Babbles

I don't but I would be very interested to see it :-)

Hi , we got it wrong first time round buying in the Gers, too quite and the weather is not very good even though its in the South west, you really need to get to the med coast for the good weather (drier) watch out for how windy an area is. we plumped for just outside Pezenas in the Herault, it to meets you criteria so maybe worth a look. We're not selling up we really love it here :-)

Well Done, hope it all goes smoothly and you enjoy your new home.

If you're offering all that you say you want to the prices seem low, before we opened the average room rate in the village was under 70 Euros but we can charge up to double that and people are more than happy to pay. we have many Nationalities staying with us and when the decide to come here they look at an enormous area and are comparing what we do and offer rather than the immediate area. I feel that breaking even at 53% occupancy is too high a percentage and would aim to break even at at about 35% and see how that reflects on the room rates. We thought that as you can only have 5 rooms/suites as a CDH you need to get the best price possible per room and still be good value, our comments on Tripadvisor say that people think we're good value and one of the weblistings we are on advertise us as budget!!! Its all a matter of perception and I would 't get to hooked up on what's on offer in the immediate area and what they charge.

I've too have an iphone thats about to be out of contract, but everyone here in france says it cheaper to keep it on my O2 basic monthly contract than to change it over to a french contract, is this true? (I always keep data roaming off as that is really expensive) and use various apps such as Truephone and Ping! to keep in touch with UK mobiles when I'm connected to the wifi, anyone any thoughts is this is an effective way to have an iphone?

lets hope it so going to stay here or goes up, it really helps with the mortgage payments !

I assume the way the budget airlines are discounting for May things must be a bit dire all round so fingers crossed for so last minute bookings. It difficult to plan when things are so up in the air (no pun intended!)

As this is our first full year I was wondering what is normal in terms of percentage of nights booked or taken so far this year as a percentage of total nights achieved for the year. We took loads of bookings in March but April has been really quite, is it the Bl**dy Ash to blame?

We've just driven from Herault to Lancashire via Wiltshire and Leicestershire, total time 30 hours 48 minutes. No problems on the motorways in France, the service stations were busier than normal with the loo's being a bit grim. Arrived at Euro tunnel at midnight( booked on one at 8am) but managed to get on the 2.55 am but it wasn't that busy. The motorways in England were the worst bit as there are huge amount of roadworks everywhere replacing the central reservation. So, on the whole Ryanair have dealt with the situation very well, we had rebooked some of our flights for wednesday and have managed to apply for refunds, one fight was swapped for a bmibaby flight Toulouse - Manchester on wednesday , its still not listed as one that has been cancelled , its extremely unlikely to fly and when you do want a refund you have to write in, there is no online method of doing it, with the post now disrupted this is not really a practical solution. My only issue with Ryanair is that we have a fight booked for next sunday to Nimes which we won't need but I can't change without a £50 fee, if I could change it free of charge it would fee up a seat for that flight which I'm sure will be needed by someone if the flight does take place, as it is we'll wait to see if its cancelled to see if we can get a refund. But it does seem wrong to fly with an empty seat.

Most French mortgage companies need to have it fully paid by the age of 70, and I can vaguely remember 5 years being the minimum term, we got ours through BNP Paribas very easily ,by email and telephone all in English with no fuss and bother.

I had some Russians coming to stay but ended up no showing so I contacted them to find out what was happening, his opening line of the email was I'm sorry for the great incontinence caused, now I was pee'd off as it cost me a lot of money but certainly didn't cause incontinence !

The site was crashing loads in the last couple of days, if you get as far as entering your card details your flight could well be booked, I ended up booking twice as the confirmation email didn't arrive for ages , I've had more luck when going on very early in the morning when most people are tucked up in bed.

Yep, I think they taste the same and I noticed too that there is a bit of a price hike between which shelf they're on , just those who haven't spotted them yet on the french shelf the called Original. Seems the good people of Pezenas are now hoarding them as supplies seem to have dried up temporarily!

