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Do you expect free WIFI when holidaying in France ?


alittlebitfrench
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Judith , jonzjob and most who've replied have echoed my thoughts.

Sat nav is a lifesaver when I drive to an unknown town (That's not the problem ) and have to locate a Hall or venue where I am due to give a talk or teach. Great for getting one around one way traffic systems too.

Albf you've posted your question in the Gite owner's section. WiFi most would agree is a requirement way above offering T.V. these days.
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My business in the UK involved visiting lots of pote,tial and new customers within a large radius of my base, London, Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Kent and others a lot further afield, shatnav was not available then or at least not within my means, I used an A-Z for London, in fact had 2 the small for carrying and a larger scale one for the car plus street level A-Z maps for all the counties, I would look up the address in the index, find the page and grid reference and plan my journey from that, I would navigate using a larger scale map to the close vicinity and move further in using the A-Z, for many of the sites I also had latitude and longitude co-ordinates which I had to supply for the Police helicopters and these could be used on either the OS maps (forgot to mention I have a full set of them) or the street level A-Z maps.

 

I finally begrudgingly bought a shatnav after losing the use of one eye, the one that could still read a map close up, at that stage with only monucular long range vision I had lost the capability of reading a map, driving, reading road signs etc all at the same time.

 

Begrudgingly I have to admit that shatnav is no for me pretty much essential to not be a real danger on the road.

 

I would bet that you cannot even buy the street level A-Z maps of the counties any more, they have never existed in France I found to my great surprise.

 

Todays youngsters would not have a clue how to read a map, my niece who is now in her late 30's set out as a novice driver to go to somewhere on the M25 (maybe Lakeside) about an hour from her home near Gatwick, several hours later she ended up in the Midlands [:-))] she was/is a real bimbo though!

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Do I expect free WIFI? Yes if I'm paying for the accommodation.

The problem with map reading and driving at the same time is that it's virtually impossible if you wear varifocals and very dangerous. Yes you can stop every few km to check the map, but satnav is much easier.
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I would include wifi in my initial search for holiday properties so wouldn't even see those without. We went to Spain for the whole of January a few years ago and the owner told us that he would only give us 500mb a week as "you will only need emails and news". Er - no, that would go on one Facetime or Skype to our family, with whom we actually like to stay in touch. I think some property owners project their own needs on to their clients which is never a good way to do business.

We have Satnav and find it invaluable for crossing cities and finding hotels. It doesn't replace using a map but it is a useful addition.

I don't get the virtue signalling stuff about not using technology. You just have to engage your brain about when, why and how.
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This is all very scary.

Sat Navs

Once upon a time Sat Navs did not exist. I ran trucks all around France and I don't remember drivers getting lost. They still made their deliveries. The world still turned.

I personally never get lost. OH does not get lost. Who gets lost ?

France is such a simple country to drive in, I just don't get it. If I go somewhere that I have never been before I look at the map before I leave, make a couple of notes (usually on back of a fag packet) and then (probably not) refer to them if I need to.

The British circumnavigate France to avoid Paris yet Paris is probably one of the easiest cities in the world to drive around.

What the hell is mankind coming to.

WIFi

So you go holiday to France, you are glued to a Sat nav on the way and miss everything out your window. You miss the opportunity to find other more interesting routes and when you arrive, you spend your time on the internet telling your facebook friends that you are on holiday in France.

Bizarre behaviour.

I have loads of short cuts across France that are not only faster but save you money on Motorways tolls. A Sat Nav will not tell you those routes.

DON'T GET ME STARTED about dash cams. Another British weird obsession.
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So glued to a map instead? You need to look at a map whereas you can usually just listen to sat nav and follow the verbal instructions.

Maps are always well out of date before they are printed. Sat nav maps (if regularly updated) are usually less than a year out of date.

I mentioned Portugal and Sicily earlier. I could let give you the addresses of several rural B&B you would never find on a printed map and with very poor owner directions. Even with two different sat nav programs (with different map suppliers) and with Google Maps they were very difficult to find as the locations were not precise/did not exist. And then there are those well-positioned in towns with narrow one-way warrens of streets.
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Pomme Said:

"So glued to a map instead?"

No, I make notes before I leave. I will resort to a map in a car in an emergency.

Reference finding rural gîtes, is that not half the fun of being on holiday or going somewhere ?

The Sat Nav is spoiling your holiday. Take the excitement of finding your destination away then you may as well by train or bus. Or just stay at home and go virtually on holiday with google maps and save yourself a few bob. Especially if you spend your time once you are there catching up on Eastenders.
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I have a dashboard camera too and if you think that they are only found in the U.K. then you should get out a bit more me-thinks [blink]

One of the things that they can do is dig you out of mire not of your own making.

Anyone who is 'glued' to a GPS whilst driving will probably be holding a phone on thier shoulder too and should be removed from the road. A GPS is an aid. I also use mine on unfamiliar roads to tell me just where the road goes and how tight the corners are. I still don't belt around them because it doesn't tell me if there is a bleedin great tractor with lethal spikes heading my way and out of sight.

