nimportequoi
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Posts posted by nimportequoi
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Thanks everyone - I thought 15€ was perhaps a little much! I just couldn't visualise how many wheelbarrow loads would make up a corde.
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Yes, I was going to include the first basket as I always lay the fire, and then I was thinking of around 15€ per wheelbarrow load, but I'm not sure if that is too steep (you can get quite a lot in!)
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I've decided to charge for heating now instead of doing an all in price. I can no longer live on site and bite my tongue while guests wearing nothing but T shirts and shorts in April burn my valuable oak in the chimney or woodburner with the central heating on full blast, whilst the doors and windows of the gites are open wide to let the heat out. (This doesn't apply to all guests, of course, but it happens too regularly for me now!)
I'm still not decided on a price for wood and maths isn't my forte. If I paid 180€ per corde, any opinion on what would be a fair price to charge per (heaped) wheelbarrow load?
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Edyth
I have a different contact for French people, as Loiseau pointed out, they pay 25% deposit with the balance payable on arrival. It is also normal not to cash the security deposit. If are interested, PM or e mail me, I can send you the 'contrat de location' that I use.
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It is still worth going with the paid listing sites as most reputable ones have very good search engine ratings for the top search words used by potential customers. Even though you have your own website, it is unlikely that it will be found straight away on google!
I think your site looks very nice, but a few more photos would be very useful - people like to see everything (with the possible exception of the toilet) these days![:)]
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JonD, ff you like short, usually funny news stories from around the world, this site is always worth a look!
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[quote user="Cassis"][quote user="SusanAH"]
[quote user="Cassis"]I think visitors to a certain place to our west have a similar sense of delight when they eventually meet a French speaker! [:D]
[/quote]You aren't referring to Brittany are you Cassis?? Why, I spent the day in St Malo on Sunday and it was packed - I didn't hear one single English voice in the crowds - mostly French, a few German, but no English!
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Nope - much closer to home! [:D]
Sorry if I touched a nerve!
[/quote]No Cassis, not at all, you wouldn't have been far wrong if you were talking about Brittany! There are no shortage of English people here - it must have been a fluke day at St Malo on Sunday. You must have been referring to Normandy then?
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[quote user="Cassis"]I think visitors to a certain place to our west have a similar sense of delight when they eventually meet a French speaker! [:D]
[/quote]You aren't referring to Brittany are you Cassis?? Why, I spent the day in St Malo on Sunday and it was packed - I didn't hear one single English voice in the crowds - mostly French, a few German, but no English!
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As a gite owner I'm biased, but some French friends of ours borrowed a camper van and went down south and said that the number of towns and cities now making it impossible for camper vans to park (low barriers) is increasing. It is the same in St Malo here. Our friend said it is because people who holiday in camper vans contribute littleg to the local community by way of paying for accommodation etc., so they are not encouraged. That said, there are still plenty of places to put vans (our little local town has just created a space), but it is difficult to park in the more popular tourist places.
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I don't smoke and if I go to a resto and end up near someone who is smoking it ruins the meal for me, so I'm happy about the new legislation. However, I do confess to rather liking the smell of the brown Gitanes that my French agriculteur neighbour has constantly hanging out of the side of his mouth.
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Donald,
I'm near Rennes, but you should find work in any big cities which have French international businesses operating there, certainly Toulouse and Bordeaux would be options.
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Unless you have wood on your own land that you can use, I don't think it is a significantly cheaper option any more - at least not at the price I've been paying per corde of seasoned oak recently!
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Do you mean laying on all the entertainment, or just renting out for those periods? I rent out for a minimum of 3 nights Christmas and New Year and the gites are always fully booked (French clients, not UK) but I don't provide entertainment/food etc.
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Donald,
I got myself a TEFL qualification before coming out here, but got my first jobs teaching because of my professional business experience in the UK. An English friend of mine, who has never done a qualification nor had any teaching experience and what she knows about English grammar could be written on the back of a postage stamp, has also just got a job teaching adults, so just being a native English speaker seems to be enough nowadays.
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If you want to teach English in a collège full time, Mistral is the one to tell you about it, but you need a premier degré which is a very difficult qualification to get - you need to have fluent French (and also be a French national??). If you are going to be living near a big town, there is a fair amount of work teaching English to adults in companies, but the pay isn't great, around 20€ an hour and it is done on a contractual basis so you have no job security at all - it rarely gives you a good steady income. If you got around 15 hours a week you'd be lucky. If you have a family to support I don't think it is an viable option if it was to be your sole income.
