nimportequoi

I don't know, but thanks very much James, for your advice.Should there be a seperate section for all this as I'm sure there are a lot of people in addition to gite/B&B owners who have their own websites? Cassis, I know the pages are a bit slow to load on dial up - the cottages page is a lot worse than the homepage! How do I reduce the filesize without changing the size or quality?

Hi Rebekah, I use dreamweaver to do my site but it was originally done by someone else. All pages except the index are HTML, except the index which is SHTML and whenever I do updates to the index page, I get kicked out of Dreamweaver after the update has been done (or if it is a major change, before). I know it is a dense question, but what is the difference and if I re-name the index page as HTML would this solve the problem? I never have any problems with updating and changing the other pages. Thanks in advance! my website is here if it is of any use to see the code.      

It is very useful - the local library also has internet access, but that has more limited opening hours. I think the bar owner is trying everything he can to increase trade - but I can't see many of the locals using it, although it is very handy for my guests.

One of the bars in our village (3kms away) has just got a computer with internet access so I just direct them there instead! If people are that tied to work they often bring a blackberry to keep in touch with things.

The French always leave my place spotless, even large groups of young people - it is just something they seem to do (well trained by strict G de F proprietors). My worst experiences have been with large groups of Irish people, not individual families, but I intend never to let to large groups of Irish again after a third and particularly bad experience a couple of weeks ago.

Katie, I wish all my guests did the same as you! I find generally that with one family, the gite is always kept quite clean, but when there are a group or 2/3 families no-one seems to want to do more than anyone else regarding cleaning, so therefore nothing in the way of housework gets done and the place is generally left quite dirty. Except when Grandma is in the group, then the place is usually spotless.

I have washing machinges in all 3 cottages and dishwashers in the 2 which sleep 6 and 12 people. I think that they are essential for groups of 4+ people now - most people have them at home and I don't think they are considered a luxury anymore. I supply all dishwasher tablets, but not washing powder/liquid. I've been looking at putting a dishwasher into the small gite which sleeps 4, but there isn't a lot of room and the small dishwasher type that can fit in a cupboard costs a fortune and it doesn't hold  lot of inventory. Having spoken to guests they prefer a washing machine over a dishwasher when there is only a max of 4 people (2 adults, 2 children) in the house - particularly if they have babies. In the four years I have been renting out the gites I've had 2 incidents with the dishwashers, one breakdown and one blockage because the guests weren't cleaning off the leftover food properly.

And here is what Bill Bryson has to say about timer switches....and the French The hotel was one of those sterile, modern places that always put me in mind of a BUPA advertisement, but at least it didn't have those curious timer switches that used to be a feature of hotel hallways in France. These were a revelation to me when I first arrived from America. All the light switches in the hallways were timed to switch off after ten or fifteen seconds, presumably as an economy measure. This wasn't so bad if your room was next to the elevator, but if it was very far down the hall, and hotel hallways in Paris tend to wander around like an old man with Alzheimer's, you would generally proceed the last furlong in total darkness, feeling your way along the walls with flattened palms, and invariably colliding scrotally with the corner of a nineteenth-century oak table put there, evidently, for that purpose. Occasionally your fingers would alight on something soft and hairy, which you would recognise after a moment as another person, and if he spoke English you could exchange tips. You soon learned to have your key out and to sprint like billy-o for your room. But the trouble was that when eventually you re-emerged it was to total blackness once more and to a complete and - mark this - intentional absence of light switches, and there was nothing you could do but stumble about like Boris Karloff in The Mummy, and hope that you weren't about to blunder into a stairwell. From this I learned one very important lesson: the French do not like us. That's OK, because of course nobody likes them much either. It so happens that I had just seen a survey in a British paper in which executives had been asked to list their most despised things in the whole universe and the top three ones were, in this order: garden gnomes, fuzzy dice hanging in car windows and the French. i just loved that. Of all the things to despise - pestilence, poverty, tyrannical governments, Michael Fish - they chose garden gnomes, fuzzy dice and the French. I think that's splendid.

Jules, £450  to £500 for your Gite 1 is only an 11% increase by my calculation! If you upped the rate to £600, I bet you'd still get the bookings! It's off peak you have to be more careful with the rates.

As you say your rates are very reasonable - cheap in fact for what you appear to offer, so why don't you just increase them by about 25% mid July - August then you won't feel so bad about people using the appliances. It is swings and roundabouts - for every family who uses a washing machine daily, another one won't use it at all. I have a similar dilemma in winter, when my rates are cheap and people use a lot of heating, but over a year it balances out asoverheads are generally minimal in the summer. I have the tempo tarif in two of my gites, so from 1st April - 31st October electricity costs are minimal.

