Angela Bird

Had a great few days in the area: Two nights at seafront B&B in Wimereux: lovely rooms, awful breakfasts. Two nights at a Relais in Clairmarais (in marshes near St-Omer): less atmospheric rooms, but *great* food! Had "potjevleesch" for the first time - delish! And B&B was half the price of the first place! Actually, as a guide book I found the "Guide du Routard" excellent on all fronts. Angela

I keep coming across otherwise ultra-modern French public loo facilities WITHOUT SEATS! Very chilly for us ladies and it doesn't seem very hygienic, either. Now I could understand this if there were signs of vandalism, or if the loos were in unattended and out-of-the-way spots. But my most recent discoveries have been in: - a service station on the southbound carriageway of the Rennes-Nantes dual carriageway; - the Agincourt/Azincourt visitor centre, near Hesdin (62); - the Brittany Ferries terminal building in St-Malo (these loos didn't even have the two holes near the back into which you would screw the fixings for a loo seat!). In each case, I checked out every cubicle in the ladies', in case I had just struck it unlucky... At Agincourt I took the matter up with the charming lady on the reception desk. She looked totally bemused at the idea that anybody could be shocked at the absence of a seat, or find it frankly rather disgusting. She was so incredulous at my surprise that I actually had to ask her - in a good-humoured way - whether she and her colleagues all used loos like this at home. I should add that the ladies' loos at Agincourt were immaculate, with their doors jokily painted to resemble medieval tents. The receptionist appealed to her colleagues in bewilderment to see if *they* knew why there were no loo-seats, and one of them said that they were always being broken, so they had stopped replacing them. I really find this hard to believe, as admission to the Centre costs 6 euros, so I wouldn't have thought you would have vandals in off the streets in large numbers. Also the ladies' loo cubicles were otherwise immaculate, with not a single chip on the paintwork, so vandalism really didn't look to be an issue. Do today's French architects consider them unnecessary? Do you think they have no loo seats in their own homes? Angela

FIXED IT ! I tried downloading the latest version of Internet Explorer, and my problems seem to be sorted! So I hope you haven't all been scratching your heads too long over this one... Angela )

LAST EDITED ON 17-Jul-04 AT 05:30 PM (BST) Two problems for the price of one here, I am afraid... 1. I have a PC in the UK, and another PC in France (both British, both runing W98). The UK one works OK, but the one in my French house is refusing to let me book flights online - whether it's British Airways' site, ebookers', Air Miles' or whatever. I get as far as entering the dates I want, and click for availability - and go nowhere... Also, the pages of the site don't look *quite* as they do when I am visiting them from my UK computer. Some of the text overlaps a bit - that sort of thing. Any ideas how I can fix the problem? 2. My French-resident PC refuses to print out emails from Outlook Express. Everything prints OK from other programs (Word, notepad etc). If I want to print something, I have to copy, and then paste into a Word document, and *then* print out... Thanks in advance to all your knowledgeable folk out there! Angela PS Just discovered that I can't access Hotmail either (by typing the straightforward www.hotmail.com), so it seems that it's a general "interactivity" problem perhaps.

LAST EDITED ON 09-Apr-04 AT 08:16 PM (GMT) My guess as to why the Western France forum is so quiet is that the Brittany owners have all now decamped to "North Western France"! I do rather miss them. Angela http://www.the-vendee.co.uk

Hi Paul, I am afraid I don't know Parthenay, but I did a Google search, and came acrosss this http://www.district-parthenay.fr/parthenay/creparth/ceg/membres/negoce/entr/Roche-Fortune/Roche-Fortune.htm which makes it sound quite big, with turnover of 300 million francs and this http://siren626620082.societes.org/ They sound like a big wholesaler of household crockery and glass. Hope it's helpful. Angela http://www.the-vendee.co.uk

I have been using the totally brilliant Mailwasher to scan through my mail for several months (thank you to whoever recommended it to me, on the forum!). But this evening it seems to have seized up. I click on "check mail", and it starts running, tells me it is downloading 1 of 34, say, and then just goes no further. No messages download at all. After a minute or two, an error message appears, saying "the connection was intentionally closed by the server before the session was completed" The first time it happened, some other box opened up saying something like "you have to go to ........ and do ......... to register", but - partly taking it for some annoying pop-up or something, and partly being of a very suspicious nature and being reluctant to act on everything that pops up and asks you to - I clicked it shut quickly. Now I wish I had paid it more attention. Perhaps it was telling me how to get round this problem. I am a bit desperate, as all my emails are now blocked. Does anyone have any suggestions? Angela www.the-vendee.co.uk

This could be useful to people wondering about boundaries, keeping animals, building a house, right of access etc http://www.06immo.com/droit.htm#Bornage et Cltures Angela www.the-vendee.co.uk

This could be useful to people wondering about boundaries, keeping animals, building a house, right of access etc http://www.06immo.com/droit.htm#Bornage et Cltures Angela www.the-vendee.co.uk

Oh, you *have* to visit the church of the Jacobins! A French friend told me that part of the exam for entering the French civil service is a question on what is the unusual feature of that church... Angela www.the-vendee.co.uk

There's Plante Racing, just outside Challans (85). It's 30 hectares of flooded gravel pits. I called in one day and saw lots of cool young men zooming around on jetskis. Angela www.the-vendee.co.uk

Could the couple's local Mairie not point you in the right direction perhaps?