sun and rather than being pliable and bendy they now gave ominous creaks when I moved them. Fortunately with all the different pumps we've been through with the pool over the years I have quite a collection of replacement pipes so was able to swap the broken one over.

PS: And in case you wondered why I'm writing on my blog rather than spending time with the family on holiday ... I'm currently sitting in McDonalds carpark in Loudeac accessing their free wifi (see previous blog posting about free McDonalds wifi and hat-tip to Bob Toovey for originally spotting this McDonalds service). The main reason for connecting up was to arrange a booking for the Gite for the first two weeks of September, but whilst I'm here I'll catch up on my emails as well.

Bookings bookings bookings - 2010 already??

2009-08-10T17:13:00.004+01:00

Flipping 'eck

Just checking my emails in McDonalds again to confirm a holiday booking for two weeks in September and found 104 emails since I last checked on Monday!

And the good news was several booking enquiries:
- Confirmation of the September booking
- An enquiry from an American couple about April 2010
- An enquiry for a family for a week in May 2010
- And another enquiry from another family for 2 weeks in August 2010.

Family getting bored now, better go ...

Sailing to France - and found free wifi on board!

2009-08-08T10:33:00.005+01:00

NorfolkLine

I'm currently sitting in the lounge on board a Norfolk Line ferry sailing across to France to start our 3 week holiday. The kids are off watching a magic show, Liz is fretting about the dog being all alone in the car, and I've been left to guard the luggage.

The Dover coastline has just about disappeared in the sea mist and so to my surprise I've found out that Norfolk Line have free wi-fi onboard their ferry. The download speed isn't fantastically quick and is certainly nowhere near fast enough to watch a movie over (according to a quick test I did with the BBC iplayer speed test it's rated as 73kbps download speed and between 36 and 148kbps streaming speed - i.e. similar speed to a modem), but the signal strength is good and at least it's completely free.

(As a slight technical aside it appears that Norfolk Line must route their ferry internet connection through Denmark because when I searched with Google I was presented with google.dk as the default homepage!)

Compare this to Brittany Ferries who just 2 weeks ago announced that internet access is now available across all Brittany Ferries services to France and Spain ... but that you had to "purchase access time from the information desk onboard".
No details of actual prices are on their website - but it ain't free.

Happy happy holidays !!