We also navigated all around France before GPS was available and due to

the 'wonderful' French sign system we got lost occasionally. It must be

wonderful to NEVER get lost?[Www]

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ALBF is right in as much as renting a gîte where the owner gives you directions (usually wrong) it is all part of the Holiday experience, its all too dumbed down now and in my mind people are missing out, they certainly are is they spend all their time on fessbook, twatter, or facetime whatever that is, look at any group of vistors now anywhere in the world and they will probably all be staring into their screens or worse still wont have left the gîte/CDH because they cannot seperate themselves from the Wi-Fi.

 

I took a photo in Wellington airport in 2004 when I was travelling, it was a very striking image, a Pacific island family, very colourfully dressed, a photogenic enough subject in their own right but what was so striking was that none of them were engaging with each other or the world around them they were all staring into their phones which then had just got colour LCD screens and polyphonic ring tones, they were all playing games of some sort, it just looked so insolite, everyone i showed the photo to remarked on it, today you see it everywhere you look its is the new norme, doesnt make it right.

When I travelled through SE Asia in 1987 I noticed that the of the very few foreign travellers that there were most would put on a headset and listen to their Walkmans during long coach or boat journeys completely missing out on one of the joys of travelling, the sounds, people engaging with each other even if you dont understand the words you can guage the meaning and much more importantly from a personal safety point of view the mood.

 

ALBF you could never plan a route to a final destination except in a major city because you could never buy street level maps, my commune does not even have its own one relying on the stupid old "everyone knows where everyone lives and the names of all the roads" and they have a point too with a population that has never wandered any further than 3 km away in their life and a deep rooted tradition of not trusting any strangers, they will never make it easy to be found. Add to that that most satnavs, Mappy and all the other internet mapping sites have the wrong name for my road because the person who did the surveying was lazyn stood at a junction and decided that to the left the road must be Route de (town on left) and to the right the road must be Route de (town on right) so that most vistors using a shatnav will get sent to a dead end chemin rural with called chemin de (town on left).

Lindal when I was in my 30's I could drive my Sierra XR4x4 at Vmax through tiny Cornish country lanes whilst simultaneously navigating a route on the fly from a map in my lap, my retired father and stepmother were horrified and petrified, I could not see what they were concerned about, i totally get it now, it would terrify me because I have almost forgotten what it was like to have Young vision and reactions although the latter still get regularly trained.

 

I tried varifocals once, they were hard to get used to but after all my eye operations I am used to that and will stick with something until it no longer makes me sick, just like wearing only one contact lens now, however driving with varifocals I found downright dangerous and stopped using them for that reason, my discomfort is one thing, the lives of other road users far more important, I hope that they were just not the right ones for me and that others dont go through such a dangerous adjustment period.

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I drove home from running on thursday in a complete pea-souper fog, it was on tiny single track country roads, no other vehicles so no headlights to orient from, safe speed was maximum 10k/h I had been running faster, anyone who has done this knows its a real mental challenge if you are on familiar roads, trying to guesstimate where you are and what is coming up, bend to the left or right etc, sometimes you think you see the road going right but its an illusion from the fields and you have to decide based on your mind map, its really stressfull.

 

With the shatnav operating a quick glance every now and then will tell you exactly what is coming up ahead which is very relieving.

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So many hours are spent before the journey planning the route - perhaps better to use the time doing other things.

Modern sat navs collect traffic information and so will take you off of the motorway to avoid the queue because of the pile up that you would otherwise sit in for many hours.

Places of interest on the way - press the POI button (Points of Interest) on the sat nav and take your pick.

GPS satellites were put up by the military - if paper maps were superior think the military would not have bothered and still use paper maps.

Unless you have large scale paper maps then unfortunately, that third turning on the left that you took was down a very narrow lane not shown on the map and there is nowhere to turn.

Also, perhaps not a very good idea to be looking at the notes on the fag packet whilst driving - dangerous and an offence.

I presume albf you dress in fig leaves rather than these modern things called clothes?
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This rather sterile debate bores with its extremes because it implies that certain things are done to the exclusion of others. Thus, yes, I do use a sat nav, but not exclusively, I do use maps but not exclusively, I want access to wifi when staying away, but not to spend my time in front of it regardless of other activities. It is all a question of necessity and proportion. Simples, really.

Just out of interest, I just bought a book about historical maps which contain errors and mistakes, ranging from added continents to missing countries and the rest. It is fun and interesting, no more, but I am not gonna spend all my time reading it when there is a garden to tickle and the sun is shining.
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Jonjob Wrote:

"I have a dashboard camera too"

Be careful Jonjob otherwise you might end up like this poor British chap who moved to France for a 'place in the sun' and quite clearly did not find it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHyHtflqR_E

I love that. It is just fantastic and there are loads more to watch. Vivre les Brits

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WB, and others, thank, you confirm the general agreement on this topic, with the exception the OP and one or two others who seem to think we are all stupid .... and unable to cope without all these modern mod cons.

