Athene

[quote]Personaly would go for the tiles/wooden floor and slippers as Athern(sp) said.....so much easier to keep clean when you are as busy as I am PS definatly tiles if you get cramp in the night, nowt lik...[/quote] I think this stomping around on a cold surface to cure leg cramps is a Northern remedy! It is one my mother always subscribed to! My husband, a cheeky Cockney, had never heard of it! However he tried it when writhing with pain the other night and discovered that it does work! Maybe we should start a thread about old fashioned remedies?

[quote]Personally I wouldn't go out of my way to go to a le roy merlin and I would have to to get to one. The one closest to me is around 60-70k away is no bigger, and perhaps smaller than most of the other ...[/quote] It depends on the size - as with a lot of things in life - size does matter! We go to the Leroy Merlin in Bordeaux and it is a massive store! We have found it really good for things like tiles. We were going to buy some tiles in England that we had found that were £35 square metre and we found the same tile in Leroy's for £10! So we bought enough for our purpose and then everytime we to-ed and fro-ed from France, we took as much as the estate would carry! We have just finished laying them and they are superb! We also bought door handles and they were cheaper too!

[quote]Thanks Athene again. We stayed for 5 months near Bergerac this winter before we bought this house. If only we had known that we should have been preparing for a visit to Leroy Merlin! Will chase up th...[/quote] My advice is fit tiles and buy fluffy slippers!

[quote]Thank you Athene. We are in 46. Do we have a Leroy Martin within driving distance from here please? We will drive up to 2 hours away before we flag! Who are they? What are they? Where do I look in our...[/quote] Hi Chocolate! Leroy Merlin are huge DIY stores - sort of B and Q on steroids. They will be in your nearest large town. There is one in Bergerac, Bordeaux etc. I am not sure where you are near!

[quote]Having posted queries on some other topics and received very helpful replies - here I go again. In the house we have just bought some rooms had carpets we just HAD to remove! Don't ask why. You can g...[/quote] Hi Chocolate, I am not sure exactly where your department is but you can get a good selection of carpets in Leroy Merlin. They also have rugs that you would like. They are not cheap but they compare favourably with what we could get in England. We have bought carpeting there and the glue to stick it down! My other advice is to try E-Bay as a friend of ours bought a lovely, antique rug for £50 and then paid one of these carrier guys to bring it down to SW France - £60 but the overall price of £110 was not excessive when you see the rug she has managed to get! If you can't find a carrier coming out, you could always post a letter here and see if someone could squeeze it into their car/van! Good luck with it!

[quote]This year, for the first time, I used a tick collar on my dog and he hasn't had one tick. Normally, I use Frontline, and although he had picked up ticks they were all dead. I think it was on here th...[/quote] Wonder if they do these collars in different colours? I think I should be planning to wear one all the summer!

[quote]11 in one year...oh My!!!! Been lucky not to have had one but then I have a big long haired dog who (unselfishly) I let walk ahead of me. She basicly cleans the way for me. The most I have taken of...[/quote] 'Those plastic suits' ? Do you mean the incontinence pants that Billy Conolly made famous in that wonderful piece about the guy who goes to the disco and they fill up. I think if I was going to get ticks everytime I walked through long grass, I might need a pair of these too! LOL!

[quote]I'm pleased I asked, I 've never heard of that system before.The people I know have the system with pipes under their tiles as you said. One friend put normal radiators in later as she said that the u...[/quote] We have the water version, it was in our house when we bought it. It is lovely in winter to have warm terracotta tiles! However, someone did say they had heard it was not good for varicose veins! It is true to life that there is always someone who wants to pick holes!

[quote]I'm afraid of French hair techniques! Everyone seems to sport the various shades of red!! I always go to UK for anything hairy!! It' seems to be cheaper here but....... My husband has taken the plung...[/quote] However tell him from me that 'anything suits a good looking person' even a pudding bowl!

[quote]I'm afraid of French hair techniques! Everyone seems to sport the various shades of red!! I always go to UK for anything hairy!! It' seems to be cheaper here but....... My husband has taken the plung...[/quote] However tell him from me that 'anything suits a good looking person' even a pudding bowl!

[quote]Perhaps builders are all the same the world over.. All the problems mentioned seem to remind me of the time I had a house built in England! gplux[/quote] If we do do this new build. We will acquire either a caravan or a motor caravan and watch whilst the work is done. I think that you need to be there to answer questions and make decisions when things arise.

I have read this strand with interest as we are likely to go down the new house route. Thanks you all who have contributed!   At present, we have the most gorgeous, sprawling, old house set in beautiful grounds in 17 but with ill health striking in the family, we are not going to be able to spend the time in our beloved house as we had planned!  We have a piece of land with building permission and think that our only option now is to sell the house and have a holiday home built which could be shut up and left. It is sad how you make plans and then through one thing and another they cannot come to fruition!

I have read this strand with interest as we are likely to go down the new house route. Thanks you all who have contributed!   At present, we have the most gorgeous, sprawling, old house set in beautiful grounds in 17 but with ill health striking in the family, we are not going to be able to spend the time in our beloved house as we had planned!  We have a piece of land with building permission and think that our only option now is to sell the house and have a holiday home built which could be shut up and left. It is sad how you make plans and then through one thing and another they cannot come to fruition!