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Pip, I was a little shocked at the price you had to pay too, presumably it was late September? I don't charge that for our 2 bed cottage and we offer a heated pool too (and no damp inside!).
Miki, I agree that it would be nice to have some kind of grading, but I do have a problem with some of the very strict criteria specified by G de F and Clévacances - one of my (very old) cottages does not qualify for a grading automatically because there is a beam in the living area that is a couple of centimetres below the required 2m clearance height. Despite this the cottage is normally fully booked from March through to end October and I've never had any complaints and get a lot of repeats. In fact, a lot of my French visitors say it is far more comfortable and better equipped than graded G de F gites they have stayed in, but I can't get the epis...!
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There is a lot of difference in the way the rule is interpreted. In big companies (FT, where I teach for example), the staff get an extra 4/5 weeks paid leave (RTT) every year so account for the fact that they work over the set 35 hours every week. This gives them a total of 45 - 50 days paid leave every year and costs the company a fortune. In contrast, in many smaller companies, there is no compensatory scheme. The employees who have now got used to the extra leave are going to find it very difficult to give up if the law is changed (I believe both Sarko and Ségo are against it).
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I just want to confirm that in Brittany in the countryside, there are also plenty of flies around, but due to the poor August weather, we were only troubled for a few weeks in July this year. If you do your househunting anytime from late September to June, you won't get an indication of the summer fly problem. It is the very difficult to remove stains they leave behind which I find most annoying.
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You might find some useful information here . An friend of mine gave birth in France a couple of years after arriving here and she spoke no French at all, but fortunately she had a quick, straightforward birth. I think if complications arise you could find things a lot more difficult. I don't know if you have other children, but if you do, what sort of support, other than your husband will you need around to look after them while you are in hospital? Especially if you need to go in for longer than planned. I'm having a baby in March and although I've been here 4 years, speak fluent French and have friends around, the lack of immediate family is still a concern, should things go pear shaped!
I can only confirm what is said above, though, the care is excellent. When I teach I have described the fact that in the UK new mothers and babies go into a ward with several other mothers and babies straight after birth and a one night stay is normal. My French students are always horrified by this, they have their own room, or share with one other at worst.
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St Armour, it was strange when they were delivered as without the legs and cushions the hard frames looked tiny! However, it is so easy to put the soft furnishings on the frame, it took about 5 mins to get the sofa ready. The covers are wash well too, which is another big advantage, although it is expensive to buy a spare set.
J'attends avec impatience Ikea à Rennes!!! But the opening keeps getting delayed....
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I can second JJ's comments about the Ektorp sofa bed, it looks stylish and is good quality, both as a sofa and a bed (the seat cushions don't slip as much as they did on a previous design). We got ours delivered (with other Ektorp sofas) as our closest Ikea is Nantes an hour and a half away.
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[quote user="Jon D"][quote user="SusanAH"]I'm a bit puzzled as to what you have to invest in to 'attract' the baby and toddler market. We supply the usual baby kit: stair gates, cots, baby bath, high chairs, a few toys etc.[/quote]
....Susan, you'd be amazed how many people would consider these items an"investment too far!" Furnishings are usually the last items to be bought by an aspiring gite-magnate and suffer most from late budget cuts. Even an "essential" kit can run into a few hundred euros.
Whatever an owner provides, parents still have to bring a pile of stuff with them when travelling with young children. Being only a few hours drive from the ferry ports is a must. By a few I mean 3-5 hours tops.
[/quote]I suppose you are right, some gite owners maybe don't consider these essentials, I hadn't thought of that! It is also true that cars are packed to the brim even without parents having to bring their own cots and high chairs.
BTW, talking of baby stuff, congratulations JonD!!![:D]
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I'm a bit puzzled as to what you have to invest in to 'attract' the baby and toddler market. We supply the usual baby kit: stair gates, cots, baby bath, high chairs, a few toys etc. but have never been asked for anything else and every year we are fully booked June to mid July usually just with young pre-school families. The little ones like the garden, the pool and the trampoline just the same as the older ones! St Armour is right about location and not beng too hot - we are in Brittany and had two families with young children staying in September who found even the Vendée too hot for their children last September so wanted somewhere cooler. The shorter travelling distance from ports is also attractive as a lot of families travel by car.
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I have sofa beds, but do not count them in the number of people the gites sleep. I really only have them for French guests who don't seem to mind the overcrowding at all and always want to accommodate extra people.
In your case, I would have a spare lit pliant or something like that for use if required for an occupancy of greater than 4, but not compromise the existing space you have.
Charging for wood
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