Personally, most of us do use whichever tool is appropriate for the given condition when driving, and if any one will tell me how I drive AND look at a map together when alone, without driving off the road I'd be delighted to do that ... and no, memory is not always helpful, the route can be much more twisty and turny that the mind can remember  - and yes, I've navigated in London with an A-Z, and got lost .... in spite of living there, being able to read maps and having a good enough memory. 

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Aaahaha!

Just back from two weeks in A Country With Very Little Wifi (free or otherwise). Spent less than an hour online over my entire stay.

I spend at least three months in France every summer in a house with no landline or wifi.

I'm self employed and when at home I spend a lot of time online.

However, I remember life before the Internet and I can still happily go for prolonged periods without it.
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Anyone heard of the saying 'live and let live'

Until recently we caravanned. Two camps there. One believes that you stick the caravan in the middle of a field with no electricity bar the battery, so definitely no TV etc, no entretainments etc. The other camp, with varying 'wants'. For most mains electric with TV (most sites have a TV aerail connection, you can get a fully serviced pitch where you connect up the water to the mains and connect the waste to a drain, ablution blocks and on some sites an entertainment block.

The interesting comparison is that those in the second camp just get on with it and if those in camp one want to caravan that way then so be it. Those in camp one look down their noses at those in camp two.

To me, there is a comparison. It seems that there are those in camp one who do not want WiFi and those in camp two who want WiFi.......as a parallel, those in camp one seem to look down their nose at those in camp two.
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[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]Jonjob Wrote: "I have a dashboard camera too" Be careful Jonjob otherwise you might end up like this poor British chap who moved to France for a 'place in the sun' and quite clearly did not find it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHyHtflqR_E I love that. It is just fantastic and there are loads more to watch. Vivre les Brits[/quote]

 

Hah! Someone needs to explain PàD to that saddo!

 

He was also complaining about a car from Wales ignoring a flashing yellow light which I think was actually for turning not going straight on.

 

Bloomin French in their UK reg'd RHD cars with Welsh Dragon murals! dont know how to drive like me Mr Self-Righteuos!

S!!!!

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I had a caravan too and throughly enjoyed it. But remember that there are good and bad in all disciplins so if you ain't tried caravaning then you ain't qualified to knock it are you.. [;-)]

Almost all of the time, holdups with caravans aren't caused by the rig but the clown following it who 1) won't pass and 2) won't leave enough space for anyone to pass them and then the rig. They make it about the same size as an inconsiderate truck driver and there are LOADS of them navigating here in France [Www]

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JJ Wrote:

'Almost all of the time, holdups with caravans aren't caused by the rig but the clown following it who 1) won't pass and 2) won't leave enough space for anyone to pass them and then the rig. '

or the driver of the car in front of the car and caravan driving on a 60mph road at 30mph (bear in mind car and caravan combos are limited to 50mph on single carriageway roads) and no chance for the car and caravan to overtake. Those behind only see the caravan so it is 'bl**dy caravan'. In cases such as this on bends I would be positioning so that those behind could see the car in front dawdling along.

As for dash cams, there was a series of programmes on TV from Russia. Apparently, most cars there have dash cams and you can see why because of the standard of driving.

Recently, there were a series called 'Claimed and Shamed' on TV where dash cam evidence stopped spurious claims against the dash cam owning driver.
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I just don't see the point of driving 20 hrs from Burton on Trent to the South of France (with a Sat Nav guiding you) towing a gigantic fridge only to pitch it up, set up your WIFI, turn on a switch to have a satellite dish pop up so that you can watch Eastenders whilst constantly being bitten by mosquitoes to the noise of other Brits doing the same. Then in the morning pooping in a bucket, showering in a communal shower type thing whilst telling all your Facebook mates how great France is.

That is not a holiday.
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[quote user="lindal1000"]Do I expect free WIFI? Yes if I'm paying for the accommodation.

The problem with map reading and driving at the same time is that it's virtually impossible if you wear varifocals and very dangerous. Yes you can stop every few km to check the map, but satnav is much easier.[/quote]

Absolutely Linda !
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ALBF:

'I just don't see the point of driving 20 hrs from Burton on Trent to the South of France (with a Sat Nav guiding you) towing a gigantic fridge only to pitch it up, set up your WIFI, turn on a switch to have a satellite dish pop up so that you can watch Eastenders whilst constantly being bitten by mosquitoes to the noise of other Brits doing the same. Then in the morning pooping in a bucket, showering in a communal shower type thing whilst telling all your Facebook mates how great France is.'

You seriously need to relocate to North Korea. There everyone HAS the same haircut, wears the same clothes, allowed to do the same thing.

You are either a troll or someone that cannot appreciate that people are different and like different things and would hate what some people do - perhaps you like the IS way, unless you do what they want then curtains.

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