Fil

Hi, thanks everyone for your replies. Teamed Up - glad I gave you a laugh.  Funny - I always have a good one reading your contributions too. Saligo Bay - you may well be right.  I have found that the people over here are inclined to accept things without questioning them, rather sheep like.  Thanks for the good wishes - maybe I'll be off to the Conseil General next, you never know. BJSLIV - yes, and have you seen the statistics on accidents on them?  He does actually have a moto, but I worry every time he uses it, and there is certainly nowhere secure for him to leave it at the bus stops in question.  And if he did ride it in bad weather he would hardly be in a state to spend the day leerning, would he?  And as for boarding, he suffers from a condition that would make that very difficult for him - he has Asperger's Syndrome - monstrously high IQ but very introverted and insecure in strange out of the ordinary situations, meaning he is best off living at home and commuting to school. Any other ideas appreciated and thanks again to all, especially to that noted wit TU. Fil

Er, do none of you lot out there have lives of your own?  Or do none of the french either?  Are you trying to tell me that all french parents of kids of Lycée age are totally slaves to the school bus and getting their kids to and from it on time? What about single parents?  What about people who work shifts? This cannot be true and I refuse to believe it. I for one am not about to take this lying down.  I never take anything lying down, I can tell you, and am prepared to battle to the furthest limit possible.  There is no way anyone can convince me that school children should be expected to be able to get themselves 3 k to a bus stop in the dark with no street lights.  We do live in the 21st century you know, not the 18th.  This is the modern world.  What about parents with only one car for crying out loud, or even, heaven forbid, no car at all? I await with trepidation the replies to this!!!! Fil

Hi, thanks for that, but what department are you in? It must vary I think, according to area, as James has always been picked up at home (only child at that particular stop) and the bus does a very circuitous route to get other isolated children from their homes.  There is indeed a big stop in our village (centre of the commune but only a commune of about 800 in total) and quite a few get on there, but no way is everybody expected to deliver their college age children to one stop.  We have a little minibus that does the rounds of the hamlets for primary children which our youngest child could take, but at only four I think he is too young yet, and besides, the particular driver is a bit of a speed freak and we would rather not commit our baby to his care just yet!  I live in hopes of him changing before we put Jacob on the bus! So you see, everyone in our area is used to having their children collected.  James would be at either stop offered with several others, and then another big stop in the next commune.  However, it would be the work of a few extra minutes for the bus to come to him first before the others.  I need someone else in the Morbihan to answer this I think! Fil

