Pas de publicité

Pas de pub or Pas de publicité, it's something that you sometimes see written on house letter boxes in France.

It means 'no publicity brochures' which is a popular French way of giving you plenty of material for the recycling bin.
In France the major supermarkets and shops all send out masses of promotional material that the postman duly stuffs through your letter box (unless you have a note on the box saying that you don't want such material of course).

Since we only go to the Gite periodically the publicity material builds up in our letter box.

The letter box was absolutely stuffed to the brim with publicity this time, so much so that you couldn't get any more in.

On digging through the pile it was just the publicity brochures from September through to early January this year. At that point the box was full and looked like postie gave up trying to deliver any more.

Always on the lookout for Brittany books

Walking in Brittany: Fully Mapped Guide to 30 Scenic Walks
(Bartholomew Walk Guides)

Ever on the lookout for useful books and items for our Brittany Gite, I spotted this Brittany walk guide book on ebay last week for the princely sum of 99 pence plus postage.

I stalked the auction to the end, then nabbed in at the very last minute and was lucky enough to bag a little bargain. The book arrived today and I've enjoyed flicking through and looking at the walks described within it.

The walks are largely all around the Brittany coastline, with quite a few in Finistere. There are fortunately some in "my part" of Brittany, with walks in St Brieuc, Carnac, Plouha, Berneuf, and more, that are all easily within reach of our central Brittany Gite right on the Morbihan/Cotes d'Armor border.

When I next go over to the Gite I will pop it on the bookshelf for the benefit of our guests. Everyone of course is more than welcome to come and stay in the Gite to "try out" some of the walks themselves !

Cheap dogs, cheap holiday ?

Very much on my "to do" list is to add a page to our Gite website about taking your dog to our Gite, and in the past I've written about how much easier it now is to take your pet to France.

We try to take our own dog Dexter to the Gite when we go, and now he's been accompanied by Whitey who joined our family last year. I've taken loads of photos of the two of them lazing around the Gite (it's a dog's life !), and here they are chillaxing (as our kids would say) in the shade of a parasol by the barn.

We don't charge extra for pets in the Gite, only ask that the owners clean up after them and keep them off the furniture. The ferry companies normally charge a nominal amount of £15 or so to take your dog on the ferry, but I picked up news from DFDS recently that pets will travel free on for all DFDS sailings in the remainder of 2012 and all of 2013, as long as the booking is made between September 10th and the 23rd.

And to tempt you a little more, we've recently cut the price of the remaining September dates in our Brittany Gite so you'll save on both your crossing and on your Gite holiday as well.

Not a ruff deal at all !!

Taking Poochie or Tiddles on holiday to France has got a whole lot easier

Last year the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (or DEFRA for short) announced a simplification to the Pet Travel Scheme that now means that it's now even easier to take your Pet Dog, Cat or Ferret to/from the continent.

The revised rules that came into effect on 1st January are laid out on the "what Pet owners need to do" page of the DEFRA website, but boil down to:

1. Ensure that your pet is uniquely identifiable either by microchip or tatoo. This is a a fairly cheap process that most vets can carry out, or if your pet came from an animal rescue centre they they are quite likely to already have been microchipped.
   The nightmare scenario is if the microchip fails because you then face the whole quarantine process on your return, so worth getting your vet to verify that the microchip is still working before you leave the UK.


2. Vaccinate your pet against rabies at least 21 days before the date you are due to return to the UK.
   Prior to 2012 there used to be a requirement to wait 6 months after vaccination and then have a blood test to verify that the rabies vaccination had worked. This requirement has now been abolished as long as the vaccination is at least 21 days prior to entry to the UK.


3. Collect ther pet passport which your vet will issue. This records details of the unique identification number (microchip or tattoo), Rabies inoculation and bi-annual booster dates, tapeworm treatment, etc.
   Our dog's pet passport even has space for a photo of him but we've not been able to get him to sit still for long enough in the photo booth !


