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Im thinking of giving up the gites.


dave21478
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10 days before our Canadian guests were due to arrive - the bombshell was dropped.  We had been asked several questions during the preceding months by our guests and knew that they had been planning a major trip - their golden wedding anniversary. One of the questions were, Did we know a good local traiteur? We don'treally have one but there is a local chef which we sometimes use and recommended his services.  Their response was Well we didnt really want a chef as we only want something for a Cocktail.  Her closing line was it is only for around and additional 50 friends and family (totalling 67)!! It was just a passing comment in her email. Well as you can imagine we were somewhat stunned.  Our contract does state additional guests are allowed but by prior request.  We responded with the usual details of Insurance, septic tank issues, facilities etc and stating a resounding 'Non'.  Her reply was swift.  She had been planning for months, people were arriving from everywhere, hotels, B&Bs were booked locally etc(no one was planning to overnight at our place) - her email was pleading....  

What were we to do? We felt awful, we knew she had been planning this stay for months as she had sent us many a descriptive email - 50 years of marriage is some feat nowadays.  Well we did relent as we do have the space... we put in a few restrictions etc and the event went ahead, it was very lovely, some people hadnt seen family for 40 years.  The fosse survived and our place was cleaned from top to bottom by our guests.

It is hard being a Gite owner but you can strike a balance and make a judgement call sometimes. I believe we made the right call this time, but it could have gone wrong but it didnt.  We have further amended our contract for clarity but sometimes 'the unexpected' does happen.  Our guests departed happily and so were we.

Deby

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Saturday - You know what that means? yep, changeover day.

But you know what?????

 

 

ITS THE LAST ONE![:D]

 

I never took any bookings for September as the builders are supposed to be starting on the conservatory, so this coming week is the last family staying for the summer season!

There are a couple of odd weeks between now and Xmas, but that aside, I can get back to being a grumpy hermit.

Phew.

[B]

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Well, we've got two weeks to go - yippee (luckily I'm not the owner and I definitely won't be "helping out" next year).

I've spent most of the day trying to bleach black hair dye from the bathroom walls; unravelling loads of fairy lights from the downstairs beams, bannisters and lightfittings; and scraping bright red candle wax off everything.

 

And, they seemed like such a nice family!

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[quote user="zeb"]

... and scraping bright red candle wax off everything.  [/quote]

If the candle wax has dripped onto the ceramic/tiled floor then placing a few thicknesses of absorbant kitchen roll over the wax and then ironing the paper with a warm/medium temperature iron should remove the wax completely.

Sue

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Today was the Saturday from hell.  I'd overbooked (never done that before) so had to lodge some odd New Zealanders with my friends.  The 3 noisy kids in the attic were replaced by ..... 3 more noisy kids.  The French lovers spent all day bonking even louder than I could hoover.  I turned away 3 sets of passers by and several phone calls.  The dogs have been whinging all day and now the neighbours are having a VERY noisy party which looks set to go on until the early hours. BUT one more week and I'm going on holiday.  I don't care if I shoud be here for the beginning of September, I won't and I can't wait.  I think I want to go and BE an irritating guest for a while instead of looking after them. 

.

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Waiting in for our guests yesterday and after getting more and more cheesed off as the evening went on without any phone call the call came at 10.05pm saying that they were only about ten minutes away but had decided to stop off at a restaurant and that they had not even been seated by then!!!! Anway sometimes you just don't know what to say at that exact moment but after putting the phone we should have said no, one of you get back in the car and come and get your keys as we are going to bed. But hindsight and all that.

Anway they did get here about 11.10pm and didn't get the usual friendly welcome and show around. They said they couldn't beleive it that they could not find any supermarkets open late at night!! If they had what time would they have turned up.