Hi, can anyone help me with this? My son has been at college and the school bus has picked him up all that time from right outside our house (we live deep in the country with no streetlights in a hamlet of six houses and of course most of the year it is pitch dark at 7.15 am), and dropped him back there every evening at about 5.45pm. He is going to Lycée in September and I decided in advance (the Lycée is in a different town, so different bus to catch) to go to the Mairie that deals with the transport scolaire and enquire about where he would be picked up and when.  I was on the alert because older son did a 6 month training course in a Lycée in the same town and had to be got every morning to a stop some distance from the house.  For six months punctuated with three stages and sometimes using his motorbike as well, this was not too bad, but I did NOT want to be letting myself in for three years minimum of doing the same!! So I wrote a letter to the Mairie, after they had said blithely that I would have to get him to the nearest stop myself, or he would have to walk.  In this I pointed out that the nearest bus stop is 2.8 kilometres away along narrow country lanes with no houses, no lights etc, and that he would need to be at the stop for 7am every morning!  Our insurance man had told us (when I was sorting out insurance for his moped) that he had looked after the transport scolaire in another commune, and that if a pupil lives more than 500 metres from a bus stop, then the bus company are obliged to come and get them.  And he lives much further from the stop than that, obviously. Having not received any answer at all from the Mairie in question, I went in the other day and received a semi apology but was told that no, he had to get to the nearest stop.  Sigh.  So now the Secretaire has given me an appointment with someone (not sure just who) who deals with it, for Tuesday morning. Before I go I am anxious to be more clear on the rights of my son.  He lives within the 'catchment area' of the school in question, but after a public college we have opted for a private Lycée because he really wants to do Arts Plastiques so that he can go onto Computer Animation and only the Privé offered this.  Does this affect his rights in any way as to the transport? As he redoubled quatrieme he is now 16 years old, and I want to know if his age would have any bearing on his rights? Is there a set distance that pupils homes must accord with for the bus to deviate to collect them? (A french friend who works in a college is not sure if the 500 metres applies just to collegiens or to Lycéens too). I would really liked to be armed with my rights (and his) when I meet this bureaucrat on Tuesday morning at 9am, as I am quite prepared to argue my corner, and more than capable of doing so in French.  I do find that arguing in french is my forté lately!  But I want to know that I am standing on firm ground. Obviously, I COULD get up and drive him to the bus EVERY morning for the next three years, and be waiting to pick him up EVERY evening, and Wednesday afternoon, BUT what if the car won't start?  What if we have a crisis with one of our animals?  There are endless ifs.  And what if we want a few days away in term time?  We run gites so holidays are out in proper holiday periods, and up to now we have been able to leave the house, animals etc in the capable of hands of both of our sons.  But not if we have to keep to a strict bus timetable. I find that the trouble with french bureaucrats is that if they do not know the answer to something, or no-one has ever done it before, they just say 'no' anyway.  And I have read an interesting article saying that as they have relatively unimportant jobs (often the result of job creation binges) they like to pretend they are important by exercsing their authority and saying 'no' whenever they can.  I have encountered all this before, and the trouble is, when you do not know the system inside out as it is a foreign one, you can never be sure if the answer you get is true or not.  Unless it is in the affirmative. So I would like the benefit of the advice of ANYONE who has had to cope with the bureaucracy of the Transport Scolaire system and could give me a few words of wisdom. Incidentally I had a run in with his Directrice of the College he was at.  Very amusing.  I got the better of her for sure and she was convinced she could outsmart me. Answers appreciated ASAP before Tuesday,   Fil

Hi, I received an unsolicited email today about this company.  Does anyone have any experience of them at all?  They seem to have a completely different way of advertising.  You tell them what you want and then they send you properties they think match your requirements.  The advertiser of the property pays £1 for every enquiry forwarded to them in addition to an annual charge.  Looking at their site they appear to be forwarding 4 to 8 properties to an enquirer/prospective holidaymaker.  I don't k

Hi, as the posessor of a Carte de Sejour (totally free) a disturbing thought has just occurred to me.  Having watched (smugly as I thought I would not require one) the information on UK tv about the proposed UK identity card, it suddenly dawned on me that as we expats are mostly still UK citizens, are WE too going to be made to have them?  And will we have to pay the highest price, as we are non uk tax payers?  Are they hot on our trails and after our money? Anyone know anything about this? Anyone else getting worried? Are we all going to hae to escape this with french nationality? Fil

I quite agree with Mikey, and think that as we are a family orientated gite complex with lots of things for children, the last thing any parent really wants is lots of noise at bedtime! None of our guests has ever complained about us having opening hours for our pool and we always have peace and quiet and hope they do too.  They always say how peaceful and relaxing it is here. We also tell our own family to come out of the pool if guests want to use it, and that all seems fine, although our littlest likes to swim and play with guest's children, and that works well too. One point I would like to raise is a safety one.  In the evenings people are likely to have both eaten and drunk and swimming in such a state can be a very unsafe thing to do, particularly in a deep pool and this is one of the main reasons we close our pool in the late evening.  We would not like to have someone in it who was a bit the worse for drink both from the point of view of behaviour, judgement and cleanliness (being sick!).  None of us would  dream of swimming either before or after the opening times as we don't want guests to either and feel that rules for guests are rules for us too. The one bit of advice I would like to give is always observe your own rules.  Nothing is worse than one rule for someone but anothr for someone else.  you will of course get the sort of people staying who agree that you should have rules, but surely you do not mean them to apply to them?  Hopefully only the odd ones though. Good luck Fil