4. Tapeworm treatment for dogs is required to have been completed before you return back to the UK, and this must be between 1 and 5 days before your UK arrival time.
   So if you're going for a short trip you could have the treatment done in the UK before you depart, but for most people this will mean a trip to an overseas vet before you come back home.
   For pet guests to our Brittany Gite we provide details and directions to a local vet in Loudeac that we use, its about €20 for the consultation and tablet which you can administer yourself.
   This is another area where the rules have changed in 2012; the treatment can now be up to 5 days before travel (it used to be 24-48 hours beforehand) and tick treatment is now no longer mandatory, although is recommended.


5. Finally ensure you are travelling with an approved transport company on an authorised route - all the ferry routes from France are, but only the more major airlines that fly into large airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, etc - so if you are using a budget airline best to check beforehand.

And that's it.

We're very happy to take pets at our quiet holiday Gite and the garden is safe and secure and fully fenced in. Our only request is keep the pets off the furniture and ensure that the garden is cleaned up afterwards.

We usually have about one Dog visiting the Gite each year. It's too early to tell if the relaxed DEFRA travel rules will mean that we get more pet guests; but do drop us a line if you'd like to come and stay.

French Heating Oil Prices

For both our Brittany Holiday Home and the house we live in in Bedfordshire, UK, we have an oil boiler for the central heating and hot water. The French system is slightly different in that it has a flash (on demand) boiler that switches on to heat up the water when you open a tap whereas the UK system is a conventional hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard, but other than that they're pretty similar.

And the heating oil which is 28 sec Kerosene is the same.

But what is really different is the price we pay for our heating oil in the two countries.

Just before I left for France I decided to order 1500 litres of heating oil for the UK as I wanted to buy before the prices started rising in the autumn and winter, so the day before I left I phoned around, got the best price I could and asked for the oil to be delivered whilst we were away in France.

When we were over in France one of the first things I did was to phone up a local supplier and ask him to deliver 1000 litres of heating oil for the holiday home as we were getting down to the last 300 litres or so and so it was time to refill the tank. The French tanker driver arrived on the Tuesday, quite by coincidence the same day that the UK delivery took place.

In the UK we paid 54.95 pence per litre - which is incidentally the highest price I have ever had to pay for heating oil in England, but economic conditions, prices of a barrel of oil, uncertainties in the Middle East, etc all conspired to make this the price it was.

So after 5% VAT the bill came to £865.46 for 1500 litres.

In France I'm not sure whether there is any TVA tax charged or not, I'm only ever quoted a single price per litre, and I paid 88.6 cents a litre, making the total bill for €886.00 for 1000 litres, or roughly £782.

So for only 10% more money I got 50% more heating oil in the UK. This works out that French heating oil is a wopping 36% more expensive than back at home.

Ouch.

Fortunately we don't use anywhere near as much oil in France as we do in the UK and we only have to fill the tank every couple of years or so rather than once maybe twice a year in the UK depending on how cold the winter is, but the price differential is really noticeable when you see comparative numbers like this.

Free tickets to A Place in the Sun Live (Birmingham) 2011

Here's a quick and easy way to save some money if you'd like to visit the Place in the Sun Live show at Birmingham's NEC from 30th September to 2nd October 2011; the tickets normally cost £12 on the door but if you use this special link you can print your own etickets to enter the show for free.

There'll be lots of properties for sale, information about how to buy your own dream place, plus expect some guest appearances from the Channel 4 TV presenters Amanda Lamb et al.

Enjoy !

Car Booting in La Cheze

Up early(ish) today because we've got a busy day. Slept like a log last night after the short night's sleep the night before, and awoke to a beautifully warm and sunny day.

The little town of La Cheze is just 2 miles from our holiday Gite and has a range of shops, a supermarket, three restaurants and a couple of bank branches.
There's also a large lake and it was around the bottom and sides of the lake that the 'Festival Ete' (summer festival) was held. As we walked around and managed to buy far more than we'd started off with it was noticeable that there were quite a few English stall holders as well as French families clearing out their attics and garages.

