Eskenazi

Obviously, I meant E275,000, as in 275,000 euros  - what was the point of pointnig out such an obvious mistake?

We've found a house we like the look of in Palluau, Vendee. Does anyone know it? The house is 3/4 beds, detached, 3 large reception, large garden, and asking price is E276,000 - this seems on the high side to us, given that it has no pool & there seems to be lots around the £275,000 mark with a pool! If anyone knows this village & the immediate area, I'd be most grateful for any 'insider' information.

Friends who have shared the 'will we /  won't we' move to France'experience with us (they are doing it - we are not, much to my regret) think they've found their dream in Limousin, & they will visit this week. Now, I'd welcome advice - I hate to put a damper on their  dream, and the house itself does look fabulous, but it is  situated in a teeny hamlet on the Auverge bordera, between  Aubusson  (half an hour away) and Clermont-Ferrand  (an hour or so)  - nearest village is Crocq  - my question for those of you who know the area, is  - won't this be a bit too isolated, and maybe even cold? It's about 600 feet... What do you think?

We're thinking about moving to Marseillan  - does anyone know it  /  would you recommend living there?  Other possibility is Lagrasse. Any opinions most gratefully received!

If you thought that programme was, at best, disingenuous, have a look at today's 'Times,' which has a huge feature on how the new quick time of 1 hour 20 mins from London to Lille is 'set to send house prices in rural Pas de Calais rocketing.'  And so on  - they single out the area around Le Touquet as set to benefit (!) What they don't say is - 1)  Lille is utterly irrelevant to rural Pas de Calais because to get out of the city to, say, the 7 Valleys, takes two hours in rush hour or on a bad day, an hour plus at any other time. Not to mention that Lille is in fact a dump - even the so-called 'trendy shopping streets' are a mess of graffiti, and it is the dog mess capital of Europe. 2)  The only relevant train service is the Eurostar one which at the moment stops at Frethun, but this stop will be no more when the St Pancras service begins. So how do people get to Le Touquet? Look at the map - it's 3 hours from Lille! 3)  The so-called fast service is in fact from Ebbsfleet, not London at all! I suppose I should not complain, as our house is right in the area supposedly set to benefit, but this sounds very misleading to me!

I wonder if anyone might have any experience of their dogs having adverse reactions to the anti-tick etc treatments which dogs are forced to have in order to travel between UK and France? I'm asking because our 2 year old Labrador is constantly sick  - she has been in at our vets (UK) for four three-night stays in order to try & find out what's wrong, but no diagnosis was possible - they went through everything including food allergy / blockage / swallowed something etc etc. She has now done the round trip to our house in France 15 times - often twice in a month, and of course each time she has to have the jab & gel! It's hard to say if she's worse after coming back from France,  but this might be the case. I just wondered if anyone else had any knowledge of this?

Hi there! We have a  weekend house in Pas de Calais, near Hesdin, and had intended to move over full time  - however we changed our minds after various changes with Eurostar /Eurotunnel. Eurostar used to have a wonderful ' carnet' system which allowed cheap and flexible travel - that is now gone & their policy seems to be to make it as difficult (and expensive) as possible to use the service. Furthermore, they are likely stop the Calais / Frethun service altogether, so as to shave 5 mins off the journey time to Paris - I can put you in touch with a group who are trying to fight this, if you like. Eurotunnel also stopped their  very useful  Homeowners  offer. I would not want to live in, or near, Lille, as it is, frankly, a dump. If part of your reason for wanting to move to France is to get away from vandalism / graffiti / drunks etc, then don't go to Lille, which is covered in graffiti (yes, even in the swanky part of town) and has plenty of vandalism. Nor would I want to travel vis Stansted, which is a total nightmare. All that said   - if you don't need to travel over every week, Pas de Calais is a great place to live, and we know lots of Brits who love it there - but all either retired, rich, or working almost totally from home.

This would be great as long as  - a)  You don't make it 'teens only!' b)  You actually do make it something like a REAL American Diner  - that is, something like Ed's in London  - not the usual  beermat burgers / flaccid chips  / fake milkshakes! c)  You make it totally non smoking d)  You keep good opening hours - i.e. if one feels peckish at 5.35, you'll be open! Best of luck!

