[Capital Gains Tax]

I expect you wouldn't have had much to pay in the UK anyway if it has been your permanent home for a number of years.

But what did you tell the French tax man?

[Using Eurostar and TGV]

I bought tickets on-line in the UK in August and travelled from Ashford to Brive, via Eurostar. The Eurostar ticket had to be booked separately (I think) - I believe their website claimed that Brive didn't exist!

However, although both on-line printed-out receipts looked the same, and both had a code number to enter into a UK station ticket machine, only the Eurostar one produced a ticket at Ashford. They told me at the Ashford booking office that I had to get the Paris-Brive ticket at the station in France (which is Gare d'Austerlitz - ie not TGV, so not quite the same as D71 trip).

What they didn't tell me at Ashford was that a French ticket machine won't hand out a ticket if it wasn't booked with a French credit card. I had to go to the booking office at the Gare d'Austerlitz instead. And I should say they were very helpful there, and printed out the ticket very quickly.

So I don't know whether JandM was speaking from experience about getting all the tickets from a UK ticket machine - I can only say my experience was quite different.

So D71 might want to leave a bit of time at St Pancras to see if they can get all the tickets there, and be prepared for a bit of a rush at Lille if they can't. It would be nice to hear from D71 after the trip about how the tickets were produced.

[Advice on lining an old chimney]

Thanks Teapot, that's very helpful. We don't have anything like 7m in terra-cotta - more like 1.5m. The chimney isn't quite up to the ridge level. I am a bit more confident I can do it!

Do you know about the "chinese hat" rain covers? They have three legs each of which ends in a fork, with a hole in to take a screw/bolt. I wonder if they would simply tear the flexible liner in a gale, and if they need to have a bit of s/s rigid pipe inside to support them.

[Advice on lining an old chimney]

I'd like to put a flexible s/s liner into an old chimney - built about a hundred years ago - that has never had one before.

What concerns me is the top of the chimney. The brick construction ends before the chimney goes through the roof. On top of the brickwork there are a number of hollow terra-cotta pre-formed sections, much like what you find inside a more modern chimney construction. They are an oblong cross-section and after they exit the roof they have been rendered - several times I'd say - and make a reasonably water-tight join with the roof. The roof is lauze (stone) and I don't want to disturb it more than is necessary.

Will the terra-cotta sections be strong enough to support the liner (ie the clamp that goes across at the top)? How do I get a reasonably water-tight finish around the liner at the top? The problem is that the terra-cotta sections aren't very thick. In an ideal world no doubt the chimney would be brick all the way to the top.

Further up I was hoping to put on one of those chinese hats: do they need to be supported by a short section of rigid s/s pipe, or can they be fixed directly to the liner?

Normally I'd look and see what other people have done - though with chimneys that's a bit more difficult. These terra-cotta chimneys do exist elsewhere near here, but they all look as if they are still unlined, and the way they have been made to stop rain coming down is by having a couple of mechanical tiles stoop up in an inverted "V" on top - mortared in, of course.

I feel that any way of getting a liner in the chimney will be better than what I have. But I'd really appreciate practical suggestions for finishing off the top.

[parking fine - should I contest it?]

Well, I and my family went to the 2015 Street Theatre festival in Aurillac, and I can thoroughly recommend it - and in particular the well-managed parking arrangements.

There are three or four well signposted large free car parks outside the town, with free and frequent shuttle buses to take festival-goers into the town centre. It would be absolutely impossible to run the festival with free-for-all parking in the town centre. The roads are all in use by the many performers, and it's such a pleasure to be able to walk about without having to worry about traffic. There isn't any.

What I don't know is whether the shuttles operate after the streets have been closed but before the festival proper starts. If they don't then perhaps it's a bit rough imposing a €135 fine.

But anyone who wants to see some amazing and eclectic street performers should really consider coming to Aurillac for the Éclat. Next year, of course. You won't have any problem parking your car.

[Swedish owners selling French Holiday Home not involving the French legal system]

I'd guess it was possible if the house was owned by some kind of company or similar entity: sale of the shares outside France wouldn't necessarily need to involve a French notaire. Weren't SARLs used at one time to get round the French inheritance rules?