Hi, is there anyone out there with gifted children?  If so, what if any, special help and advice, or problems, have you encountered in educating your child here in France?  I have a son of 16 just going into Lycée this autumn who has been classified as Highly Gifted but also with Asperger's Syndrome.  He is going to a private Lycée where he has been offered extra help but only from a psychologist, although this I think will be beneficial. However, his little brother of 4, at present in Maternelle only, is probably gifted too.  It is the little one I am most concerned about as he has all his school years ahead of him.  The older one had a Government Assisted Place in the UK and despite the AS is well settled, well adjusted, and doing fine at school.  The AS, incidentally, was only diagnosed over here, and we have had to cope with all the tests etc totally in French, and he has improved enormously since the diagnosis, his self confidence going through the roof when presented with a reason for his 'differences'.  He is hoping to do a Bac S at Lycée. The little one was originally thought to be Hyperactive, so off we trooped to the Centre for Psychotherapie for infants and adolescents locally.  He had a week there last summer then they offered him a half day a week, which he loves, but seems to be with children who have totally different problems to him.  We have decided to stop this now, as he goes into Grand Section in September.  His teacher (a wonderful woman who is alas retiring) has said she thinks he is a gifted child and that we should get him assessed.  But if we do, is there any help? I have read as much as I can on AS, gifted children, enfants surdoué etc on the net and found a wonderful (but Aussie) site that suggested networking and finding other kids of the same intelligence level to meet up with.  Is there anyone out there, preferably in the Morbihan area in Brittany, with a gifted child, preferably also about the same age?  Or is there anyone who can offer advice?  Experience etc? I would really appreciate replies to this, as I am concerned that the french system in primary might repress him and as he has already been suspected of hyperactivity, probably due to boredom, he might get worse. Thanks Fil

Hi, anyone any experience with Sunseekers website?  I received an unrequested email offering six months I think of free advertising if I applied before 18th May.  Thought why not, so went to the trouble of creating the ad then found it wanted to charge me.  I had actually missed the small print which said you then had to email them once the ad was set up.  However, I did email them, asking why it now wanted to charge me?  This they completely ignored.  I forgot about it until this week received an email from them asking why I had not gone live with my ad, so emailed them back to say they had wanted to charge me.  They then said I should have emailed them, which of course I had, so I got cross and I am ashamed to say I called him a moron when I told him I had emailed him and he should look in his records.  Got quite a nasty little email back this morning, so promptly emailed him to praise him on his professional manner. Anyone else had this?  These free offers usually amount to no enquiries, but I guess there is the smallest possibility they might generate something for the effort of putting ones details up.  The trouble is, they would probably only generate enquiries for peak season, which we could fill several times over anyway, with our mainstream advertising. Anyone know of cheap or free sites which actually produce out of season bookings?  We are very content with where we advertise and have a good product to offer, which probably results in the enquiries we get being so high I suppose, but we could always do with those lower priced and less profitable out of season lets.  Fil

Hi, I am in my second year with OwnersinFrance website and this year I AM NOT PLEASED with them at all.  To be fair, they are trying to make up for what they have done, a bit. We paid our money as usual last year, and got lots of enquiries from our other advertising and then one day not so long ago I was browsing and did a search on each site we were on to see where we would crop up.  We did NOT crop up anywhere in any search I did with OIF.  I was horrified.  This, indeed, explained why we were not getting enquiries. This is what they said when I phoned. "Ah - but you have three properties sleeping 19.  You would be on the search under 19".  I was disgusted.  Who on earth puts in a search for properties sleeping 19?  Not many people is the answer.  They said they would put me in under 8.  They emailed to say they had done this and I had appeared on a search.  I checked.  We were not under 5, 6 or 8 or even , now under 19.  It was late then.  I sent them a furious fax.  I phoned them the next day and they assured me I was there.  I checked and this time I was, but only under 8. They said their boss would get back to me when she got back from holiday and eventually she did - must have been a long holiday.  I suggested that as with our other advertisng we should appear under all four amounts and she amended it for me.  Why, I wondered, could this not have been done in the first place.  She now has emailed me with further sops to my fury.  I have accepted them but I am NOT PLEASED, and unless they offer me free advertising next year, in compensation for their total cock up, I do not think I will be repeating the experience. You do not expect a big company like them to be so incompetent, do you, where so many people's livelihoods are at stake? Fil