The boys were happy because they bought an XBOX game (fortunately in English - I managed to steer them away from the French ones), an inflatable boat complete with Oars for €10 and Toby had the star purchase of a moving electric robot. The boat has been played with extensively in our swimming pool and we're still trying to figure out the robot as all the controller instructions are in French - so far we've found the demo dancing mode and how to get it to walk and move its arms !

Further round the lake we found an old hay maker and displays of old tractors, a parade of classic cars and Liz was happy with the Breton horses she found to stroke and make a fuss of.

We finished up with lunch at the fair which had a longer queue than usual. It wasn't the traditional Saucisse et Frites or Galette nature or even the Sandwiches that was causing such a queue, it turned out to be the battered Fish and Chips sold at a premium €6.60 that was proving to be such a popular item that they kept on running out and having to cook some more for the next batch of hungry customers. I'm sure the french 'language police' would have a fit with the sign that said 'Fish and Chips' not 'Poisson Frites' but the Union Jack flag above the stall and the satisfied customers said it all - this little transplanted corner of English produce was going down a smash hit!

Dogs are allowed with us

Over on This French Life I recently came across an article about how it has been judged illegal in France to ban pets from short-term holiday rental agreements.

In the recent comments on the TFL article there's different points of view expressed as to whether Gite owners and customers feel positive or negative about accepting pets or not.

For our own Brittany Gite in the 7 years we have been renting we have always accepted pets, although we've only had a small number of customers that have asked about bringing their dog on holiday to the Gite.

We do ask that guests act responsibly with their dogs and pets and ensure that any mess inside or out is cleaned up afterwards, and without fail every one of the customers has been quite happy with this arrangement and we've never had any problems with the pets that have stayed with us. I personally think it's something about the kind of dog owner that wants to take their pet on holiday with them that also accepts the responsibility of doing so.

We had a lovely letter from one couple who took their dog on holiday to the Gite and they wrote a letter of thanks afterwards as if it had been written by the dogs themselves saying how much they loved their holiday and running and playing on the North Brittany coastal beach at St Brieuc. We've taken our own dog there a couple of times and as you can see he loved it!

We've also been able to help our doggy owning guests out with practical details of pet passports and also the English speaking vet we've found nearby for the inoculations for the return trip back home.

Our Oak Tree gets a serious haircut

In the back garden of our Gite we've a large oak tree with a 3 or more feet thick trunk which must be well over a hundred years old.

In the photo above which is taken from the bottom end of the garden in winter you can see that the tree is behind the barn (to the right) and the main house which is to the left of the picture. We've not "done anything" with the tree since we bought the Gite 7 years ago and have been quite content to let it grow; apart from once when I put my ladders up the tree and went up and cut off a couple of smaller branches. It was then that I realised just how big the tree is as my double extending ladders only just reached up into the main crown of the tree where the branches all split off from the main trunk.
I realised that I was going to need some help when it came to pruning the tree ...

In August last year I decided it was about time we gave the tree a haircut as several large branches were now overhanging both the barn and the house. I wasn't particularly worried about the tree being unstable but all the leaves, moss and small twiglets from the oak tree would fall down each year onto the house roof and block up the gutters so I was keen to stop that annual job, and also I was concious that if ever a dead branch did fall off the tree then it could do serious damage to one of the buildings when it came down.

So I phoned Dave Robbins a British ex-pat tree surgeon that lived the other side of Pontivy and he came over and we agreed a price for "part-pollarding" the tree.
Dave would remove all the branches that overhung on the barn and house side, taking them back to 4 feet or so up from the main crown of the tree. I didn't want the tree completely pollarding as it would then look like a large stump until it started growing again, and there was always a slight risk that more major surgery could damage or kill the tree. No, a haircut on one side was agreed to be a good idea.

