Judyc

Would definitely steer well clear of this one!

Thanks for the replies, everybody. Hopefully they have now all found a home, and proceeds will be going towards a good cause.

Thanks Tony I have sent you an email. Judy

Does anyone know who might want a large supply of English books.  Fiction and non-fiction (cookery, gardening, etc) from the last twenty years of hoarding?  Probably close to 1000+.  I know Phoenix have a sale, but it looks like it's not until May and I could really do with getting rid of them well before then. We are close to Agen and Moissac.  Any suggestions? Judy  

I would add a vote for ownersdirect.com.  I have been delighted by the number of enquiries (with a couple of bookings) that we have had from them since joining in August (after dropping Chez Nous - useless to us!).  For a normally quiet time of year, I am very impressed. On the downside, I was transferred to holiday-rentals after the sad demise of holidaylets.net.  I have been with them since September and have not had a single enquiry. Judy

Hi Tia Have you looked at independentowners.com?  They do templates especially for rental owners, and are extremely easy to produce a professional result (IMHO!)  They will also provide you with SEO guidance to help get your website recognised by the search engines. Good luck!

I have suffered with these every year in my pots of geraniums and yes they love eating the roots of them and other bedding plants,so I would end up with some very sad looking flowers. I have found a product called Capsicol at the garden centre which I put in the pots when I plant initially and there was a dramatic improvement.  I also found some in the flower beds this week, so may have to sprinkle it around there too. Judy  

We have some UK generated income as well as french, so it would be quite logical to use sterling to buy the car. As regards ordering a LHD car in the UK, it is not a problem.  Some dealers may tell you they can't do it, but only perhaps because it is a bit of an unknown quantiy for them, and they don't really want to get involved in something they don't know the processes for.  The specifications vary between country so you need to check that what you would get on a French car would still be standard on a British spec, eg on the model we are looking at, cruise control is standard on the French spec, but extra on the UK version, whereas heated front screen is standard in UK and an option over here!  Part of the reason it could be so much cheaper is we both used to work in the industry, and still have 'contacts' who will do very good deals for us!  I am sure there are other dealers who would be keen to sell anything at the moment at a good price!  I spoke to DRIRE this morning and they said it was very straightforward, so long as I have the type approval certificate. With the pound strengthening, though, we are still undecided, mainly because of the hassle factor!

Thanks for the info guys. I am going to take a trip to DRIRE tomorrow to see if they can clarify the VAT issue, and if they think I will have any other problem. Judy

Has anybody imported a new LHD vehicle from the UK and registered it over here? With the drop in the pound, it is cheaper for us to order a new car from the UK, to french spec, and then import it, but I am unsure if we are creating problems for ourselves further down the line. I suspect we would need to pay the difference on the two VAT rates, but would be grateful if anybody could tell me otherwise., and also what other costs are involved.  I have checked the DRIRE website, but can't find anything about brand new vehicles. Thanks in advance Judy

Pun You may not be trying to preach to anyone, but you are making a jolly good job of it!  As Itf says, many of us have been running gites for a number of years and have learned from first hand experience.  You remind me of my working life when every year a new university graduate would arrive and immediately tell us where we, who had been doing the job for years, were all going wrong.  After all, they had  a degree and had learned it all out of a book.   No doubt they had valuable contributions to make but to think they immediately knew everything and we were all numbskulls did not go down well. I am intrigued to know what your job was that makes you so qualified to lecture to us idiots?  Obviously something not requiring spelling and grammar. Many of our guests (and us included) have stayed in places where there were rules and regulations and lectures and beauracracy, and guess what....they invariably hate it and never go back.  Ditto Itf again - when our guests arrive, they are shown the gite, (including the fridge with the wine and cold beer) shown the pool and told how the alarms work and shown the file that contains all the information they could need.  Then they are offered a cup of tea or a cold beer and made to feel welcome.  There are fire alarms in our gites, but I certainly don't feel the need to show them they work.  We have tested them and know they do.  The guests will correctly assume they do.  Perhaps we are lucky (or not) that we are on site.  The guests can and do come to us for all sorts of information and help, and we have done everything from booking restaurants, to accompanied visits to doctors and dentists to dealing with the sudden death of a guest.  I am concerned from your posting that you think pool checking is a once a week thing?  I hope I am wrong.  A pool can turn extremely quickly, particularly in the thundery weather and if it happens on any day other than a Monday, to tie in with your regime, you could be in for a nasty shock.  You say you are sure that your guests don't want the owner to be there every day - I am sure they would prefer you to be there for pool cleaning and checking every day, than be swimming in a cloudy pool.  Mine is cleaned and checked at 7am every morning, at no inconvenience to the guests. And guess what?  Guests don't always do what your rules/lectures have told them!!!  Wait until you are up to your arms in s**t trying to clear the fosse pipes because teenage girls ignore the notices not to put anything except what nature intended into the fosse.  Plastic cotton buds followed by an half a loo roll is not fosse friendly and has a nasty habit of blocking everything up.  Wait until you see the abuse your gite will get from people who are just thoughtless with other people's property.  I spent ages one winter sanding down and varnishing the kitchen worktop in a gite.  It looked beautiful.  We were then invited into the gite for a drink early in the season, and watched in horror as the guest cut up a lemon on my worktop, having ignored the chopping boards right next to him.  The customer may be king, but even kings can be a royal pain in the ****. Every guest brings a new situation or problem that you learn from and sometimes you might want to scream with frustration.  It doesn't mean we don't enjoy what we do.  We have been running our gites for eight years, and consitently have a repeat/referral booking rate of more than 60%.  We must be doing something right, and if we are it is through talking and listening to our guests, talking to other gite owners and reading some of the excellent advice given on this forum. Everyone is entitled to an opinion on this forum.  But please, don't try to teach granny to suck eggs when you have only just finished reading the book about where to find them!        