Hi, I thought I would share with you my friend's pre Christmas encounter with an ostrich.  My friend, who rides with me on my horses, has her own horses too, and a few weeks ago took one of them out for a quiet hack up the lane by her house. The first thing that happened was she unexpectedly encountered two other riders (I have never met anyone else on horseback in three years of living here). She was unable to talk to them though, as their horses were so un-nerved to meet another horse they were terrified of it! She progressed a bit further and then over the hedge of a garden, she spotted an ostrich. Now her horse used to live next to a zoo and was not in the least phased by meeting an ostrich (I don't think my horse Eclipse would have liked it much), but the ostrich had obviously never met a horse before, and it burst out of its fence into the surrounding garden. Feeling a bit guilty (but the fence was very feeble so not too guilty) my friend hurried her horse off before she scared it any more, thinking the owners would soon retrieve it from their garden, and thought nothing more of it until the next morning. She was doing her morning chores when a young boy arrived at her house looking for what she at first thought was an Austrian. It then dawned on her he was looking for an ostrich. Oops. Almost immediately her french neighbour arrived looking a bit flustered - there was an ostrich in his garden! Surfeit of ostriches for one weekend here! The poor boy was looking after this ostrich (Juliet) for his parents whilst they were on holiday and he was pretty upset, so the neighbour, my friend, the boy and another neighbouring farmer all set out together to catch the ostrich. Apparently the technique with ostriches is to grab them by a foot! My friend was not at all sure this was the right method and as the only thing she knew about ostriches was that they can kill you with a kick, decided to leave the actual catching to the others and just help with the general rounding up. This was not at all successful! The boy did succeed in catching the ostrich by a foot, but my friend decided it might not be the ideal catching method when it gave him a nasty kick - though not a fatal one thank goodness! After an hour and a half they all decided to call it a day, and I suspect my friend missed out on something vital because the next thing she knew, the farmer came out with his gun, vanished into the little wood where the ostrich was lurking and there was a loud bang! I think the ostrich's mistake was to escape at a weekend when all the farmers can think of is the chasse. My friend did say that the farmer was a great one for the chasse, and presumably he couldn't wait for his chance at big game hunting! I am not sure what the poor young boy was going to say to his parents when they got back from their holiday! However, this incident has earned for our friend the soubriquet of 'killer'. We spotted a rather nice plastic ostrich for her in a toyshop, lest she should forget her part in the Big Game Hunt. As it was just before Christmas we were wondering whether the ostrich would fit in the oven. Fil

Hi, just want to agree with the last posting.  My son was 13 and a half when he got here, and now is 16, doing very well at school and really happy.  Prefers french school because it is more structured and he feels he knows where he stands.  Likes all the testing.  Comes rushing home to tell me his good marks etc, much more conscientious and proud than he ever was in his UK comprehensive.  Might not suit every child, but suits him fine.  Little one aged four now fluent too, but quite different for him.  Although he has an english accent because I read to him every day in French and he has picked up my accent.  Mind you, I think having fluent parents helps kids alot because they can ask for parental help then.  Fil

Hi, hubby Patrick says he totally agrees.  He was a chainsaw instructor and is HORRIFIED at the number of professionals over here who operate with NO safety gear whatsoever, often using saws designed for use UP trees, on the ground.  Do they think they are immortal or what?  Like the riders who don't think they can EVER fall off so do not need hard hats.  Very unsafe practise.  Saw usage is a personal preference, but DO get instruction on use and maintenance and safety gear - a chain not properly sharpened is a DANGER.  Personal first aid kit attached to your belt, including a VERY large wound dressing (ie big sanitary towel) squash balls and bandages for use as a tourniquet, (used to work in deep forest in days before mobile phones). Incidentally - he swears by HUSQVARNAs, and thinks they are great - he has three.  Used to ride a motocross Huskie too - ex works. Fil