Dave advised that he'd need to do the work in October or November when the tree growth had ceased for the winter and so we agreed a date in November when he would do the work and I could come over as well.

Unfortunately the November day that we'd arranged turned out to be heavily overcast and dismal and as the day went on the rain came and came and came. I was quite impressed that Dave was happy to continue clambering around the tree with his chainsaw in the rain, but other than tea breaks and one period of torrential rain the two of them just kept on going.

Interesting to see how Dave climbed up the tree, he doesn't use ladders but instead he threw a weighted rope over one of the upper branches, then pulled a heavier rope behind it, and then using mountaineering equipment and carabiner's he climbed up into the tree.

Down below Dave's mate, also chainsaw equipped, was busy cutting all the large branches up into half-metre or so long logs which were then stacked in the wood store. You can see the woodstore in the background, the left-hand side we use for drying wood and the right-hand side is for wood that's already dry and ready for the fire.
At the start of the day the left-hand wood store was quite empty.

Most of the time Dave actually used the ropes to support his weight and he walked along the branches with his feet to get into position to cut the next branch back in sections. Larger pieces were lowered to the ground by rope, all the smaller stuff was just allowed to fall down.

The guys worked a pretty full day and it was just about going dark when they finished the work and tidied up the ground underneath. Next morning it was of course a beautiful blue sky day and you could see much clearer just how much they'd taken off the tree.

And as you can see in the picture below taken from the patio side of the garden, there was still an awful lot of oak tree up there !

The wood store was very very full afterwards with all the cut and logged oak brances. It'll take 2 years or so for the wood to try out properly and some of the sections will need to be split before we can put them on the fire, but we've got an awful lot of wood now.

All the smaller branches, twigs and leaves went through a shredder onto a tarpaulin in the garden and when we were over at the Gite at Easter we wheelbarrowed it all onto the flower beds. We had enough mulch to cover the 8m by 4m flower bed that's behind the swimming pool to a depth of several inches. Will hopefully keep the weeds down.

And this final picture was also taken at Easter this year when we had some scaffolding up so that Geoff the plumber could re-point and repair the chimney stacks on the main Gite roof. It's still an awfully large oak tree, but now with a suitably well groomed hair-cut!

 

Anyway I couldn't finish without passing on details of the Tree Surgeon we used, Dave Robins, take a look at Les Bocages, Brittany arborist. Definitely recommended.

A Place In the Sun Live - Free tickets

Coming to Earls Court, London from the 11th to the 13th March is the A Place in the Sun Live exhibition with buying advice and 70 free seminars over the weekend, and thousands of overseas properties for sale, from £20,000 upwards.

You'll probably also get to spot the television presenters Amanda Lamb, Jasmine Harman and Jonnie Irwin there, as well as gain lots of information on popular destinations such as France, Spain, Florida, etc.

If you turn up at the door you'll pay £12 to enter, or if you book on the website there is a special advance purchase price of 2 tickets for £15 with a free six-month subscription to A Place in the Sun magazine.

Alternatively, and with no free magazine subscription -sorry- you can use this special complementary free ticket link to create your own e-ticket entry for the princely sum of £0.

Enjoy!

Bonne Année 2011, and a look back on 2010

"Bonne Année", or should I say "Happy New Year" to all my readers and visitors.

At this end-of-one-year, look-forward-to-the-next time of year I thought I'd give an update on how things have been for us personally in terms of website traffic and holiday Gite bookings. I last wrote on this subject two years ago when I detailed the visitors and guest numbers from 2005 to 2008, so an opportune time for an update.

