Eslier

Paul, I think you will find that Philips is the exception rather than the rule. Indeed there are a lot more "multi-standard" TVs in the UK but most of these will be PAL/NTSC. It is not so common to find SECAM functionality.

Yes, you can receive Sky - bring the digibox and dish with you. Yes, you can receive French TV via a TNT box and an aerial (a bit like "freeview" in the UK) No, correct, you are extremely unlikely to have a UK tv that will receive Fench secam signals through an aerial without a TNT box.

Rather than looking at how you can pay less in France, why not look at how you could earn more from the UK. As your UK employer is effectively paying you against invoice, your employer is saving a considerable amount on UK employers NI contributions, whilst your salary still remains 100% tax deductable. Why not calculate what this amount would be and ask your employer to increase the amount you are paid by an equivalent amount. Your employer won't be any worse off than if you were UK resident but you will get some extra help towards your French cotisations. Seems only fair !

If the teacher is qualified and experienced, a certain amount of his/her time will be spent on preparation to ensure the lesson is tailor-made to your requirements (that is the true benefit of one-to-one teaching).  Therefore 35 euros is not too much, but you have to decide what it is worth to you.

I'm sure I am not the only one that finds these "google ads" that now appear down the right hand side of the forum pages really anoying. They take much longer to load than the forum pages and it is really tedious always having to hit the "stop" button to prevent them loading.  It's unlikely that they are any use whatoever to anyone on the forum and are clearly only there to make some cash for Archant. If Archant is really so hard up, couldn't we come up with a better and more constructive method of raising money. Classified ads maybe that can be placed by forum members - now would't that would be much more useful.? If you dislike the google ads, as I do, then post your support here and perhaps someone will do something about it.

It could be the chageover (speed switch) for the VMC.  Maybe the disconnected wire is the low speed wire which some people do not conect so that the VMC can be switched off and only used when required.

Gay makes a very good point.  It would be worth buying a machine from a local supplier - Gitem maybe - who provide their own backup sevice. It may (or maybe not) cost a few euros more but could save you loads of grief if it ever breaks down. We have a Thompson 6kg top loader which has been extremely reliable and efficient. A top loader will save on a lot of back breaking bending when loading and unloading. Most of them are only 5kg load but if you look around there are a few 6kg ones available.

Printemps,  Monoprix,   C&A,  

It is actually 230v +/-10%  not 220. This applies to all EU countries affiliated to CENELEC and has applied for some years now.  Individual countries are allowed to set tighter tolerance limits - the UK, for example, is 230v +10%/-6%.  Effectively, this allowed countries which previously had nominal supply voltages of 220v or 240v to continue to supply within existing limits. All CENELEC countroes now have a specified nominal supply voltage of 230v. So . . . anything between 207v and 253v is acceptable. Remember, however,that this will be determined to be at the point of supply, i.e. at your meter. You may well experience volt drop after the meter wich is your problem not EDF's. Also, this figure is an everage supply voltage so it is possible that you might get less than 207v at times and more at other times (probably in the middle of the night when demand is low. If you were to push EDF into doing something, they would probably fit a voltage analyser to your supply (at great cost, no doubt) and they would then be able to come up with an average figure over a period of a week. To be honest, the odds are stacked against you  !

Surely, zencherry, you have highlighted exactly what Will has said, that both forums have their place and won't necessarily appeal to the same audience. In a world of free speech, its is healthy to have the opportunity within this forum to discuss any other. To get all hot and bothered about it, however, serves no practical purpose. I, like many others, have migrated to this forum from AI and, personally, find it a more comfortable and imformative place. I also agree with gastines that a little humour from time to time is a most welcome. The one thing I have learnt about living in France, is that whilst there are a lot of rules and regulations about everything, it is widely accepted that there is a degree of discretion when and where these rules are applied. The same should apply to the rules of a forum and I believe Will and the other mods on this forum manage to strike a good balance. It should be remembered that AI is run on a different basis from this forum. It is a commercial venture that derives its income from advertising. The franchisees have paid money for their franchised region and are looking for a financial return. Therefore, it is understandable if not always helpful, that strict censoring of unauthorised free advertising takes place. The principle director of the AI brand, (screen name Mike,who often posts and moderates within all the AI sites) is clearly very knowledgeable about French law and chooses to adopt a very strict policy across the AI sites ensuring all content is as 100% legal as possible. This is his choice - some might call it prudent, some might call it jobsworth but there it is. In the end, we all have a choice of what we participate in. I still participate in AI from time to time and I am often amused by the content of some of the postings, wondering, like others, why some people move to France. I much prefer this forum and would recommend anyone  just starting out on the process of moving to France to make use of it. IMHO there is far more useful and accurate information available on the Complete France Forum than any other I have visited. Zencherry, I hope you will choose to join us here and will reap benefits from what you read. You don't have to choose between the forums, you can belong to both. If you decide that Complete France isn't for you then I'm sure we would all wish you well and hope that you continue to find what you are looking for on AI.