[quote]I'm not a vet and not involved in the industry so my 2p worth is just comment:The British authorities are quite paranoid about tick diseases and Frontline is still one of the approved treatments for d...[/quote] Now Frontline is the ONLY product allowed for tick treatment on cats and dogs entering the UK!

[quote]Hi Annie We have passport for our pooch and it is a blue book. It has a section for a photo and details of chipping etc and also a number of pages to record vacinations, flea and tick treatments etc...[/quote] About the photos - my two cats are still trying to make up their minds which is their best side for the photos!

Hi all! I have just been reading the thread about the rabies vacinations and someone there said that you need only take the current animal's passport when entering England. We have proved that this is NOT the case. On a couple of occasions recently the authorities have wanted to see the whole history of rabies injections going back four years ie to the Stone Ages when animals did not travel with passports just a whole daffy of forms! So my advice is take everything you have that relates to your animal. I was very amused this last time when entering England and whilst going through the immigration checks in Boulogne for our own passports - The cats having been checked and OK-ed in the Vetinary control offices before this - we were asked to show their passports yet again! My dear old British Shorthair cats were most offended that it might be thought that they were cat illegal immigrants! Another thing is that for the tick treatment, the UK authorities ONLY accept Frontline now. The officials doing the checks said that they had had to send some people, whose vets had used other preparations, to another Vet in Boulogne to re-do this treatment and then they people had had to wait the appropriate time ie between 12 hours and up to 24 hours after the shot to get on another ferry! Hope this helps!

Thanks you all very much for the really valuable advice! What a great site this is! All this talk of selling my house is fine in principal but we have shed blood, sweat and tears getting it to where it is now. I really love it and I wonder whether I could live happily next door in a perfect 'pavilion' with my beautiful, old house next door! I am sure some of you will understand this! We would not have two sales as we would have to sell our existing house to finance the new build, so I suspect that CGT will not come into things. At any rate, I have two years to get the house plans in and then make my mind up.

[quote]Will I thought that if you are resident, tax paying etc, then your principal residence was immediately free of CGT for the period that it actually is your principal residence. Doesn't the 15 year bu...[/quote] The question arises as we have a house in France which is at the moment , a 'maison secondaire' ,and we also have bought some designated building land. We bought this initially as we did not want anyone building on our borders. Soon we intend to retire to France but are undecided whether a smaller new house would be better for us in the longer term. If we did build this house, it would mean we have to sell the present French house to finance it and live in a caravan or some such whilst it was being built. So my question is related to whether we could move to France in retirement, change the tax implications etc and immediately sell the house we have escaping CGT or do we have to live there for a specifed number of years before we do this? My other question relates to whether if we tried the life in France and it did not live up to our expectations, whether we could change our National Health contributions back again to the UK? It is so difficult to know how you would feel resident in France all the time. We love our long holidays in France but listen to what others who have come here say about what they miss about the UK and maybe we would be the same! It has to be seen! So I am hedging my bets! I was just thinking around the options and thanks you so much all of you who have written here!

[quote]Assuming that you are living in France and hence part of the French system, the charge would be 16% tax plus 11% social charges (recently increased from 10%, hence the 16% and 26% you mentioned). Y...[/quote] Does anyone know: How long do you need to have your French house as your principal residence before you can sell it and escape CGT? If you have transferred your National Health entitlement to France, can you easily transfer it back to England when you move back? Thanks all!  

[quote]I think Lizzie has made a good point. She doesn't speak Spanish, so it's best to keep Spain for holidays! Do you speak French or Spanish, both or neither? I would suggest that to fully enjoy where ...[/quote] Talking to friends the cost of living in Spain is cheaper than SW France where we are. I think you need to sit down and make a list of what you want in your new life then go and see where best fulfills your criteria. If after that you are not sure, then rent before you buy!

[quote]we had a martin (pine or otherwise) that killed all our chickens. One of the neighbours trapped it and killed it. Apparently they kill chickens to drink the blood if the martin has babies, and they wi...[/quote] Be careful if it is 'fouines' they are a protected species! We have had them and the last time we were in France one had fallen down through the shaft that was round the bathrooms' ventilator unit and what a mess it had made! Unmentionables on my chest of drawers and the wallpaper had been clawed off as it made its escape back to the roof cavity! We now have closed the gap and, although we know they may come back to the roof, we hope we will not get a visitation in the house!

I have lost touch with Stewart and Linda who used to write on this site  and went to live near St Jean D'Angley near A10. If anyone knows them or you read this S and L we would love to know how you are getting on living the dream. Best wishes J and M

I have lost touch with Stewart and Linda who used to write on this site  and went to live near St Jean D'Angley near A10. If anyone knows them or you read this S and L we would love to know how you are getting on living the dream. Best wishes J and M

[quote]Why do they have to be English speaking??[/quote] I can understand why someone who does not have a firm grasp of French is reluctant to put themsleves in the hands of a hairdresser who does not understand what they really want. Imagine having your long tresses docked when you only went in for a trim!

[quote]Hi, does anyone know of an english speaking mobile hairdresser or an english speaking hairdresser in a salon in dept 17, preferably near saintes/pons/gemozac or near the Estuary. thanks Emma[/quote] There is a new hairdresser opened in Jonzac in the street that lies  behind the Place du Chateau. It sports the name David Williams over the door. I can't say whether it is good or bad as I have only passed by it in the car.