[quote]Hi Fil, Would you care to ask him to elaborate on that sweeping statement. Sure there are many more than there were just 3-5 years ago and yes, for many areas the market has got far too saturated bu...[/quote] Would you care to ask him to elaborate on that sweeping statement. Hi Miki, Yes I would.  It was a joke!!!!!  To do with bottoms!!!!  Get it? Bookings are going great guns after a slow start felt by all I know, and we are really pleased with last season and how it looks to be going this one!  Bit cold though at the moment and hubby feeling his arthritis a bit. Hasn't affected his sense of humour though.  What happened to yours? Fil

Hi, my husband says to say that the bottom has dropped out of this market. Fil

Hi, thinking of relocating in the next few years from Brittany.  Perhaps to Aveyron but need to do homework first.  Any advice on climate would be appreciated, places to avoid looking, winters, etc appreciated.  Looking for a house with land for horses, and barn preferably for stables and storage. Thanks Fil

Hi, I am sorry this is late, but I was just browsing and saw it and also saw no-one had replied.  Well, you need warning.  It is vast and impersonal to start with, but that can be overcome.  What can't is that although they market it as for english kids too, it is really aimed at the french ones.  All lessons taught in english are taught slowly and simply for the french students, with repetition etc.  The lessons taught in french are raced through at normal speed, no repetition allowed, no help to the english kids.  Unless your child is pretty fluent he or she will be lost and get low marks etc. My son was there for two terms and got so depressed by it (you're so stupid etc) that he left.  They had transferred him to Français Langue Etrangere but that was not much better, as although it taught him more french, everyone else in it was from another country (lots of trouble spots so lots of refugees) and no-one had good accents to copy!  The teacher was not even french herself!  And she hated my son. He still has friends there, but not many of the english kids stuck it out and he was really glad to get away.  The pastoral care was none existent, but I suspect that is the same in most lycées.  He is now in a training scheme hopefully leading to an apprenticeship as he doesn't really know what he wants to do even yet!  I do feel that the Lycée Ile de France was to a great extent responsible for his leaving education early, and I am dissappointed in them as he is a very bright boy with 10 GCSE's at A to C.  Bit of a waste.  He does want to continue on in France though rather than return to the UK. Email me personally if you want any more info. Good luck. Fil