I think you will find that a gite business registered at the Chambre de Commerce is considered a commercial business and as such operation of the pool is part of that business. In this circumstance you should be able to legitimately top up your pool. If you have a gite which you let out as a sideline or just on a casual basis, and therefore are not registered with the CdeC,  then it will be considered a private pool and you will be goverened by any restrictions in place.

[quote user="Shelly"][*-)] Is the Brittany ferries club worth joining? [/quote] Yes definitely if you will be making two or three crossings per year. You can save the cost of membership in one sailing at summer prices. It probably won't be too much help to you with a 7.5T lorry however as they will charge you the freight tarrif against which I don't think your membership discount will apply.

The last sailing of the Val de Loire under the Brittany Ferries flag will be 07.45 Porstmouth to Cherbourg on 20th February. Her fist sailing under the DFDS flag, having been renamed King of Scandinavia, will be 12th March Newcastle to Amsterdam.

Ryanair Dinard to Stansted is probably your best bet - fine for coming home Friday but you might need to travel back to London on Sunday afternoon.  Fairly reliable all year around service providing Dinard Airport isn't closed by snow which happened a couple of weeks ago on a Friday! For more options, you could consider taking the Condor fast ferry service from St Malo to Jersey (usually 8am out of St. Malo gets into Jersey 8.10am) and then more flight options to either Gatwick or London City from Jersey.

I am sure there are all sorts of idealistic and sensational reasons why one could argue that changing to oil would be a bad thing but  if we leave the idealists to get on with campaigning for the Green Party and the sensationalists  to seek out the back copiesof the UK Daily Mail that they've missed  then the  realistic point of view gets a chance to be heard. The period we are talking of, 20 years, is fairly "short term" in the big picture of things. We must accept that oil is an important part of the world economy and whilst prices are bound to fluctuate, there is little realistic chance of a major breakdown in supply or the sort of price increases that would  makes us all go out looking for our own peat bogs. Compared to using electricity, oil will almost certainly be a cheaper option for the forseable future albeit the gap narrowing from time to time.  What you may not yet have taken into consideration, is that if all your heating and hot water is no longer fueled by electricity then you would benefit hugely by switching to the TEMPO electricity tarif. The savings this alone could offer you will cover the cost of quite a few hundred litres of fioul ! We use oil for heating a large seven bedroom property and for all our hot water. The cost of doing this is significantly less than we were paying to heat our business premises by gas when in the uk and the properties are of a sililar size. This, even after the increases we have seen in the cost of fioul this year. I would say, go for it.

The largest six bedroom property lets for about 14 weeks (seven of which are at £1800 per week) and the two smaller properties for about 20 weeks each.  Having said that, this year we already have 14 weeks booked for the big house so we are hopeful of two or three more weeks and an exceptionaly good year.

Like so many of these types of question, there are many variables and there is no simple answer. IF you have the right properties in the right location with the right facilities then yes, of course, it is more than possible to make a decent living. To get all these things right, however, will almost certainly require a substantial initial capital investment. I have a small gite complex of three properties plus owners appartment with the allimportant heated pool and it generates an income of about 60,000€ per year. After all costs (including our own utility bills, tax, social charges etc.) we probably clear about 40k€ of which, we probably plough another 5 or 6k back into the business in the way of improvements and new facilities (tax deductable!). To buy a business such as ours, you would need to have around 750,000€ to get going and a bit more in the bank to see you through the first year. You would also need to do a lot of homework first to make sure you have chosen the right location that will attract enough visitors. Even in a popular area you would be surprised how much difference a few km in one direction or another can make. Good luck in your proposed venture. You will find this forum to be an excellent source of information.

Personally, I don't bother to convert mine when I visit the UK. My headlamps have a height adjustment knob and I simply adjust them down and have never had a problem. If you are really keen however, I noticed that the shop on the ferry (Brittany Ferries) sells beam converters for French to English as well as the other way around.

