Shamajac

Congratulations on registering your caravan, I am afraid we gave up and bought a small french caravan but it lacks the facilities of a UK one of a similar age. What seriously interests me was your method of registering, and I wondered how old the caravan has to be - I looked at the website and it is mainly geared towards cars, and they have to be 30 years old - I have in the past owned a couple of lovely Cheltenham caravans for instance and love vintage caravans.

Hi there I had exactly the same problems as you and found that the french authorities in our dept 29 were very unhelpful (St Brieuc). We have a 1996 Compass and I managed to get all the chassis details but only a Uk certificate of conformity from the now defunct Compass. To be honest, I was going to fight the whole process but not speaking French well does not help - I even went so far as to ask an English speaking French lady who works for my insurance broker (she used to work in the UK) to assist - she took the hellish form home with her and had to admit defeat, she did not have a clue what information they required. However, some have had success, but I feel they must have had a modicom of French to do this. By the way, I have successfully applied for planning permission for an shed, carte de sejour and carte vitale, (so I'm not completely useless) but the form they supplied is horrific and the level of technical detail (probably bad enough in English but totally incomprehesible in French) just beat me. They even wanted us to take the caravan to a public weighbridge to get the nose weight registered - I would have thought the control technique process would have done that automatically. Good luck with your venture, Maggi

We are one of the unlucky people who own a uk caravan and are trying to get it registered - as usual its a company who have been taken over by another company and worse than that its a 1996 model which means prior to the European legistlation concerning caravans. (Strangely enough the engineer of the company who took over Compass, said he was one of those responsible for bringing in the demands of this legislation. So thanks to the kindness of another person on the site who have just managed to register their caravan, we at least had a rough idea of what was required. First visit to the Drire, and this resulted in an interview with a women inspector, who said we were the first to attempt to do this in the area and for a start, as a UK caravan, the door was on the wrong side. Hell if the so called experts dont know the law what chance have we got. She eventually handed over one of the worst forms I have ever seen with instructions to go and get the caravan weighed at a public weighbridge, (we still have not found one yet) and we had to report to the tax de impots to get a certificate to say that we had no import duty to pay, then we had to telephone a company in St Brieuc so we could arrange for our caravan to be inspected to get a certificate of European conformity, then we were required to get a load of complex calculations re the axle and weights, tyres, payloads etc etc. I dont even think bringing in an interpreter is going to help as the form requires specialisat technical details. All msut be done prior to getting an appointment with the control technique crowd. Do we give up now I wonder? Maggi

We applied for one in January and duly awaited a response - in April we received a letter from the local Marie to say our carte de sejours were ready and waiting, so we went up to collect, however, we had lost the original reciept of application and they refused to hand them over, she telephoned some other district who said we would have to report the loss officially to the genderames, and get a receipt from them as proof we had it - so we trailed down and waited in the reception area, however, they said their was no way they could accept our claim and accordingly would not give us a receipt - so again we drove back to the Marie - explained the position, she then telephoned the main office again and they then said we had to go to St Brieuc and explain the position once again and they would consider giving them permission to release the cartes - what a hassle, I am almost sure that I threw the receipt away when we chased up the cartes in February and the response was that we no longer needed them (I had asked them that at the time of application but they still insisted on the application being done and we had to give all our monetary details to them as a result. We still have not been to St Brieuc as it is 120 km round trip. and accordingly the Marie still have our carte de sejours sitting up there. Why do I want the cartes - well so that I do not have to carry our precious passports everywhere with us. So the moral of this story is, if you recieve a printed slip as proof of application, for whatever, do not lose it or you will not get whatever it is you have officially applied for. Maggi Maggi

I initially bought a Gunny from Magazine Vert (a garden centre in Brittany) and unfortunately with last summers high temperatures with accompanying drought - it did not take, again I bought another one from same place in January (they look like rhubarb plants and admittedly they are deceptive size wise, it was not too expensive (I could be wrong but I am sure it was well under 10 euros - and this time it has taken but they do grow enormously so you would have to consider the shade factor and the fact they are not a "touchy feely plant" they have a rough leaf and a spiky stem. They can be divided once established by dividing the crown (so it tells me in my gardening book). Maggi

Is there any place in Brittany that sells fresh cream, double or single - most of the large supermarkets only have creme fraiche or similar. I am surprised - another product is unsalted butter - just can't seem to find it anywhere. To me there's nothing like strawberries and cream - great heart stopping stuff! Incidentally I hate the spray cream and I do not like fresh cream which has sugar added. Any help would be gratefully received. Maggi

Hi there I have a 1996 2 berth uk caravan and would like to use it to tour around the rest of France but I understand to tow this van with our French car we need to go through some sort of process ie control technique etc etc. The main problem is, where do we start - I have already searched through the site but can find nothing concrete - just emails from successful caravan owners. We are in Brittany ie dept 22 at present. My French leaves a lot to be desired but I have successfully negotiated the carte de sejour(although we have not received ours because I mislaid the original reciept from the Marie who in turn refuse to hand it over without it - ie deadlock there,) and we now have a carte vitale between us - but as far as caravan rules and regs I have come to a dead halt - our insurance company telephoned the DRIRE office in Plerin who promptly told him there was no way we would be able to register because the door was on the wrong side - so before we start we have come up against a problem (I know this is not the case by the way) I have gained small bits of into but nothing concrete, I could use a translator but if the DRIRE do not know what the rules are, what chance has anyone else. Any information would be gratefully received. Maggi