Lachouette

If you're travelling up the A20 and leaving the motorway at Junction 28 to go to the airport, there's a Cora with the usual credit card automated system at Junction 29, which is only about 1km before the airport junction. From there the airport's no more than 20 minutes drive so your tank should still be registering as full! The airport area's very poorly served with filling stations. Jan

If you go to the Lay My Hat forum you can find some very good tips from gite and B & B owners. Bon courage Jan

That's great!  If we are already subscribers with 6 months to run on the sub, can we get a refund and start again digitally? Jan

I've sent you a PM Bryan. Jan

Yes............and it's called lait en poudre.  Casino and Carrefour do their own brand, so I'm sure the other supermarkets do too, and there's a branded product from Regilait if my memory serves me correctly. Jan

We run a chambre d'hote and are registered at the chambre de commerce. This immediately takes us into the health system as we pay cotisations  and get our carte vitale on the basis of those cotisations. Jan

We've had two different lots of postcards from Vistaprint - one that just shows a watercolour of our place - visitors take them away FOC, I use them to acknowledge deposits and our website address is on the back, and another for our local tourist office that has a smaller version of the same pic plus write-up in French and English and a map.  First lot were postage only for 100 and the second lot the same, plus about £4 to upload a pdf file.  Vistaprint always have an offer so you rarely have to pay for more than the postage for a modest quantity, and it's easy to use the UK site but have your goods delivered to a French address. Will forward our pdf for you to look at if you're interested and send me a pm. Jan

We still have a barn owl in the barn above our guest rooms, so 'La Chouette' seemed a good idea. Jan

Have sent you an email. Regards, Jan

    Not sure whether they do or not, even though we're with them, but on a practical level, your walls will be running with water if you don't vent them.  People on holiday love to take long showers it seems! Jan

For fluent English speakers try www.anglofrenchbedandbreakfast.com. Jan

Someone has to be first to reply.........................and I know there'll be many more 'techie' and learned replies than mine. I've found it's been really useful to have a French based URL name, as it's easy to tell the French what your website/email address is if it's in French, and have to spell it out for non-French speakers than it might be the other way around.  The last people to own our place named it after an English race track, with website to match, and I would hate to have to tell French callers that! For what it's worth, we're with tiscali (now Alice) and have a 10 euro a month abonnement,which gives us unlimited time for 6 days a week from 5am - 5pm on dial-up and an additional 15 hours at other times on top.  I'm currently re-doing our website so have yet to test the connection for uploading the new site but guess it might be terribley slow! Jan

The last owners of our place installed one, and in the two and a bit years we've been here, it's hardly been used at all for cooking a meal, much to my relief.  We get French and UK guests, and the French ones appreciate having a fridge to park their picnic stuff in and wash up their plates, and the UK guests like to be able to make a morning or late afternoon cuppa and keep beer cold! We offer table d'hôte and most guests eat with us.  If I had to redo the place, I'd keep the fridge, sink and microwave (useful, as others have said if small people stay) but would do away with the mini-hob.  I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to make space for it, if there hadn't already been an obvious place to put one. I'm pleased to say, most people clear up after themselves. Jan

"One thing I couldn't get to the bottom of was where the statistics come from - but I think they are based on visitors to Tourist Offices who are asked whehter they are in gite/hotel/camping/friend & relatives." Here in the Limousin we're (well CdH, but I guess gites too) are sent a return to complete every month, with, wonder of wonders, a reply paid envelope!  I've no idea what percentage bother to return them, but we do and at the end of the year get a break from them of our guests and regional totals too. The Qs asked are simply how many guests we have in each room, their nationality, whether they ate dinner and, new for this year, we have to indicate whether people stay several nights by whizzing a circle around the entry.  It really takes no time at all to complete. Jan PS Can't get my head round this quote thing and have no time as we have diners this evening!

Sorry Maggi - now I come to look at it, it does say it's only an extract.   It's the heat and having a mother-in-law as a guest! I'd be interested in hearing how the full version looks, as the small taste I have in my hand looks useful. Jan