Eslier

In answer to the original question, French banks often make a charge to the payee when a cheque is paid in from a non-French bank - even if it is in Euros (yes I know that makes a mockery out of the whole point of a single curency, but it is fact). Under these circumstances you may well find that some bodies will not accept a cheque drawn upon a non-French bank. In France a cheque drawn on a French bank is usually as good as cash - no guarntee card is needed, but, a Notarire will usually require a bankers cheque (bankers draft equivalent) for larger amounts when buying property. Of course there are ways around everything, but, having a French bank aco*****will make your life much easier. If nothing else, a Carte Bleu will ensure you can always get fuel for your car after 7pm in the evening or on Sundays !! As has already been sugested, contact CA Britline who will make opening a bank account whilst still living in the UK very easy.

The reality is, the letting season doesn't really get under way until Easter and usually finishes at the October UK half term week. Within this period, most bookings will be between May and September which, lets face it, is when higher rents can be charged and you stand a better chance of making some significant income. Some people, when they talk about all year round bookings, are referring to long term winter lets. If you decide to go down this route you have to be sure it isn't going to cost you almost as much as you make. Long term tenants will put a much bigger strain upon furnishings, fixtures and fittings. I am aware of cases where winter "guests" have left properties in a horrible state on departure and the owners have had to spend a lot of money carrying out repairs, replacing equipment, redecorating and cleaning on an indusutrial scale ! When you offset this against the low rents that can be achieved in the winter (often not more than about 75€-100€ per week) you have to ask yourself if it really is worth it. Good quality fixtures and fittings enable you to charge more in the summer. If you are already letting through Cheznous then you are probably getting the best number of weeks possible. You might get a few extra winter short breaks by taking additional advertising but be careful the cost of the advertising doesn't outweigh the advantage. Your best bet might be to simply put your prices up by £100-£200 per week for the six week peak summer period. You'll be amazed to find Cheznous clients will still pay it at this time of year if you have something good to offer, especially with a pool !

I would recommend travelling via Plymouth / Roscoff for a number of reasons. Firstly, Roscoff is about the only port I've found where there is a large, relatively quite, car / lorry park within the port area where it is easy to stop and take your dogs for a walk immediately after you get off the ferry. There really is plenty of space. Secondly, if you head down towards Devon, there are loads of farm B&Bs who will be happy to take your pets. Many are in rural areas so no problem with the security of your trailer. If you find somewhere not too far from Plymouth you could get the early morning ferry to Roscoff and be well on your way through France by mid afternoon. With your cats, if you've got room in the crate you could leave a litter tray in there. If you by some of the expensive "gel" type cat litter then you won't get any nasty smells in the car. It really does work - I've tried it when bringing our cats over to France. We had no problems with our two cats and two golden retrievers. They just took it all in their stride - I suppose you wouldn't expect any different from a retriever ! Last time we did it (with the dogs only) they were in the car for about 26 hours and were absolutely fine with just three walkies stops! Don't worry about it, I'm sure your pets will all be fine. One last tip. When you get to the ferry port, if they ask to scan your pets then remind them they don't need to do this if you are on a one way ticket. The last thing you want is to have to get the cats out of their crate and risk them escaping in the ferryport ! Be firm if you need to, they can't insist on scanning them when travelling from the UK to France.

In my experience, the chemicals you buy at the hypermarchées and bricos really aren't up to much. Try getting some pH- from you nearest pool supplies shop. It might seem more expensive but it will probably work far more efficiently. Earlier in the summer I used two 1kg tubs of pH+ from our local brico and they did nothing. Off I went to the local Everblue dealer and got some good stuff and just over half a kilo did the trick !

By the time all the various fees / taxes etc., which the Notaire collects, have been added together you will need to allow around 8% for a private purchase with no mortgage.

If parking is scarce in your bastide then the garage will probably sell anyway. What you have to ask yourselves is "if the garage had been put on the market at 1,000€ more than it was, would you still have been interested in buying it". I suspect the answer would be yes. Swallow your indignation and go ahead with the purchase and have the treatment done. You'll only regret it if you don't.