Again using Google Analytics reports, website visitor numbers for both the Gite website and this Blog for the last couple of years have dropped a fraction, but in the main have been fairly constant:

Year	giteinbrittany.com		giteinbrittany.blogspot.com
	visitors	page views	visitors	page views
2008	13,617	42,756	4,492	6,523
2009	11,450	32,104	4,037	5,676
2010	12,961	33,198	3,932	5,331

But unfortunately we have seen a definite downturn in guests over the last couple of years, with 2010 having both the smallest number of guest bookings and the least number of nights where the Gite was rented out:

Year	Rental bookings	Number of nights rented	Average days in advance
2008	22	162	150
2009	15	109	109
2010	12	98	135

Hidden behind these numbers of course are the days and weeks we have occupied the Gite ourselves as a family, and in both 2009 and 2010 we had a number of stays including a 3 week August holiday in the Gite, which is of course prime-time holiday season.

Over the 6 years now that we have been renting our Brittany Gite out we've now broken the Century with 103 different guest holidays, although some of these are families that have been back a couple of times, and two families have been back 3 times, so the number of unique guests is slightly lower.

Again we've had really good feedback from our guests, although I have to admit to not having remembered to copy some of the quotes from the "Gite Diary" that we leave in France onto the online Guestbook comments on our website. Every time I visit I completely forget to sit down and copy some of them over - perhaps this should be my New Year's resolution?

I'm hoping that the booking slowdown is due to the general economic conditions, and we'll see an upturn in numbers as and when things improve. I know other Gite's have really really struggled with just a handful of weeks booked last year, so against this background we've continued to do well. We've kept our rental prices constant for the last two years and are continuing to invest in improvements to facilities at the Gite, so fingers crossed let's hope we are well positioned for a good 2011.

(And so far we've had 5 bookings for the new year, 46 nights in total, with a good chunk of July and August booked, and also an early May booking as well, so things are looking OK so far).

Been 'Gite shopping' again

Oak bedroom chest

The pile of things in the garage that's destined to go over to France is growing a little bigger as I've been shopping again ...

Last week I popped into Ikea in Leeds enroute home from my Dad's, not only to buy a coffee and a hot dog [Image], but also to buy some metal hooks for the hanging rails where all the pots, pans and kitchen utensils are in our Gite kitchen. I've been meaning to buy some more hooks for about a year now so pleased I have finally managed to tick it off the to do list.

Whilst wandering round a car boot sale on Sunday I saw a lovely little oak table that I decided would be just perfect as a bedside table in the second Gite. I love the look of natural wood furniture, I think it fits well in the Gite with its exposed beams and simple "country" decor, so most of the bedside tables, wardrobes and chests of drawers have been acquired in this way.
It was only £4 so I had an enjoyable afternoon sanding and wire-wooling it down before applying a couple of coats of beeswax polish. Looks lovely now.

Also at the car boot sale I picked up a new coffee percolator as the one in the Gite has suffered an accident and so we've had to put out the replacement from the second house. It's always the same things that seem to suffer from breakages so I try to keep one step ahead by buying a spare coffee machine in case one gets broken.

Another thing that seems to die with roughly annual frequency is the pump for the swimming pool. The guests currently in the Gite texted me on Sunday to tell me that the pump isn't "making any kind of noise". After eliminating the obvious ideas like checking that the electricity hadn't tripped out, it now does look like the pump's gone to the great pump heaven in the sky so I've asked our agents to pop over and get a replacement pump out for the guests.
Fortunately I already have another spare pump in the garage in the UK, but I've started looking on ebay to buy yet another one now so that we've a replacement for the replacement!

I'm waiting for Mr Postie to deliver me some new bike pedals courtesy of ebay, well admittedly they're not new, but they're new to me, and I need them as the last piece of my repair work on one of the Kids bikes that I brought back from France to repair.

PS: Toby has just put a wet cup down on the newly sanded and polished bedside table that I'd put in the conservatory after I'd finished it. It's now got a lovely circular ring mark on the polish so will have to be sanded down and re-polished again.

Grrr

The early guest catches the booking discount

When I wrote the title of this Blog I was thinking about "The early bird catching the late worm" ... but in hindsight the analogy ran out of steam about half way through so maybe I'd better move on!