Wow   -you're all very lucky to be able to leave power on  - we'd love to be able to, but cannot. We leave our holiday home unoccupied for up to 6 weeks at a time, and our insurers are absolutely adamant that 'Owing to Power Surges on the Continent (!) all electricity, water, etc MUST be turned off at the mains.' I disputed this with them, saying that surely it would be better to leave it on and protect the house against burst pipes etc? They said no, and I said  - so, are you saying that if I leave on just the tiny little heater in the Utility room (next to, but not accessible from, the house) on its 'Hors Gele' setting (specifically fitted there for the purpose by previous owners!) and there is a 'Continental power surge(!)' and the place catches fire, we are not covered?'  'Yes, that's right. No cover.' I then said  - so, if the water tank bursts through freezing, amd floods the whole house (it's wooden) I am covered, yes?'  'Well, we can't of course confirm that!' Thing is, we could only find this one company (SAGA) to insure it  - it is wood, and had a riverbank plus tall trees all around!  Any ideas?

This post ought to be compulsory reading for all those on the discussion Forum who opined about how the UK is so great! Seriously  - I was brought up in France (Angers) and de Musset's 'Vire' was the first poem I ever learned to say aloud - I must have been about 5. Vire, c'est un lieu delicieux. 'Vire, est une ville Normande .Ce n'est pas un Sejour des Dieux - Mais Vire, c'est un lieu delicieux!'

If all those of you who were so distressed about my post, think so highly of the UK, may I ask if you all live there? I cannot imagine where you get your ideas  - Belgravia? Little Poppleton? I do not live in a deprived area of London, in fact I live in a supposedly affluent one - but the decline is there for all to see. Once my suburb was greenery / family homes / small shops (as in France) now it is concrete / so-called 'mixed' housing, i.e. family homes mixed up with one-bed council flats for single parents aka 'social housing / superstores. My nearest 'shopping town' here is Sutton  - No 1 Chav town, of which our cleaner says she never goes there because she's too scared... no one over 21 ventures there after dark...when you go down the 'High Street' you are assailed by Chavs - quotes therefrom  'O, yew fakkin arseole, jew leukin a meee?'  / 'Ooo fakkin cares? Ah dahnt!!!'  - uninvited, straight into my face. My 14 year old son is afraid to walk our dog in our local park after 4.000 - dognapping is rife...etc etc. And in France? If we had moved our local  town would be Hesdin, where everyone smiles at you, where last week when I passed by a group of teenage boys, they parted to let me pass, and two actually said 'Bonjour, Madame.'  Yes, there's dog poo, but that does not begin to compare with the evidence of drug use, the sheer, out and out violence after 11pm and the absolute depravity of the youth of Sutton once they have, in the local parlance, 'necked down a few.'  I rest my case. Tell you want  - if you all like it so much, I'll swap  - you come & live here & I'll gladly exchange it for France.

I'm only surprised it's so few. If you asked a cross- section of those who actually know France well but have to live in the Chav-dominated, vomit-ridden, thug-infested, alcohol-soaked slum that England has become, I'm sure you'd get a rating of 4 out of 5.

It's actually £30 for a dog on Eurotunnel, and an absolute rip-off considering it takes 1 minute to check the dog's passport - you even have to do the micro-chip check yourself! What a moneyspinner, too, for French vets - our local one in Hesdin charges £48 a time, takes 1 minute & the actual cost of the drugs is E14!  And all totally unnecessary  - a once-yearly treatment against tics etc would be quite enough, and as for rabies, how long since the last outbreak in France - 20 years?

Hi Marky! I'm not quite sure what you're looking for, but can tell you that you are VERY lucky indeed if you are able to go & live near Hesdin! We have a little holiday house in a village near there, and it is heaven on earth except that we have to leave it and come back to foul London! What sort of house are you looking for? What do you plan to do when you get here? Do you speak French - pretty much essential as no one speaks English in the villages around here - quite rightly, too, in our view - who wants all that 'cup of tea' rubbish? The villages of the 'Sept vallees' are what England was like in the 1950s, and really are the real France - totally unspoilt. Hesdin itself is a great little town with a market to rival any down South.

No, it's not worth it! Go instead to Dennlys Parc, north of Fruges. Much  xheaper, and much more fun.

Hello Richard  - you're in a minefield here! Yes, there was once a very useful Carnet scheme, but they stopped it because, in their words to me, ' It is not meant for going from France to  the UK - it is supposed to be  for British businessmen going from London. You have been ABUSING US by using it to commute'  What can one say? Yes, many trains do run near-empty, yes, they do need all the money they can get, but like all set-ups of their kind they seem to want to shoot themselves in the foot. The round trip Eurostar fare is in fact something like £109 - and that is cheap rate. Opale Link can be found on the Forum - look in the section including Pas de Calais. You are right about the article - all that  twaddle about Eurotunnel wanting to establish a hard core of 10,000 commuters - I wish!  Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact they are doing what they can to put a stop to commuting, including, you may be interested to know, either reducing or stopping altogether the service at Frethun (so as to cut 5 mins of f the journey time to Paris!) Also, the writer did not seem to know the difference between Eurotunnel (cars) and Eurostar (train). Again, what can one say? There are many, many people who either commute from Pas de Calais or would really like to - so we must all get together & try and persuade Eurotunnel/ Eurostar to see how short-sighted they are being.