There is a website called www.thebigdomain.com which specialises in large parties and they have plenty of chateaux on their site. Judy www.faysselle.iowners.net  

Another ooops. I forgot my dunnocks! Judy

I'm afraid I agree with Sue.  I can't count the number of times that we have driven south and seen the weather change for the better once you get past Limoges. Will never forget one time, driving northwards out of Limoges where within minutes the scenery changed from green to white and everything was frozen with ryme (?) whereas we had come from a lovely sunny winter's day in Lot-et-Garonne. Perhaps I am slightly biased - we spent four hours stuck on the motorway at Limoges  in the snow earlier this year!   Judy 

Thanks to Itf's comments, I was dragged out of apathy and prompted to e-mail Independent Owners this morning to ask about the availability chart problem. I received a phonecall back within two hours (certain other websites could learn a thing or two about that for customer service!).  IO say that they will be launching a 'mark two' version of the sites hopefully in July, and it will be address both the availability and the 'counting' issue, along with other improvements that have been suggested by their users. Keep up the good service, IO!

thanks Itf, I really appreciate that feedback. The availability calendar is a downside to this particular website in that it can only cope with one property, not all three.  Hopefully the designer might be able to incorporate this feature in the future.  On reflection (and thanks to your comments as until now I had ignored the problem!), I have changed it to show my weeks when all three gites are  booked and left 'available' anything where I have one of the gites free. Not perfect, but an interim solution. For anyone who wants to build a really easy website, but has no technical knowledge whatsover and is too intimidated to start, this was such an easy website to put together.  It is from the www.independentowners.com website and your website address becomes www.(yournameorwhatever).iowners.net .  Unlike other advertising websites, it does not link back to the Independent Owners website so you can (a) point interested renters in its direction without fear they will wander off and look at other properties and (b) because it doesn't link, other advertising websites that we use don't have a problem with us adding it to our adverts.  There are a couple of downsides, in that there is no counter available to see how many hits we are getting, although I have been told that facility is coming, and the availability on multi-property.  At least I have full control of content and can change at will. PS   I have no connection whatsover with IO, just a happy customer! Judy www.faysselle.iowners.net    

You just reminded me I advertise with Holiday Havens, too.  It's just soooo long since I had an enquiry from them, I had completely forgotten!! Judy www.faysselle.iowners.net  

Tim According to this website, nightjars make a 'churring' noise.  There are all sorts of birdcalls on this link. http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/n/nightjar/index.asp Judy

From Lot-et-Garonne, can I add:- goldfinch, firecrest or goldcrest (not sure which!), nightjar, cirl bunting, kite, skylark.  The winter before last we had numerous bramblings at our bird table and frequent visits from a hawfinch.  Neither one were seen last winter.

I used Onspeed for a year until about three months ago.  It made no difference whatsover to the speed - although it always 'showed' it was working, the speed did not improve, nor did I see any difference when I stopped using it. As regards the neighbours, yes on good terms with them, but they are about to move house and I will have to ingratiate myself with the new family! Thanks for the replies, as it has given me food for thought

I live 9,6 km from our exchange and obviously have NO chance of getting any ADSL.  I did visit our local maire to see if there would be any change to the current set up but he shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyes heavenwards.  Think I get the picture. The only suggestion that was made was 'move'! Ironically, our neighbours-across-the-valley are able to get their ADSL as they are linked to a different exchange.

Jet2.com flies direct from Manchester to Toulouse, according to www.skyscanner.co.uk Fares might be a bit higher than Ryanair, but less hassle!

Thanks a lot for all the info.  I will investigate this one. I do have anti-spyware which I use - lavasoft, but I have to remember to run it every so often and it will quarantine any tracking cookies.  Even after a couple of weeks it will find a dozen or more.  Perhaps I should be doing it every day! Ironically, I had run it the day before these problems started, but unknown to me my husband had switched it off by accident before it had finished running.  Bless him! Thanks again Judy

I too have been receiving mail from myself.  Three e-mails in the last three days.  Although I have had the 'rejected' e-mail come back to me (supposedly from me, but not) in the past, this is the first time I have  had mail come into my mailbox purporting to be from me.  I do use spamjab so mail gets held, but I do worry about if this could have any effect on mail we try sending in reply to gite enquiries. To add to this, I have also received two weird e-mails through the contact form on my website (via zyweb) in the last two days.  I thought the reason to use a contact form instead of direct onto my own address was to stop this sort of thing.  These two mail were from motor-finder.iespana.es and contained lots of junk about carburettors!  How have these people picked me up like this?  Any suggestions?

This has been a discussion point several times for my husband and I for our three gites, as I think we should look seriously at having them but my husband isn't keen.  We have run our gites for nine years and so far, only one family said a few years ago that they would have liked a dishwasher, but as they have carried on coming each year it didn't have too much of a negative effect that there wasn't one.  Having read the thread, I realised perhaps how many people were not even considering us because of the lack of! Husband's argument against is that, for a gite for six people, we either supply twenty plates, bowls, cups etc in each gite or expect renters to use it three times a day which he feels will be expensive.  How do other owners equip their gites to take into account a dishwasher?