I've written before about a flurry of booking enquiries for 2010 I received in August 2009, and more surprisingly the booking we took in August 2007 for the following August - an amazing 363 days in advance, well I've been surprised again with how well organised some people are with their holiday plans.

Last week I received an enquiry from the Spellman family through the France holiday home advert we run on VillaRentals; enquiring what I would charge for a holiday in August next year.

I replied back saying that we normally review the prices for each season towards the end of the year, but for all bookings made this year I would hold the prices the same as this year. Our booking calendar on our Gite website and on VillaRentals only runs up to the end of December 2010 as I don't normally "open up" bookings for next year until September, but as the Spellman's were keen to book I manually marked the week they were interested in as available.

And later that day they made their booking, confirming an 8 day holiday for August 2011 - a staggering 418 days before they're due to rent the Gite.

I will have to talk to Liz and decide what we want to do for our own holidays in France next year because if I don't get organised we risk not being able to stay their ourselves. Meanwhile if you are interested in holidaying with us next year (or even this year we still have availability in September, October and at Christmas), do drop us a line with the dates you are interested in booking and I'll be happy to take your booking.

The question is, can anyone beat a 418 days in advance booking?

The Bikes are back in town!

I'm delighted to be finally able to take the photo above, showing all the bicycles we have ready for use in our French holiday cottage - it's been a long time coming.

Over the years as I've seen reasonably priced bikes at car boot sales or our own children have outgrown them, I've been accumulating bicycles and taking them over to France for use by our holiday guests. A few years ago we had so many that I had to buy a bike rack for them all (another ebay purchase), and things were looking pretty good at that stage. We have 3 adult bikes, 3 children's bikes of different sizes, 3 smaller children's bikes with stabilisers, two scooters, a child's seat for one of the adult bikes and a Wike bicycle trailer that two children can sit in and be towed behind one of the adult bikes.

Then about 3 years ago when we were over at the Gite I found that one of the adult bikes (the orange one) wasn't riding right. In fact it felt terrible and when I tried to change gear the whole dérailleur mechanism jammed up solid, requiring some emergency roadside repairs.

When I got back to the Gite and inspected the bicycle properly I realised that the dérailleur had been damaged somehow and it was bent out of alignment and several teeth on the cogs were missing. No time to fix it there and then so I put the broken bike in the second house and made a note to buy a new dérailleur when we returned to the UK.

And this then started the long saga of trying to get the bike back on the road again which went something like this ...

Bought new dérailleur off ebay, took it over to France, fitted it, then realised that three of the bike wheel spokes were broken. Measured them, and when next in the UK bought some new spokes. Took the spokes over to France, fitted one of them, then realised that I needed to remove the freewheel unit in order to fit the other two spokes. Returned to the UK and bought a freewheel extractor which I then took over to France.
Had trouble getting the freewheel off, meant I had to clamp the axle in a vice before I could remove it, so in the process damaged the thread on the axle so when I removed the freewheel unit and fitted the new spokes, I couldn't tighten up the axle nuts to put the bike wheel back on the frame.
Took the wheel back to the UK, bought a new axle (and some axle grease), fitted it all back together, checked the wheel was OK, and took it back over to France.
Fitted the wheel to the bike, everything looked OK, so took it out for a test run and on the first hill the dérailleur dive-bombed into the wheel and came apart all over the road. Retrieved all the bits, including newly broken bits of dérailleur, and took the bike back to the Gite to work out what was wrong with it this time.
Realised that the axle was missing half of its ball bearings so hunted around for a French bicycle shop (for a nation obsessed with the Tour de France they appear to be few and far between in my bit of Brittany), eventually found one, and bought some ball bearings. Returned to the Gite and realised that the wheel hub was actually broken and it wasn't repairable.
Back in the UK bought another wheel off an ebay seller that was local to me, arranged for Liz to meet him at a nearby Tesco, but he never showed up and despite several emails via ebay we never managed to complete the transaction. Some weeks later found another ebay seller that had both a front and back wheel for sale so ended up buying both so I had a spare ready for the next bike 'challenge' !
Took the new wheel(s) over to France, fitted the rear one, it worked OK, took the bike for a test run and success at long last, everything worked perfectly.