We opened last summer so haven't really known the good times as such but we are pleasantly surprised by the number of bookings as our expectation was low!!! but as Quillan says not that many from the UK, we're at the luxury end of the market so the exchange rate hits us hard, but we are also getting a lot of enquiries from Americans, Canadians and Aussies. In our village at the basic end of the market I know a Dutch guy whose bookings are right down and he never really relied on Brits. So I'm not sure if certain sectors are suffering more than others. Other people are saying that people are really leaving it to the last minute to book. One thing we did do was keep hold of our UK business to easy off the financial pressure of establishing the Chambre D'Hote in France.

Yes me too, had a phone call a couple of months ago, then emailed me some info, sounded plausible on the phone but looking at the website it looked a bit rubbish.

We found Tempur to hot, the fact the foam moulds round you to seems to be the problem, and the same with all foam mattresses that are too soft if you sink into them you'll be too warm. As we didn't have the budget to change all the mattresses in our private bit of our Chambre D'Hote and did have one which wasn't 2 sided so I bought a topper from Ikea which has done the trick. I also think if you put a foam mattress on a solid or sprung base they are hotter than using a slated sommier where the air can circulate. As to knowing which is the summer side and which is the winter we couldn't find the secret code, we just tried them and turned them over if necessary. We bought our mattresses from our local bed shop where the guy was really helpful in pointing us in the right direction in terms of finding 2 sided etc etc and ordered us some special size for our antique beds. Ikea mattresses have a great reputation but I thought they where expensive (when you include delivery) compared to the quality you could get in the local store.

It makes me laugh when people right off a whole country when they've lived in one place, we tried the Gers found it too quiet, with quite a lot of peoples lives based around drink it seemed so moved to the Herault and love it, it has more to do with country v town than which country you're in ( assuming you make a modicum of effort to learn the language. And as a side line we found moving to rural Lancashire far more difficult in being accepted than we have in France.

We use foam mattresses and I thought they'd be a bit cheap and nasty but they're not at all. but essentially you need one that it is two sided , summer and winter or you will cook in summer and look at the kilo's anything below 28 will probably be too soft but over 32 too firm and you feel like you'll roll off. To get an equally comfortable sprung mattress you'd be looking at over £2000. The bed that we get most comments about what a great night sleep they have had is 18cm deep 30kg and the sommier (base) is a good quality slatted one that has quite a lot of spring in each piece of wood. We have sprung ones in the UK and they don't come anywhere close for comfort and I often end up with a stiff shoulder so now have been totally converted to foam!

Water Rat, thats just cheating!!!! For everyone who don't have resident jersey cows!!If using creme fleurette or the fluid one trying whipping some marscepone ( That doesn't look like its spelt right) into it and it whips up a treat no need for that vile Chantilly fix and it has no sour back note or that artificial sweet taste and can whip firm enough to fill cakes, top trifles etc yummy

I found some in Carreforre in Pezenas, more the New York type than ones you'd get from a proper Jewish deli but a decent substitute with cream cheese and Salmon, yummy!

We had our very long zinc gutters replaced last year a real pro job but cost over 5K they were beyond repair and did a good impersonation of a colander, but the damage caused by leaking gutter is endless so they had to be fixed. Although it was a lot of money its one of the few jobs we've had done that was well worth the money.

I always used to use BMI Baby Man - Bordeaux when I went to our old house in the Gers and they were great,but I thought I 'd try them again to Perpignan last year, it was really awful,limited timetable old dirty plane rude staff made Ryanair look like they are trained at a Swiss finishing school. So its Ryanair every time, follow the rules and they're great.

It normally says first, second special delivery and the like and has no numerical value on it , therefore cannot be used internationally, just the same as if someone sticks 2 first class stamps to send a letter abroad thinking that will cover the value, which technically it does but isn't valid.

I was wondering if you have a U.K. food hygiene certificate would that meet the French rules? Which I have but cost less than £40 to do.

Found this description on the t'internet and sounds pretty similar to curd cheese so I think I'll give it a go with it and see how I get on. Mascarpone is a pale cream-coloured soft, spreadable cream cheese made from cream from cow's milk. Unlike other cheeses, Mascarpone uses no starter or Rennet, so it's not really a cheese: it's more akin to Clotted Cream, Crème Fraîche, Sour Cream or Yoghurt. The cream is heated to 190 F (88 C.) Citric acid is added to curdle it. The curd is stirred, then allowed to drain for 24 hours. The curd is then mixed, whipped, and packed in tubs for sale, and sent to market.