Hectorsdad

That’s really impressive! How far is it and how long does it take?

It is so easy to make such a slip. I catch myself trying to answer threads many years old but now I have trained myself to look at the dates. At least the information may help some other desperate member.

We had our sixth jab just over two weeks ago. There were almost zero side effects this time from a French vaccine. Last week we both suffered from feeling very cold, shivering, runny nose, watering eyes and general tiredness. We can’t say if it was covid or just a delayed response to the vaccine but it has been very uncomfortable. I don’t suffer badly from hay fever unless the pollen count is very high but I have been taking a daily antihistamine pill to reduce some of the symptoms. we are just coming out of it and I am back in the garden catching up on cutting back of weeds and trees.

I think you are quite right to get new rabies jab as soon as you arrive in France so there will be no problem when you return assuming you stick to your intended length of stay. Your plan seems foolproof. We chose to have a new anti-rabies jab done in France before the new PP was issued so I don’t have experience of the exact conditions. we travel on Brittany Ferries and they ask for a pre-travel, online form to be completed before we arrive at the port. It is supposed to speed up their processing when you arrive. There are a few questions about what type of documentation is being used and in the case of a EU PP, asks when the rabies jab was done and its expiry date. It does not ask about who gave it so the Euroshuttle system will probably not notice any discrepancy.

As usual her (it’s) recent post is simply a revamp of what was offered in the first two posts a year ago.

I plan every part of any trip where I have to depend on factors out of my direct control. Planes and trains, car parks, car hire, hotels and routes are all booked and rehearsed thoroughly. Some of this is simply to reduce costs. For my short trip to a funeral next week I have fallback plans to cope with possible flight cancellations thanks to French ATC strike action. My moveable satnav is already loaded with several extra “my places” to help with quite intricate journeys in a hire car.

Your house insurance will probably cover any damage or theft provided you have satisfied their policy stipulations and can prove the existence of the stolen goods. I can’t imagine you would be able to claim for the fact they were squatting in your house.

We do own a secondaire and our principal home is in UK. I managed to register as the media suggested and found our house described correctly but there was no evidence of a form to complete. I will now wait for some communication from anywhere official to tell me to fill in a form.

The simple answer you are looking for is YES just turn up at the Tunnel or ferry and use the new pet passport. The microchip will be read in both directions. On the return to UK you must have the worming treatment and general health check entered by a French vet in the usual one to five days before embarking the Shuttle or ferry. You are fortunate to have an understanding French vet and the passport will be new and valid. Although our dog had an up to date rabies jab given by our French vet recorded in his pp, we decided to give him a new, early rabies treatment jab in his first EU (France) pp. The earlier jab was entered first with data copied from the old pp followed by the new jab which will last for three years. Without the old rabies jab record, we would have had to wait 21 days after the new jab before returning In my previous post, I mentioned that the microchip had to be registered on the French system before the pp could be issued. The registration took about three weeks to arrive by post in France though the vet said she could see that it was registered after only two weeks on the system and she could have issued the pp then without our registration paperwork. If you are in contact with the vet maybe he/she could check the microchip registration before you arrive. Whatever happens, do not let any UK vet enter anything in the passport. It will invalidate the pp. On that first post Brexit trip only, we paid about £100 for an AHC , used it on the way out but on the return, a month later, we used the new pp keeping the AHC in reserve.

Just a little more information: we have made about ten successful return trips from UK to France on Brittany Ferries over the last 20 months with our dog on his new pp. Check that the entries have been made by your French vet. At worst you may be able to get a new, clean pp during your next visit but will need to acquire the new UK issued document to get you out first and maybe on the return if the passport problem is present. I hope not! Good luck.

Unless there is some hidden information you have not revealed, it is true that your existing EU (France) passport will work in exactly the same way as before the post Brexit regulations were brought in. We had to get a new EU pet passport for our dog and used our secondaire address. Before the vet could issue the passport the microchip had to be registered on the French system. The old, partly filled EU (GB) pp became invalid after Brexit. There is a possible snag if any entry in the pp has been made by a UK (or non EU) vet. I don’t know if a pre Brexit entries would be a problem. The best condition would be all entries by a EU vet. If a UK vet enters anything in our new pp, the pp would become invalid. Our French vet must give our dog our anti-rabies jabs every three years so we need to time our visits to coincide with renewal dates. Another possible problem has been reported in the last year. Apparently EU vets have been directed not to issue a EU pp to anyone who can’t prove that they will be spending more than 90 days continuously in their property. I believe that vets have been rather more flexible with long standing clients. Maybe a one time walk in Su tower would be refused. I hope you have no problems and can carry on using your existing pp without any trouble. From your description it would seem that your pp will continue to work. No other documents are required.