[Driving a clients car to france]

[quote user="mint"] ......

You'd know, of course, that people can use the train to carry their car for them (I haven't looked into this as it's of no interest to me).

.......

[/quote]

The train routes taking cars are very few and far between (I've used one when going from the UK to Italy), so I wouldn't regard that as serious competition, particularly if the OP planned to deliver the car to the airport or the owner's home.

[land dispute]

The OP doesn't say whether s/he was (and in view of the unsympathetic posts might never tell us), but s/he should have been present when the geometer came to put the bornes there - I think the OP implies that the small plot actually bordered his/her property.

Of course if s/he was there it's possible he might have asked what was going on .....

[Carte Vitale]

Yvonne - it might be worth talking to the DWP in Newcastle before you move. I've always found them very helpful and they might (but I don't know) send you an S1 straight away, but with a future start date of your husband's pension entitlement, so you can start getting it into the French system straight away.

The French international social security office apparently has delays of at least two months in processing UK S1s, but I noticed on mine that it has a box for a start date (which is different from the box showing when it was issued), so they might be able to issue them in advance.

And yes, you should certainly ask for S1s covering you both.

[EU Membership??]

[quote user="Rabbie"][quote user="NickP"][quote user="woolybanana"]'a man who is thought to be typical of drivers of white vans by being being rude, not well educated and having very strong, unpleasant opinions.' (Cambridge Dictionaries Online)[/quote]

A description obviously dreamed up by a pompous self styled intellectual, probably a retired school teacher?. I  love the fact that people who think that because they've got one or two GCSE's they have the right to belittle the ordinary working man.

[/quote]But not without a certain amount of truth. I suppose whether a remark is judged to be inappropriate or not depends on when and where it is made[/quote]

One of my favourite internet toys is the Google Ngram viewer. This checks through all the books that Google has in its digital database (and that's really quite a lot) for the occurence of various words or phrases. You'll find - if you look there - that "self-styled intellectual" has been used pretty consistently since the mid-1950s, while "white van man" hit the reading public only in the year 2000. An early sighting of "white van man" was in a book about "Future Consumers", written by someone who might best be described as a futurologist. He's seems to be entirely non-judgmental, too.

More to the point, the futurologist doesn't seem to be a "retired school teacher" at all.

Definitions aren't insults: they are what people mean when they use the words. The words may be insulting, of course.

[French car registered to French holiday home ~ can I drive it in the UK?]

I hope the OP realizes that although he (she?) can't drive their French-registered car in the UK, someone else who is a French resident can do so perfectly legally.

So if the OP really has to make a quick trip back to the UK in his French car, he should find a French-resident (maybe a uk expat?) to act as chauffeur. It shouldn't be that hard.

[French car registered to French holiday home ~ can I drive it in the UK?]

Coming back to one of the OP's later questions - he suggested he might get a LHD car that's registered in the UK, and have it in France most of the time.

I think that works OK providing he insures it in the UK and complies with the MoT requirement by taking it back to the UK for testing every year. I take it there's no news on the UK going over to a two-year validity for MoTs, is there? I know this was once proposed.

And as for a motorhome ..... the same rule (ie not driving it in the UK) would apply. So maybe that too would be best kept on UK plates and complying with UK law.

I have to say I find the DVLA's position simply stupid - what harm could there be in having a stated de minimis period, 14 days or a month? If they have the ability to check up on all this - as it appears they do - they could easily enforce it.

I am fairly sure that in one of the many other threads on this forum in which this topic has been done to death and (way) beyond, the DVLA were on record as saying that throughout the EU, cars had to be registered only in the country of their owner's residence - ie they thought that in France it wasn't possible (legal?) to register a car to your holiday home. Which would make a tiny bit more sense of the DVLA's prohibition on a UK resident bringing their own foreign registered car into the UK (because they shouldn't have one).

[UK savings on Tax Return]

Your UK bank interest will be taxed in France anyway, so you might just as well claim back the UK tax.

Of course if it's only a few pence it might not be worth the postage costs.....

[Drilling into a heated floor?]