You may or may not find a video player that will play your English VHS videos but remember that there are not too many around now, and even fewer combis, as everyone is switching over to DVD. If you have a UK VHS Video player, bring this with you and, providing it is connected by the scart lead, should work fine with a French TV. Why not bring our English TV with you and use it for watching your videos and also, if you want to, to watch English TV by satelite. Any English DVDs you own will work perfectly well in any French DVD player or combi. I believe a UK "Freeview" box can be used in France to pickup the new French "TNT" digital service if it is available in your area. It won't be any use however for picking up any English channels. If you want to watch English TV whilst in France then get hold of a Sky Digibox and 40cm dish before you leave the UK (ebay is a good place to pick one up cheaply) and bring it with you. Its fairly simple to install and set up yourself, just search through the numerous previous threads on this subject for information. You can get a receiver and dish over here but you'll probably find a UK Sky box easier to set up and you'll only be able to find ugly great 80cm dishes over here which are unnecessary. If you can live without Ch4&5, you won't need a viewing card but if you want these channels too then get a one-off payment viewing card from http://www.freesatfromsky.com/ before you leave the UK. Whatever you do, don't tell Sky you intend to use the card in France as this against their terms and conditions. You will need to activate the card whilst still in England which shouldn't be a problem.

[quote user="Quillan"][quote user="Robbie34"] There are no export health certificates for the movement of domestic pets within the EU.  The purpose of the Pet's Passport was to regularise this. You only have to wait six months to enter the UK following a successful blood test. [/quote] Sorry but you are wrong. You can use an export certificate to bring animals over but of course you won't be able to get them back to the UK without a passport. We exported three cats and our dog had a passport and there were no problems. [/quote] No I'm sorry Quillan but you are a bit out of date. The old  UK Export Certificate system was discontinued some time during 2004. The ONLY official way to take your cat or dog between the UK and France is with an EU Pets Passport.

Your trip on the Val de Loire will be one of the last (if not the last) before she leaves service with Brittany Ferries and joins DFDS operating from Newcastle. The Val is a very comfortable ship and although, as Will said, the main restaurant will probably be closed, you will get a very good meal in the Café du Port. Three decks of shops, cafés, bars and restaurants to explore and you should also get a cabaret in the main bar. Bretagne is regarded by most regular travellers as their favorite BF ship. She has a great atmosphere and is, again, very comfortable. The main restaurant, Les Abers, is widely aknowledged to offer the best food in the fleet. A meal in there is a must. The Yacht Club bar is a pleasant and quiet place to enjoy a quiet drink. As with the Val, live music and a cabaret should be on offer in the main bar. Both ships are single deck loaders so expect a lot of waiting in your car before disembarkation whilst they offload all the lorries first from the lower vehicle decks.

As long as you have your EU Pet's Passport then you don't need anything else. This will usually be issued once a satisfactory blood test result has been returned showing that the rabies vaccination has been effective. The blood test cannot be done until 30 days after the rabies jab ahs been given, and then allow another week for the test results. Your pets will not be able to return again to the UK until six months following the date of the blood test. Annual vaccinations for cats and dogs are very similar to what you have been used to in the UK but you will probably find them to be significantly cheaper. Rabies boosters are required every year (not every two years as in the UK) if you wish to keep the Pets Passport active.

Before we came to France we opened a second personl current account (free banking, no charges) at our UK bank (Lloyds) and then changed our address to that of some relatives  in the UK. We use the no.2 account for all the cheques we receive from our gite guests I simply send them in the post with a paying in slip to our once local Lloyds branch. I take a scanned copy of all the cheques before posting as extra security but I haven't had any get lost in the post yet.  Nothing else is paid into this account so I can provide simple records of the income from the statements if asked to do so by the French impots. Despite the fact that there is ££££ lots going through the account and it is fairly obvious I am using it as a business account Lloyds don't seem to mind. We also have another current account for all other sterling transactions and  an on-line deposit account (quite a good rate of interest) which I can move the money into.  Lloyds on-line banking seems to do most of what I want it to and every now and then I transfer largeish amounts  to France via a commercial exchange company  (Moneycorp). Having two current accounts means that  I can use the £10k per day transfer limit on both accounts if I wish making £20k  in all. I have no problems asking guests to pay by sterling cheque or sometimes internet banking transfer. I have never had anyone insist on paying by credit or debit card despite the fact that I set up Paypal to do so if necessary. I am reluctant to use Paypal even though it is fairly cheap for debit cards, because of the stories I have heard about chargebacks.

All seems to be back to normal now. Seems like the boffins have done their job. Problem solved ?

The word seems to be that Sky have a major software problem. The latest version (which automatically downloads) is causing problems with Panasonic and severalother makes of digibox.  The Sky technical help line in the UK has apparently gone into meltdown !   They were telling people yesterday that they hoped to have the problem resolved by the end of the day but it seems they failed miserably. A forced software download won't help as all that will do is reload the dodgy software. But if your box stops functioning all together then unplugging for 30 seconds might help. No doubt Sky will have a team of boffins working on this and we can expect it to be resolved very soon.