Firstly, have faith in Norton. It provides very good protection providing you keep your subscription up to date and have it set to automatically download updates. If Norton says it has detected and DELETED the files then it has so it's no surprise that you can't find them. As this problem only occurs when you connect to the internet it is quite likely that you have aquired some adware/malware which is automatically seeking to download the virus each time you log on to the internet, and each time it tries, Norton detects and deletes it. Norton Anti-Virus doesn't always pick up adware/spyware/malware so you will need to search this out with a special program designed to find it and delete it. One of the best available is Ad-Aware-SE which you can download free at: http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button Download it, install it and then run it as per the instructions. You may be horified to find out just how many of these nasty little things you have in your system. I recently cleaned up my son's computer (also running Norton Anti-Virus) and managed to find and delete 251 items ! Once you have deleted all the nasties this should solve your problem. You should then ensure that your computer is protected by a good firewall. If you already have Norton Anti-Virus then you should really invest in Norton Firewall to make sure there is no clash between them. Good luck - let us know how you get on.

It is quite usual for the winter schedules not becoming available until September / October. I wouldn't worry however as you won't have any trouble booking a crossing in December as none of them will be anything like full. Sometimes in January however there can be problems with some routes as ships are wihdrawn for their annual winter service stop. Usually it is only the Plymouth / Roscoff route that is affected in any significant way.

If you've got everything together then it's probably easier to visit your prefecture or sous prefecture in person. You should be able to walk in with your documents and walk out about 15 minutes later with your Carte Grise. On your way home you can then get your new number plates made up.

There are no legal obligations on either side until the Compromis de Vente is signed and, for you, the 7 day cooling off period has passed. It is usual to sign the Compromis before organising a survey and having a clause suspensive inserted in the compromis giving you an option to withdraw, and have your deposit returnrd, if the survey is unfavourable. As you hadn't yet signed the CdeV then the vendor was quite within his rights to sell to someone else. 9000€ sounds like an awful lot for a survey so I guess it must be very detailed and the property very large so it might be worth trying to sell it to the new purchaser at a knock down rate. Don't be surprised if the purchaser isn't too interested as the French rarely bother with surveys.

1-bar should be about right if the filter is clean, and yes, water should be sucked into the skimmer not being pumped out of it in "filter" mode. You need to leave the valve in the "filter" position for vacuuming unless the pool is very dirty in which case run it to "waste". You should find there are some stop-cock taps on the various pipes going too and from the pool, usually next to the pump/filter. There should be a seperate incoming (from pool to pump) pipe for each skimmer, the base outlet, and there should also be one labelled "prise balai". This is the one that you need for vacuuming and it should usually be "off" unless in use. Turn this on and then turn the stop-cocks for the skimmers off so that you get maximum pressure from the prise balai. Hey presto you should find it all works ok. Don't forget to turn the skimmers back on and the prise-balai off when you have finished. Oh yes, nearly forgot, when you first turn on the prise-balai with the vacuum hose connected the system will probably lose pressure to start with as it draws through the air that is in the hose. Make sure the vacuum head is under the water so that it draws water as quickly as possible. The system should regain pressure within a minute or so and you can start cleaning !

If you want to change isp then your first challenge will be to try and cancel your aol subscription - not as easy as you might expect. It took me about four phone calls each of about 40 minutes to an hour long, lots of demanding to speak to a supervisor and I almost lost the will to live. It's very hard to stop an direct credit card payment ! If you achieve that challenge then whatever you do DON'T try and delete aol from your system - it is quite likely to delete critical components of Internet Explorer and cause all sorts of oher mayhem. Leave it on your computer and change all your Internet connection defaults.

Try Cuisinella. We've just ordered a kitchen from them and they have been so helpful. Prices are good and the guarantees are amazing. Showrooms all over France see www.cuisinella.com

Yes, the rules have changed within the last year and the information you have been given is correct - you do need an EU Pets Passport. Unfortunately the good old days of getting an export certificate passed towards the end of last year. It might be worth shopping around and asking other vets for prices although I doubt you will save a great deal. The UK vets seem to have picked up on this as a good earner. After all, by taking your pets abroad you're already taking your business elswhere so they've got nothing to lose ! If you want to check the details for certain, from the experts who keep up to date with all the changes, then take a look at this web page: http://www.cani-excel.com/pet_passport_helpline.asp You can e-mail their help line for more details. Good luck.