We have had some really nice people here over the last couple of weeks but also some nightmare ones and they are still here. One dad and his two boys were seeing off a family of nice ones yesterday and all the two boys could say was hope you have a boring journey home and our cars better than yours... The dad just laughed and said your so funny! If it was mine they would have been inside and got a thick ear cheeky little s**ts. My wife did say oh your full of charm aren't you. Went in one side of dads ear and out the other with nothing in between to stop it. His kids seen to want to wreck everything that is for the younger children. Another family that arrived yesterday seems to be exactly the same with again two young boys. We told them and the parents that we keep one small peice of our 2 acres for us and that the rest is for them to play etc. within and hour of them being here they are nearly breaking the tent over the kids sandpit, climbing small trees that will just snap, trying to let themselves in the pool 'Having already told the parents about the rules etc' and then running all over our garden.. I just give up.It gives the british a bad name but at least we only have to put up with these morons a little longer. 

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I did our last changeover of the summer yesterday and it seemed to take forever!

The strange thing is that someone has nicked the tie backs from the curtains in the main bedroom.  They are the same material as the curtains and I just cannot imagine why someone would take them.....

I had a swift count up of missing linen yesterday and several towels, bath and pool, 2 single white fitted sheets, 1 single mattres protector, 2 white pillow cases and 2 french square pillow cases are missing.  I am going to have to be more rigorous in 2009 and count them back in every Saturday and not just pick up the armload for the machine.

Now I feel like a holiday........  What's one of those?  We havent had one since we came here 4 years ago but it's too difficult for us both to get away because of the animals.  Still at least we will have the place back to ourselves a week today.... Yiiippppeeeeeeee

Gail

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Can I put the other side of the coin, please?

Rented a gite in June via Brittany Ferries, the directions to the remote hamlet were incorrect, sent us off in completely the wrong direction.  Phoned the caretakers who were letting us in several times to keep them posted, they were very good about it all. 

No provision at all for rubbish, except for plastic box which said that there was a bottle recycling container 1.5km away.  Next day bought some bin liners and kept our eyes out for rubbish containers, nearest were 1.5km away, so took all our rubbish there evening before departure.

When opening bathroom window (to let out possible condensation) load of dead flies and one live spider (arachnaphobic here!) fell out onto the window cill.

We left it clean and tidy, but paid 40 euros for final cleaning anyway, to be on safe side.

Gite was in an idyllic spot, weather was warm and sunny, like heaven after Lancashire, so none of the foregoing bothered us at all.

 

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Re the rubbish, very few places outside of cities in France have a refuse collection service as we know it in UK ie binmen going round the houses. Rubbish is left in comunal bins that are located near groups of houses, which are emptied once a week or so, depending on the area. The more rural the building, the further it is to these refuse points. (normally a green bin for rubbish, a yellow bin for recyclable cartons, papers etc and a bottle bank)

Here, its maybe 1/4 of a mile to these bins from the gite. I provide bin bags, but its the guests responsibility to use them and take them to the bins.

 

This is a "bad" year for flies in my region anyway. Infact, I find it quite disgusting myself. My house and the gites are all rammed with flies. Fly swats, sprays of insecticide, powders, traps, repellants etc etc, Nothing seems to work and Im not the only one with the problem. The local shops regularly sell out of these products due to exceptional demand this summer.

 

 

Not trying to justify anything, just maybe offer a wee explanation!

 

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[quote user="dave21478"]Re the rubbish, very few places outside of cities in France have a refuse collection service as we know it in UK ie binmen going round the houses.[/quote]

Ooo, we do [:)]. (Very rural Normandy.) When we first were here it was a tractor and trailer, once a fortnight. Upgraded to a pickup driven by a lady in full makeup and high heels, accompanied by a chap who threw the bags in the back. Now we have a proper bin lorry, once a week. What really p's me off, however, is that we pay two lots of rubbish disposal tax because of the gite. We put out a half-filled 50L bag each week due to recycling / burning, plus usually one not-full 100L bag each gite let for the weeks it's let - usually half the year. Yet one lot of neighbours (family of 3 adults, 2 children) put out 6 to 8 big bags every week. They pay half what we do for around 10 times the amount of refuse. Bah!

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[quote user="Gail Smith"]

The strange thing is that someone has nicked the tie backs from the curtains in the main bedroom.  They are the same material as the curtains and I just cannot imagine why someone would take them.....

[/quote]

To tie their bikes up on the bike rack?  To use as pretty ribbons for their daughters hair?  Maybe they just put them in a drawer somewhere.

By the way - it wasn't me[:$]

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Our paying guests left early this morning.

