Bob T

[quote user="Joe"]I am thinking of buying a 2 berth caravan for touring around France etc. I have been told that they are expensive here. Any information would be welcome.[/quote] You say you have been told, have you looked at the sites where such things are sold yourself?

You can get 1000 Gb ones for €65 these days.

Yes you can change it. There are two ways, a magic marker or buy new plates. There may be a place out there that makes just the blue square as a stick on, but I have not seen one yet.

I know of a chap who has been taking photos of UK plated cars that are parked in the local airport and do not conform to either French or UK rules. He has a mate who works for DVLA and the information is passed to him. As far as I understand it will also be passed to the French authorities after the cars concerned have been de-registered by the DVLA.

Quote Sprogster: "To this end the French government are clearly not keen on low income early retirees joining their health care system and whatever the EU say, France will make it as difficult and expensive as possible to join by way of deterrent, in my opinion." OK so I came here in 2004 with my RAF pension of less than £6000 pa. It is still the same amount and will be till I get to 55. What I want to know is how are the French government going to make it more expensive for me? Are the going to charge me a higher rate for medication than French people? I thought that they would have to comply with EU rules (eventually).

Just insured the 125. Went to MAAF as they have the car and paid €68 per year for the bike.

[quote user="NormanH"]The business of the country whose system these early retired  people wish to enter uninvited. I think a number of people who have to work well after their 40s would find it insulting to be accused of 'chasing money'. They may  regard it as survival, but then are not being paid out of the public purse to sit on their backsides. [/quote] I never entered any country uninvited, I am a EU citizen so can live anywhere in the EU that I choose. My RAF pension is paid out of the public purse but that is the only thing that I get. Do you think that I should give it back to the UK after serving 24 years? You could have chosen to join the forces at the age of 17 and then gone and worked on a Harrier in a muddy field for weeks at a time in the middle of the German winter too. You could also have gone to work with your sleeping bag to keep aircraft in the air during the Falklands/Gulf war and not gone home for weeks at a time. What many people choose instead is a well paid job within reach of family and friends, but that is their choice. Do I sense a hint of jealousy?

I cannot chase the sender as he is one of the companies who send me free electronic stuff for evaluation, I get to keep it afterwards. I sent an email to DHL and got a phone call today to say it will be delivered on Monday. In the future I will ask all of my contacts to send stuff by mail as I have never had any problem with Colissimo. We once had a visitor who parked his estate car at the end of our long drive. We were expecting a parcel, but on this occasion the postie could not pass the car at the end of the drive, so she put the parcel in the boot of my friends car and left the boot open so that we found it when they left. That is what I call great service.

I retired here at the age of 46, and have a RAF pension, but I am not idle just because I choose not to chase money. What I do is my business so who are you to judge me and others like me?

I have never had any problems with items sent by the postal service, but DHL is a shambles. A small package was sent via DHL from Birmingham to me in the Dordogne. It was with them on the 11th of July. I sit here on the 30th July and it has still not arrived! I have tracked it via their website and it has been sitting in Paris since the 15th. They are a clever company because they don't give you a number to phone so that you can chase it. I know that when it gets here I will get a call to say that they cannot find my house and I can collect it from Perigueux. How can anybody run a business like that?

If times get hard then I will sit at Bergerac for a day and then eat for a week on good free food and wine that the poor tourists donate to me :-)

[quote user="dogwood"]Cheers Clair. Maaf won't insure bikes less than 80cc. Another brick wall.......[/quote] That is good news for me as the wife has just bought herself a 125. We are with MAAF and they were very cheap for the BMW 1100's when we had them.

Dogwood, why not ask whoever insures your car?

When we sold a motorbike for about €6000, we took a cheque. There was no problem, but I made sure that my wife had the camera and took pictures of the couple buying, the car that they turned up in (showing the numberplate), and their documents. I also did the transaction at our local cafe where there were plenty of witnesses who I know.

A CofC is just that, a European CofC, and should not matter what language it is in.

[quote user="PaulT"][quote user="Bob T"]If I were to compare food prices with the UK, then I would also factor in ...... road tax ...... [/quote] Now, I would much prefer to pay a road tax in France than the tolls. I pay £145 road tax in the UK. We make 5 journeys down to France a year. If we went via Paris then the tolls would cost 528 euros. We go via Rouen and it costs 346 euros. This is without going anywhere else via the autoroute. I know that we could take the N roads but would take a great deal longer to get to our house and could require an overnight stay. Paul [/quote] And for me it is different, I never pay tolls as I never visit the UK. They also have toll roads in the UK - north of Birmingham, but as in France you have the choice of not using them.

Wealth in the south of France! You must be joking. The local population in this part of the Dordogne are farmers who drive 10 year old vans and 30 year old tractors. France is not the only country where it is difficult to come and live in, you should see the rules for us Europeans wanting to move to Australia.

I sometimes check my till receipts and have only once found it wrong in about 6 years, I don't understand why yours are nearly always wrong. If I were to compare food prices with the UK, then I would also factor in diesel prices, council tax prices, road tax, electricity prices etc. I would then realise that we are better off here despite slightly higher food prices.

Sweet are you losing it? It may be called Adobe Flash Player, but I don't think that this belongs in Sports! [:D]

Thanks Paul, something for me to play with.

Paul, I think that you need the T2 version of the Humax to access it from your PC and you can't with the older 320Gb version.

[quote user="sweet 17"]Bob, do they need light as well as a frost-free atmosphere in the winter? We have some storage rooms but the natural lighting level is not great. Thanks, Bob, and my regards to JT. [/quote] My garage has a window, but not with clear glass and with a balcony above it, so there is a bit of natural light. If we have a sunny day in the winter then I put it outside the garage door for a couple of hours. What I have found is that in the hot sunny summer, the more you water it, the more it grows.

Sid, Read this for the answer, it is a common thing.

Why not just write a French cheque and put it into your UK account?

Sid, It may be due to a software update as mine has been doing that too for the last couple of weeks. I only have about 30% on the disk.