For it to be "strictly legal", and certainly from an insurance point of view, you would be better advised to employ the services of a company who specialise in looking after gites etc. In addition to the legal and insurance aspects, if you use a company and the person who usually cleans the property happens to be ill one change over day, that's their problem and the job will still be done. If you rely upon a local person there's always the chance they might not be able to work one week for some reason or another and that will be your problem. I'm not sure where you are but if by any chance you are in Brittany there is an excellent registered company there called www.gite-management.com that would be well worth contacting.

Many thanks, that's very interesting. Now . . . has anyone out there registered ?

I run a successful registered gite business and, like many others, keep computer records including my clients personal details. If I was keeping such records whilst running a business in the UK I would be obliged to register under the Data Protection Act. Does anyone know if there such a thing in France ? If so is it similar to the UK and is it "officialy" obligatory to register and does anyone bother ?

If your cats dop not already have an up to date passport then this is what you will need to get. the procedure for travelling back to the UK is as follows: First, your vet will need to microchip (now available as an alternative to tatooing in France)your cat. Then it will need to have a rabies vaccination. One month after the vaccination you will need to return to the vet for the cat to have a blood test. Assuming the test is ok then the EU Pets Passport will be issued and your cat will be free to re-enter the UK 6-months after the date of the blood test. Finally, your cat will need to be treated by a French vet for fleas, ticks and worms between 24 and 48 hours before the scheduled departure time of your ferry. Having got all that sorted you can then take your cat straight back into the UK. If you can't wait for seven months and want to avoid UK quarantine then take a look at http://www.cani-excel.com/ They seem to offer a very good service.

The "Chez Nous" brochure has 33 pages of gites in Midi-Pyrénées (exactly the same number as Normandy) compared with just 19 pages for Aquitaine.

Contact Zurich insurance in the UK. They have a UK policy (one of the old Eagle Star policies) which provides full unlimited comprehensive cover anywhere in Europe without the usual maximum stay restrictions. Obviously, once your car has been in France for six months, you are then legally required to re-register it anyway.

They are really cheap in France too. Earlier this year I bought three at 39€ each which are DivX compatible from our local Super-U. They also come with a 2-year waranty. I have even seen some cheaper ones without DivX.

You will certainly earn more from two 2-bedroom gites than one 4-bedroom gite but you should still go down the "luxury" route if you can. Whilst you will hope to let 12 weeks for each property, you need to be realistic and base your income projections upon 8 weeks (unless you have already done extensive research in your particular area and are confident of doing much better). Without a pool, you could probably get around an average of £300 per week per property for the eight weeks (in £ because the Brits will be your best customers. That means you are only looking at around £4,800 income per year. From that, you will need to deduct running costs and adverising which are likely to come to about £3,000. This leaves you with just over €2,500 profit which isn't enough to live on ! Even if you manage to let 12 weeks then this only gives you about 6,000€. If you add a swimming pool you could increase your earnings by a further £100 per week which, at 12 weeks letting per property and taking into account the cost of running the pool, could add up to another 2,700€ to your profits. So, at worst, you could earn a profit of 2,500€ and at best 8,700€. Sorry this probably isn't the most positive news you were hoping for but it is realistic and I hope you find it helpful.

As I understand it, when this problem occurs, the e-mail gets as far as the NTL server and is then rejected by its firewall. If this is the case then it is necessary to examine why the NTL firewall is rejecting the e-mail. It could be that, if NTL hashad a lot of problem with spam, they have increased the security level. This happened a few years ago with aol when all messages with a different "return path" address were rejected. It is possible that this is the cause of the current problem. To eliminate this as a possible cause you will need to check your e-mail client to ensure that you are sending the same "return address" as the address you are sending the e-mail from. To do this with Outlook Express, go to Tools/Accounts, then select the "mail" tab. Click once on the e-mail account that you are using and then select "properties". Then click on the "general" tab. You will see there are two boxes, one for "E-mail address" and one for "Reply address"; your correct e-mail address should be entered in both these boxes. If the reply address box is empty or has a different e-mail address in it then your mail could be rejected by spam filters. Give this a try and see if it helps.

[quote]Mercedes must be the cheapest because all you need to do is reach into the glove compartment and take it out of the document folder. They supply one as standard amongst the documents supplied with eac...[/quote] MB provide it in German but comes supplied with a translation leaflet into a number of different languages. We had no problem having ours accepted at the Sous Prefecture.

Mercedes must be the cheapest because all you need to do is reach into the glove compartment and take it out of the document folder. They supply one as standard amongst the documents supplied with each new car.