Hi, my advice is DON'T!!!! We kept pigs in Wales on numerous occasions, and whilst they do taste nicer than shop bought pork, and they certainly are intelligent and have characters of their own, you would definitely experience no problem whatsoever in eating them, and 'sweet' would be the adjective furthest from your mind towards their end! To keep pigs you must first construct the piggy version of Colditz castle paying special attention to all weak points - ie the doors and roof.  You need to be able to put their food in over the wall lest they mug you with the bucket, and to have a fixed feed trough (otherwise they turn it upside down and push it to the furthest corner away from the door to lay a trap for you).  This trough should also be cleanable without entry with a drain plug as although they are clean animals, they do seem to like poohing in their trough.  Probably another trap.  Do not be tempted into having 'free range' pigs as little short of watch towers, rolls of barbed wire similar to that on the Somme in WWI, and mains powered multi stranded electric fencing will be required.  Also the trough will ALWAYS be in the middle of the pen, no matter where you leave it.  And if you should try to tiptoe up to feed them, be sure that your dogs will bark and let them know that you are coming with their meal!  My husband was regularly mugged like this (before we built the concrete bunker for them) thanks to his collies, and once, on his knees, bucket upturned, he found grainy bits between his fingers in the mud - pig pooh. The roof itself will need to be high enough above their heads to prevent them eating it.  The door should be reinforced and open inwards to prevent them pushing it open.  No door at all would be ideal I suppose, but how do you get them out again?  Steel bars on the door, says my husband. By the time you come to slaughtering them you will be prepared to dance on their grave. Feed them on househould scraps by all means, but they need grain - rolled barley soaked in whey from the local cheese farm was what we used.  The household scraps should not include any meat products, and should be well cooked.  We also fed them sugar beet nuts and pea bean and maize - if you can get it over here. Bed them on straw and clean them out well - haha!!!  You will see why I laugh when you try cleaning them out when they are big.  Wear heavy solid footwear - they do bite if not handled well!  Especially feet. Pork is killed at 80 to 90 pôunds in live weight but you can keep it longer than that, and baconers are 150 to 200 pounds.  Over that they will be too fat really.  We had ours that big and ate them as pork and it was nice.  Very nice. But my overall advice is buy half or a whole dead one from a local farmer!  Much safer.  No pooh, no bitten feet, no mugging, no escapees. By the way, it is really illegal to kill at home - they should go to a slaughter house and see everything else being killed first and get nice and scared and stressed.  A visit to a slaughterhouse anywhere is enough to convert you to vegetarianism, and to look for someone to kill at home for you.  I think for your own consumption it is less illegal!!!!! And much kinder as long as it is done properly. They do bleed after the stun gun and are technically dead anyway.  Much safer than a real gun!  Easy to shoot yourself or your helper with one of them!  And they should be put in hot water in a big bath and scraped to get off the hair of which there is alot. This gets the toenails off too which the dogs love!!!  Yuck!  And the ears! Even more yuck!  And lick up the blood that gathers under them!  Drape them in an old duvet cover to keep the flies off.  And don't let the butcher cut all the fat off, because he will unless you tell him no. Then hung so need to be killed in cold weather. Good luck! Fil

Hi, get a good estimate of what you think you will need to spend (on the high side if possible), then double it, then add ten percent.  And remember you will probably end up divorced or murdered by your spouse. Total expenditure = 2x + 10% + divorce costs or burial. and be happy if that is all it costs you. Fil

Hi, I agree about the chair - probably smelling salts will be needed too.  We got ours from Guilliers the last two christmases and as we paid €72 last year decided definitely to raise our own this time and have four waddling about looking very tasty.  Their days are numbered and the other three will be going in the deep freeze. Considering there are so many stinky turkey sheds all over Brittany there is a definite paucity of available turkeys!  The ones in the supermarkets are pathetic specimins - we always had 25 pounders in the UK!  Good luck! Fil

Hi, we bought our house and then discovered that part of the drive was not ours, but belonged to the commune.  They were quite happy to sell it to us for just over a euro a square metre so the price for it was under €200.  They had to have a public inquest into it which we had to pay, also the geometre had to come out and mark it for us, and then we had to pay the notaire's fees.  We too had heard they could be high, but in fact, I think the total for everything in the purchase that I have just listed, including the land itself, eventually came to about €1000, so we thought that was not too bad.  Ask first. Fil