In a way, they were the ideal next-door neighbours: invisible, quiet when on site (which was most of the time!), but we found ourselves really (unfairly) resenting the fact that they were barely using the pool or the garden, yet their very presence was preventing us from making the most of them ourselves!

The teenagers spent the 2 weeks indoors permanently welded to their laptops (yes, really! [blink]) and I could see the Neuf box was very active late at night... If internet access was all they required, they could have stayed at home!![:-))]

I'll be able to make the most of the pool this afternoon! Water at 28°, sunshine and blue sky... till tomorrow they say!

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[quote user="Clair"]The teenagers spent the 2 weeks indoors permanently welded to their laptops (yes, really! [blink]) and I could see the Neuf box was very active late at night... If internet access was all they required, they could have stayed at home!![:-))][/quote]Hope they weren't downloading illegal stuff via P2P Clair, you could find yourself in receipt of a nice letter from Mr Sarkozy telling you if you do it again they'll cut you off !

Risky business IMO. I think if I ran a Gite I'd maybe allow access at specified limited periods or by request.

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I know what you mean. It's too late now to worry about it!

It's the only time so far I have been asked about access and the parents told me when they booked that internet/wifi access was their second criteria when searching for a holiday... [blink]

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[quote user="ErnieY"]

Risky business IMO. I think if I ran a Gite I'd maybe allow access at specified limited periods or by request.

[/quote]

If I booked a gite and had limited internet access I'd be very unhappy. I wouldn't book anywhere without free wifi access for my laptop as I run my own business and need access to the internet most of the time.

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Your prerogative of course, some might regard a lack of communications for a fortnight as a blessing from heaven [:D]

It'll be interesting to see if any Gite owners do fall foul of 'Sarkozy's Law' through the actions of guests and if a defence of 'it wasn't me your honour' will cut any ice. I think I already know the answer to that [:'(]

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All of our guests use the Internet whether it for searching out information or just general surfing. We have all nationalities so there are no 'stereotypes.' All ages use it too. It is not for me to decide how long and at what periods. We of course can block various dodgy sites. I would never dream of restricting anyone it is their holiday and I've been received their hard earned cash - gratefully. Guests also run their own business and like to keep in touch. Children of all ages enjoy the internet too.  They are on holiday and it is up to them how they choose to spend it.  How I spend my holidays is up to me and would not appreciate anyone restricting mine.
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[quote user="Deby"] Guests also run their own business and like to keep in touch. Children of all ages enjoy the internet too.  They are on holiday and it is up to them how they choose to spend it.  How I spend my holidays is up to me and would not appreciate anyone restricting mine.[/quote]

If as Ernie suggested, guests are choosing to use your internet connection for any illegal purpose, it is you, not them who may be held to account. In case you did not realise, your ISP will keep a log of each website visited and for how long plus other details of your connection use.

[quote user="Deby"] We of course can block various dodgy sites. I would never dream of restricting anyone it is their holiday and I've been received their hard earned cash - gratefully [/quote]

blocking various dodgy sites is not really easy to do and in practice usually pretty easy to get around  - especially for the savvy teens

Something to consider.

Danny

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I appreciate it is tricky tightrope to walk but as Danny says, ALL activity is down to you the subscriber.

In an extreme scenario, imagine that you had an outwardly perfect guest

who was secretly a paedophile and spent his evenings searching for and downloading kiddy porn, or perhaps was a would be terrorist surfing for bomb making instructions and ordering the materials to make one, or planning to assainate Sarkozy. As fanciful and unlikely as these are the fact is the first you would know about it would be when the knock came on your door.

Blocking sites is really only possible and practical on a PC not in a router so if guests are using their own laptops you effectively have no control whatsoever over what they do or where they go. The only way you could exercise a degree of control would be to supply a PC or laptop with appropriate control software on it but even then savvy users will easily get around it.

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Wifi access is restricted to those MAC addresses I list in the Neuf box.

I know there are ways round this, but I would like to think that whoever came to knock at my door would weigh up the incriminating evidence acquired over a definite period against my long-standing history with my ISP.

I would be able to provide the MAC address of the laptops used, as well as personal details, including bank account details, of the person who had booked the property for the relevant period.

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