I have posted comments on the 'Living France' article on this subject, on the 'Post Bag' - thoe who are worried about Eurostar's plans for the Frethun service will be astonished!

Please see my post on this subject in the 'Post bag! '

In this month's magazine there is a piece on 'Cross Channel Commuting' which contains the quite astonishing statement that 'Eurotunnel are hoping to build up a critical mass of 10,000 British commuters in the Pas de Calais region... It goes on to say that the new link from 2007 will reduce the journey to one hour. It seems to have escaped the notice of whoever wrote the piece, that Eurotunnel is a car tunnel and it is the Eurostar train which will give the 1 hour journey time... far more significantly, however, all the evidence shows that far from encouraging cross channel travel, both Eurotunnel & Eurostar have actively discouraged it! Not only did Eurostar stop their very useful 'carnet' service  for commuters, but Eurotunnel also stopped their Property Owners' scheme... in addition, far from exapnding their service - as they would need to do to carry even half of the 10,000 mentioned - EUROSTAR ARE ABOUT TO EITHER CUT OR REDUCE THE SERVICE TO CALAIS / FRETHUN!  Some hope of a 'critical mass!' Of course, they could easily build it up, by bringing in proper incentive schemes and most of all, by adding at least 2 more trains from London in the evening: at present the last one goes at 5.15  - what kind of professional person finishes work in time to make that?

Please see my reply on the 'Travelling to France' section!

Hi  - I was most interested in this! We have 2 sets of (British) friends in 'our' village in Pas de Calais, near Hesdin (we are weekenders) who commute to London regularly: one of them is a Solicitor who travels back & forth each week, on Eurostar, the other has his own small Electronics company in Kent & travels weekly, using a combination of Eurostar & Tunnel. We want to move over permanently & my husband would commute on Eurostar, so this news about Frethun is devastating for us! It's appalling that Eurostar don't recognize the huge potential for custom! They used to have a Carnet scheme which gave you cheaper frequent travel: when I asked why this had been abondoned, they said it was 'owing to certain people travelling from France to UK, who were abusing the system.' Incredulously, I asked why 'abusing' was used, & got the reply 'It's not meant to encourage you to go from France to UK every week - it's only for businessmen going from London!'  What rot! There would be a huge demand for the Frethun service if there were a proper frequent traveller scheme! I am VERY keen to get involved with 'Opale Link' so please do get in touch with me!

What you need to do is to compare what you pay for other things! As a teacher myself, it never ceases to amaze me that we charge so little; 15 Euros an hour, even for a student, is appallingly low to teach two children! I pay our babysitter around that, and most of the time all she has to do is sit and watch TV! In my opinion, any fully qualified teacher of English should be paid a minimum of £30 or E45 an hour. Please consider that for each hour of teaching, an equivalent hour of preparation and marking is needed, so you need to halve your sum to see what the teacher gets. Then there is the payment to any agency, which the teacher has to make, plus tax... How much do you pay your plumber to fix your leaky sink? More than E30, I'll bet - and not for an hour, more like 10 minutes!

My experience re. open racism towards 'les Arabes' backs up what Hoddy says, and I would also add that in France there is a great deal of racism (from French people) towards 'les Juifs' and, increasingly, a lot of racism (from Brits) towards their own countrymen. I also think that the 'smug' tone of BBC etc. comes from the feeling of 'Whew! So it's not really all a perfect-health-system-wonderful-education-fabulous-food society in France, after all!'

French people are thin because they smoke. Smoking is also the reason why most French women have that raddled, pasty type of skin. Smoking kills you slowly. Period.

Don't know about fathers, Pantouflard,since I only have experience of mothers who, leaning out of their silver 4x4s (complete with killer kangaroo bars) at school drop off and pick up time say things like 'I'm not having Toby and Henry vaccinated; I don't want them to catch Autistics,obviously' and 'Well, after a lot of thought,I've decided that the safest way for China and India is that they will be completely unvaccinated children in a vaccinated group, so the rest will protect them.' Stupid, or what? To be candid I don't think the fathers get much of a look - in in these cases - too bust earning the dosh for Mummy's own personal off-roader and her multifarious beauty treatments.