Bob T

"Trends change, traditional cafe bars in France, are closing at an alarming rate. A lot of the ones I have visited, are dirty, unfriendly & expensive & wouldn't survive in any country." None have closed around here. None are either dirty or expensive. In my opinion they serve the best coffee in the world.

"Once you have established French tax residency (I think minimum 3 years but it could be 5)" Has that changed then? I thought that a person was a tax resident the day after they come here with the intention to live here.

"understand we still do need top-up healthcare insurance cover" Depends what you mean by need. It is not obligatory but may be desirable depending on what you feel comfortable with.

"once you have a tank full of wax" Does not happen like that, the wax only restricts the flow through the filter. A diesel heater normally only heats the filter. Mine was fine a couple of weeks ago when at 6am the outside temperature had gone up to -19 and stayed there for the first 30 miles of my 110 mile journey. It started fine and ran well all the way.

I had a C3 diesel, the 1.4 HDI 16 valve model. With 92 bhp it had some real performance and gave around 65 mpg in the 80,000 miles I owned it. Only servicing ever done was oil changes every 12,000 miles. Best bit about the C3 is the modern stiff chassis which meant that it was a great car for long fast motorway journeys from the UK to the Dordogne, it felt as comfortable as a much bigger car.

That sort of journey suits a diesel more that it would a petrol. That is why just about every taxi in the world is a diesel.

[quote user="Sunday Driver"][quote user="Bob T"] After a couple of BMWs...... [/quote]   [:-))][:-))][:-))] [IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w4/r850r/condor_r.gif[/IMG][IMG]http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w4/r850r/s-clan-tartan-600-1.jpg[/IMG]   Oops......[:$]   [/quote] Cheeky! I bought my first new BMW at the age of 17. I have also owned Jap bikes, but now only buy quality machines.

Thanks for that Alex. Only two specific models we are looking for but there are a few on that site.

Anyone have any links for second hand bike sites in Spain? After a couple of BMWs and have scoured UK, France and Germany, thought that Spain might also be interesting.

[quote user="Bill"]is this the beasty you are all  talking about as inverters ?    Bill   POMPE A CHALEUR CONSOLE DC INVERTER 5000 W la pompe à chaleur 995€00Dont 13,04 € d’éco participation Pour une pièce jusqu'à 60 m² (150 m"). Puissance : 5000 W en froid et 6000 W en chaud. Consommation : 1550 W en froid et 1650 W en chaud. COP : 3,62 en chaud. dB intérieur : 38 db.  [/quote] Yes that is the one. Just as Quillan says it just pumps out hot air and warms the whole area of a room and also half the single story house in my case, should have bought it years ago! Added to that there is no longer damp anywhere, even on the windows in the morning.

I fitted evacuated tubes for water heating a few tears ago and have been very happy with it so far. In the winter we use the electric immersion to back it up, but still get solar energy on sunny days. I have also fitted an air to air heat pump in the bedroom a couple of weeks ago and am most impressed. I also went for a Brico Depot inverter system. The intention was to back up the wood burner in the lounge so I fitted it in the bedroom, it is so good that the wood burner now backs up the heat pump. I was amazed last week Tuesday, when I had to go out in the morning for a long drive and the temperatures on the outside thermometer and on the car were showing -19c, that the heat pump was pushing out nice warm air.

They just give up when they find out that you are on Linux. When I told him that all of our PCs are Ubuntu Linux machines he was not sure what to say. When I told him I won't have MS Windows in my house he said goodbye!

[quote user="NormanH"]But the important one was won by England [6] [/quote] In your opinion!

[quote user="Mr Ice-ni"][quote user="AnOther"][quote user="Bob T"]If someone knocked on my door and offered to buy my house, I would send them off with some abuse. If my house were for sale then I'd put a sign up.[/quote]That ignores the first principal of capitalism which is that EVERYTHING is for sale at the right price, your house included [;-)] [/quote] and EVERYBODY. John [/quote] Sorry not everything and everybody. If that was the case then I would not have given up a decent job in the UK to come here and live on a small RAF pension. A visitor once stood on my balcony and commented that there may be truffles in my oak wood below the house, I told her that there may be. She said that I should go and look for them as they are worth €1000 per kilo. She could not understand when I told her that I don't want €1000 as I have just enough to live on.

If someone knocked on my door and offered to buy my house, I would send them off with some abuse. If my house were for sale then I'd put a sign up.