Hi, we have brought five horses over in total.  And all travelled well.  We brought four initially via Portsmouth to Cherbourg but had a 260 mile drive before they got to Portsmouth and quite a long wait on the dockside as they allowed for any breakdowns etc and of course did not get any!  But they were fine - came in a friend's lovely big lorry with three people to minister to them.  We left the fifth as he is not a good traveller, on loan to a child who eventually outgrew him (for competing) and he just came over with a professional carrier who was brilliant.  He was on a shared load with another pony and four Clydesdales, and for a very (and I mean very) bad traveller, he was apparently perfect!  I must admit I worried like anything about him, but he stepped off the lorry (last one off) calm as calm could be.  It was Wofford International Transport - look them up on the net - and cost just under £600 but was worth every penny.  Really nice driver who was very horsey himself, not just a driver, and good care - they did all the paperwork etc.  No sedatives needed at all.  And I must reiterate, he is a TERRIBLE traveller - in our Ifor Williams trailer he used to lean on the central partition and try to climb the outer wall.  Scarey.  Needless to say he is not now going anywhere again.  Pity, but there are no suitable competitions here and as someone else said, everything is very different here.  I have been to a competition and could not understand the qualifications for competing in it at all, but it was nice - a ODE.  Feed availability seems to vary alot - we buy Royal Horse here in the Morbihan, but I don't truly like it.  Stopped buying those tiddly little pellets that look like lamb creep feeder when our welsh mountain choked on them.  My husband brings sugar beet over from the UK from time to time.  Hay nice and cheap but the bales are smaller I think than UK ones.  Straw likewise smaller and cheaper - nice for ladies to handle.  Would love to have some Dodson and Horrell feeds.  I can but dream - we do have Spillers available but nothing suitable for old horses or quiet hackin - seems to be all for competing and I am NOT feeding my nice hack on that!  I prefer the quiet life, thankyou!  There is an old horse feed made by Royal Horse, but it is €27 per bag - about £19!  Faint!  If anyone has to go to the UK then I ask them to bring a few bags over as special treat for my horses and feed it very slowly mixed with their normal stuff.  They do look well though. Grass - we have four hectares and my husband does nothing but top it and it keeps it young and green.  I have never seen anyone round here top anything, and we have the greenest grass in the area.  Slays the weeds well too without putting on too many chemicals.  No-one here does anything much about the either but they can be notifiable so watch out.  Especially chardons (thistles).  As we originally had 2000 apple trees it has taken a long time to turn everything around here.  But our horses seem to do very well on the grass. Good luck. Fil

Hi, my husband went out to the local DIY and met a friend who asked him why we were selling our gites?  Of course, he said we weren't, but someone has flipping well advertised them for sale!  The friend told us she had it from someone else (of course) who knew someone who had seen them for sale in a magazine!  And there was a price on them too!  So, basically, some total stranger has taken a picture of our gites (they are near enough to the lane to do this easiy) and had the cheek to advertise them for sale in an english magazine!  There are several questions I am asking myself - why?  Who?  Where?  The mind boggles.  Anyone else had this happen?  Did you find out who did it?  Could it be dodgy estate agents thinking they look nice and will attract buyers and they can then say 'oh, that is sold but we have some others'.  I have no clues to this.  But am pretty cross as you can imagine! Fil

Hi, I too have received a call (on my husband's mobile, in the car) from a guy in Hungary who was very friendly etc but we were of course not interested.  I was however, polite to him, and got the website, which I am about to look at.  It was www.worldvacationrentals.net .  I think it probably is a scam - some east european trying to cash in on western hols etc.  Could it be a crime syndicate?  You never know do you? Fil

hi, I think if you let gites you get all sorts staying in them, not always nice, and obviously the more lets you get, the more of the less savoury type will pass your way.  We are also in our second year and have had a good summer but had the misfortune to get three not so good clients, two at the same time!  I would say, do not give an inch to anyone claiming money back etc.  I am not sure what people expect when they come to a gite holiday, but we have had some who seem to think we are a hotel and need maid service, servile attitudes from all our family, us never (and I mean never) to leave our premises in case they need us, and that the few rules we have can't possibly apply to them, can they? If we had had people like this in our first year, it might seriously have put us off, but fortunately it was this year, and all the lovely remarks in our visitors book give the lie to the bad guests.  I am sure yours does too.  If they are the only ones, there is nothing to worry about.  Ignore them. They are probably professional complainers who go out of their way to find fault.  Do not worry about them and do not pay them back even a penny.  They booked it and you could have booked it out to others. I sometimes think a questionaire to send out to prospective bookers would be a good idea 1. Do you intend to go out sightseeing, the beach etc at least five days for every week you are here? 2. Are you thinking of bringing only dirty washing with you and washing it here? 3. Can your little boys pee in the toilet correctly? 4. What do you expect from a gite holiday in five short sentences please. 5. Are you expecting the countryside to be totally silent? 6. Do you agree with rules but think they cannot possibly mean you? 7. Do you intend to blame us if it rains? 8. Are you going to take the time to read our useful welcome pack? Anyone got any other questions they would like to add to this? Fil