G de F also said I would have to halve my rental prices (and my accommodation is not the most expensive I have come across in this area), so with that added to the comission they take, it probably was just as well my accommodation didn't fit their criteria as my income would have been severely reduced.

Yes, there are some things in the fabric of a building you can't change - we have a main beam in the living area just slightly lower than the 2m required in one cottage and wood central heating in another, so on those grounds both were automatically disqualified. I realise they have to have some standards, but the rigidity of their criteria seems a little old fashioned to me too. We have never had any complaints from either UK or French guests- most French guests say our accommodation if far superior to the G deF they have had experience of. However, like Patmobile, I appreciate the lobbying both G de F and Clévacances do on behalf of all gite and B&B owners in France, even if my accommodation doesn't tick all their boxes!

[quote user="Tresco"] Were you supporting Italy? I thought the match (open play) was pretty equal. [/quote] I thought France outplayed Italy from the moment they scored their goal to the time Zidane was sent off. If only they could have snatched another goal! Trezeguet has to be one of the most overrated forwards in the world and even if Zizou hadn't been sent off, he probably would have missed.

The red card wasjustified for Zizou, but I'd love to know what Materazzi said to him to provoke the head butt! What a shame he is retiring, he is such a magical player.

Kas 33, I wasn't talking about the weekend special supplement on France, that was a waste of time for me too. I think it is different if you advertise for specific dates, especially for short notice in the summer holidays.

I've tried twice before, but no luck, but I do know people with more ebay experience who have succeeded in selling rental homes in France this way, but they are more clued up on how to market their property through ebay. I'm a bit of a novice. Parsac23, when I had a late cancellation one year for a week of the summer holidays in my big house sleeping 12 with pool I placed an ad in the Saturday Daily Telegraph and got a fantastic response - the week had sold by 9am the day the paper came out. It isn't cheap (£75 for a fewlines) and I'm not sure how it would work for out of Peak weeks, but I would definitely use them again rather than ebay - I also got a very good price for the property.

[quote user="Leslauriers"][quote user="SusanAH"] The tax relief is 72% but will decrease to 68% next year (the French Govt don't like micros very much!) [/quote] It's not that they don't like micros in fact the 4% reduction compares well to the loss of the 20% abatement salaried and pensioned people currently get. The reason for these reductions in allowances, is that the rates of taxation are reduced for the 2007 return covering 2006 income. [/quote] Les Lauriers, I'm just repeating what my accountant said! I know he 4% reduction in abbatement is due to the abolition of another tax (can'remember what it's called, but you pay it for renting out old renovated buildings). Gail, yes, you are loueur non professionel.

Micro. Assuming your income is less than 76,300€ or 23,000€ if it is your only income and you are a 'loueur professionel'. The tax relief is 72% but will decrease to 68% next year (the French Govt don't like micros very much!) 

Great site, Christine! "On n'a jamais trop de chats" Unfortunately MOH doesn't agree. I have 3 and have just found another very skinny one with a dangly leg who sleeps underneath the (poisonous) laurel hedge. I'm feeding him up and would take him in, but OH says that the house will start to smell and he will leave (have 3 dogs too). Is it possible to have to many cats?

I have freeview channels including all the radio stations and listen with the Sky Gnome, which has a range of about 40m from the digibox. I can't see why anyone would want a Gnome in the UK where DAB radios are available, but it is great to take ouside here for listening to in the garden.

We have good quality thick cushions which have washable covers  for all our sunloungers, but I got them shipped over from the UK, I haven't seen any of similar quality in France, I'm afraid. Wooden garden furniture is incredibly uncomortable without cushions, I agree.

I've had 3 lots of UK guests who have been pulled up for this offence now. The Gendarmes seem to think it is a great joke, after all, there is no excuse for Brits not understanding the road sign STOP. They take great pleasure in pointing  this out to the unfortunate offenders every time.

I agree it is nice to talk about different things with like-minded people in the real world to get mental stimulation (that's why I teach English to adults), but I think being able to speak the language fluently is more important - I get along just fine with my mainly agriculteur neighbours, we discuss the village, the garden, the weather, the family, the farm, my work, ridiculous French laws and occasionally we have the odd argument - just what you would do with the neighbours back in the UK! However, I wouldn't be able to do this if I didn't speak French at a very good level.

Thanks very much Debra and Cat, I will use it in future!

How do you post links that do not need the http:// reference?