After a lull, they are back! I have wasted more time today searching for something new and have been drawn into more rubbish postings.

We will have to be patient!

Are you able to post a picture showing yourself, even in a background shot?

After the retune I found our regional BBC 1 South was showing signs of a weak signal. It also applied to Drama and a few obscure others. They all used the same transponder and I assumed that signal was selectively reduced. I had a long list of other regional BBC 1s to choose from at full strength but we wanted South. The solution was to climb the ladder again and tweaked the horizontal direction with my wife shouting the result. We quickly determined that the dish needed a slight adjustment which I fixed in a few minutes. All channels are now running at 100% strength and quality. Maybe you should readjust your dish. Do you have a dish alignment tester? I bought one from Brico for about 15€ and it has been excellent.

I can’t give you any predictions about how UK TV is planned to change. We have a secondaire in Central France and last year the reduced footprint from the Astra satellite made it impossible get an adequate signal so I changed from a 80cm dish to 1m and everything improved very well. This year we returned to the start of the new era of HD as the predominant channel signal. All I needed was a standard retune and all is well. Our system is much the same as yours andI hope that any near future changes will not affect us. You are more likely to be working a5 the limit so good luck.

Very good photo! The colouring is superb.

These reports do not give sufficient detail so that their story fits a certain result. The extreme one quoted could have been an interest only mortgage with a crazy, unrealistically low, time limited, special starting offer for first time buyers. That would be totally unrepresentative and of no value to a sensible account of how the rising interest rates has affected normal payments.

L and L, clearly you have had the same wonderful experiences in France that confirm that we did the right thing in buying our secondaire. Family and friends have all benefited from it and we have gained so much from making new friends, French, Dutch and from UK. We are off to France again tomorrow and we have a few jobs organised to start the long term preparation for selling. We will make sure we take full advantage of our 90/180 limit during the next few years. This limit has been a nuisance in planning the most efficient use of our time.

Thanks for adding your experiences so far. I hope you will follow up with a blow by blow account to finish. We are still trying to come to terms with the incompatibility of our age and the continuing work load of maintaining our home in France. I think we must sell in the next two years but it will be a wrench to give up our lovely second home and all that goes with it.

I followed your blog and remember your postings on this forum. Where did it all go? It is good to find the reference to your blog again which was quite useful. We may well need this type of detail when we finally sell up. Thanks for posting again.

I hesitate to respond to the previous post but maybe I should make some contribution to the thread before it all dies. The two chateau that are suggested are well maintained buildings and grounds that are well known tourist destinations. These are rather incompatible with the photos presented by the OP so are unlikely to be helpful suggestions.

Lovely photos. You have wisely been very clear and open in your descriptions so potential new owners can consider the possibilities. We love dogs but already have our nine year old who would not be happy about a new dog and our future plans preclude taking on another animal. We are also too old. I hope you find suitable homes for your two, precious dogs. I am sure you are aware that you need a much wider market place than this forum.

I have no personal experience but my son has half a dozen guitars and because he uses them frequently he keeps them open on tripod stands. He recommends that if you are looking at longer term storage, maybe several weeks or months, you should protect your new guitar in a hard shell case, stored horizontal to avoid damage due to falls and with the strings slackened a few notches. Make sure you clean the whole instrument before putting it away.

We treat the continual travel as great fun and chat to many people who usually respond favourably. I recall a lift ride up the Eiffel Tour with a huge Texan wearing a ten gallon hat and I asked him gentle questions about his travels. His first response was to say in a predictable Texan drawl “You are the first person in our tour of UK and Europe who has spoken to me. What a relief, we have been pretty lonely.” We had a long, rewarding conversation with him and his wife. Both were lovely and no, he was not pretending to be French.