I'd be surprised if whoever screwed down the original WC had special equipment to miss the pipes. It's more likely he knew the depth of the screed and used screws that were shorter. And for water UFH it's usually a pretty thick screed (ours, from memory was a good 10cm).

If it were me I'd use screws for the new WC that were long enough to go into the floor as deep but no deeper than the old ones did.

[French ID Card and UK Border Agency]

They aren't planning any passport checks on people leaving the UK by land to the Republic of Ireland, nor for people sailing their own boats (or, I think, flying their own planes) across the Channel.

Window dressing I'd say. A totally pointless waste of time.

[Terrace Railings]

We have a balcony with a view we didn't want to obstruct, and we went for a stainless steel frame with laminated glass panels. The glass wasn't as expensive as I'd feared: and a local chap made up the stainless steel surrounds.

That was five or six years ago and it's all still there and nothing has broken (despite the grandchildren's efforts).

[Car Seats]

If I could only get a 25-year old Volvo 240 with a nice low mileage and otherwise in good condition, I'd buy it right now. Not only were the seats really comfortable (and the front seats were heated), it also had that ventilation system that let you warm your feet and have nice cold air on your face.

Why do we accept that newer is better? There's a lot of evidence that it isn't.

[French ID Card and UK Border Agency]

I had a carte de sejour for the first five years I was here - quite useful for things like ski hire but no use at all for crossing borders. The prefecture was a bit reluctant to issue it, as I didn't need it at all as I am a UK citizen. The dossier was pretty thick, of course: a wad of bank statements inter alia.

I suspect that they would be quite happy to do one for me now, as I believe you now have to pay a lot of money for them (€125 springs to mind, but that may be just my poor memory). The first one I had was free.

[Imperative - use the vous form or the infinitive?]

I'd always imagined that with the infinitive form - as in recipes etc - there was an implied "il faut", making the instructions a bit more impersonal than using "vous" or "tu".

["Point of lay" hens]

Is there a French equivalent phrase for "point of lay" for hens?

For those that don't know, the English expression means young birds starting to lay for the first time.

[Wood fired Central Heating.]

[quote user="powerdesal"] ..... It's a bit academic anyway as Mrs PD will not consider an AGA under any circumstances - personal preference.... [/quote]

Ssssshh - you'd better not tell her that AGA and Rayburn are the same company nowadays....

[Car breakdown provisions]

[quote user="AnOther"]If any car of mine breaks down I want it delivered either back home or to a garage of my choice, particularly so for my MGB which nobody but NOBODY lays a finger on, so for the €100 a year it costs for the two of us I'm more than happy to be a member of ADAC.[/quote]

Have you ever had to use ADAC's breakdown service, AnOther? If so, what was your experience? I ask as I too have taken out the ADAC cover a year or two back, but I am not at all sure what would actually happen if I called their helpline. Your concern about your MGB rings a bell too.

[Should I point the interior stone walls before insulating and plasterboarding them?]

One reason why you might want to do a very rough lime finish over all these walls with open joints - even ones you'll eventually conceal with plasterboard - is to provide less of a home for the mice. Or conceivably sparrows, depending on what kind of stone you have.

One of the problems with stones held together (or if you prefer, apart) with mud is that small creatures can remove it quite easily. The pointing isn't just to keep out moisture.....

[Would You Call Your Daughter Nutella?]

[quote user="Hoddy"]You've reminded me Chancer that I once met a man called Norman England.[/quote]

Are you sure that was it? KPMG in London had an accountant called Norman Brittain (just checked - that was it). I always wondered if he had a brother called George Ian or a sister called Elizabeth Anne.....

As for Nutella, well. Until JM Barrie wrote Peter Pan, no-one had ever called their daughter Wendy. It's true you don't meet that many Wendies nowadays, but as a name it went from no-one at all to lots and lots in quite a short time.

[Advice needed Moving from France]

Betty

If you say where you are moving to (outside the UK) we might be able to help a bit more.

The NHS website has a page listing the non-EU countries with which the UK has a reciprocal arrangement for healthcare, and although it does not include such popular destinations as the USA or Canada, it does include Australia and new Zealand.

Good luck with the move, of course!