For the next week I rode the bike most days, usually when we took the dog for a run, and the wheel behaved itself but by the end of the holiday I'd noticed that the pedals and crankshaft had developed a definite 'clunk' at one point as they went round. Fearing the worst I bought a cotter-less crank removal tool from the hypermarket in Loudeac, then when I removed the dust cover off the crank shaft I found that it was simply the crank nut that had come loose and it was easy to tighten it back up with my socket set. The bike is now working perfectly - hurrah!

All of this kind of underlines the difficulties in maintaining a Gite (and in this particular case the bicycles at the Gite) when you're not physically living onsite and have to keep on shuffling back to the UK for replacement parts. All in all whilst it probably was only a few hours of repairwork to the bike I think it took an elapsed duration of couple of years to get the bike back up and running. Of course if I'd realised earlier on that the wheel was damaged and needed to be replaced, then I'd have taken the easy route out and replaced it straight away ... but 'hindsight is a wonderful thing' as the saying goes.

Nice bit of laminate flooring in the hallway

As I wrote back in January, when we were over having a great summer break at our French holiday cottage last August, as well as us spending time together and doing family things, I of course couldn't be sitting still all that time so in the middle week of our holiday Alan came over to do a number of jobs with me, including repairing a leak in the zinc guttering.

Next up after the guttering was to lay some new flooring in the upstairs hallway of the Gite.

I'd had it in mind to replace the upstairs hallway carpet for some time as it was (a) incredibly thin and (b) it had acquired a couple of stains of mysterious origin that no amount of cleaning or scrubbing would get rid of. The stain wasn't really all that bad but it annoyed me and as part of the inevitable ongoing maintenance you need in a rental property was something that I'd ear-marked for replacement.

Fortunately on one of our occasional Saturday morning trips to the auction centre in Bedford to "see what they've got" (aka opportunity to be outbid on some things that we don't really need, but that someone else is more desperate than you to own), I'd managed to pickup a big pile of beech laminate flooring, about 6 brand new and unopened boxes I think, for £20 the lot.
The flippin foam underlay for the laminate flooring then cost me another £10 from one of the UK DIY sheds; and then we had to try to find space in the car for the trip over to France.

The old carpet was up in minutes and fortunately the foam backing to the carpet which had been stuck to the floor was still in pretty good condition, so we laid the new foam underlay and then the laminate flooring straight on top.

Laminate installation

All the skirting boards which I had painstakingly masked off and painted a nice creamy yellow colour a couple of years ago had to come up though as we decided to lay the flooring underneath the skirting board so it would hide the expansion gap round the edge. This of course meant that I then had to sand down and repaint all the skirting boards as they all now had a white edge to them where the carpet had originally butted up against the side, but at least it was a nice day outside so the paint dried reasonably quickly and probably incarcerated a few flies that made the mistake of landing on the wet paint and getting immortalised forever.

It took Alan less than a day to cut and install all the flooring, then me another couple of days on and off to finish the job off.

One problem that I hadn't anticipated were the metal edging strips that go across the doorways to finish off the flooring and stop you catching your foot on an exposed carpet edge - door bars I think they're called? Previously with carpet in the hallway and carpet in the bedrooms both sets of flooring were on the same level so I'd fitted flat metal door bar strips; but these all now needed to be changed to angled strips to cover the difference in height between the laminate in the hallway and carpet in the bedrooms.

This turned out to be the most expensive part of the whole flooring episode .... door bars are extortionately expensive in France.

If you look on ebay or in one of the DIY sheds then you can buy door bars in the UK for between £5 and £15 each depending on the style, quality and materials you want to use. In France though its a different story with Mr Bricolage selling their cheapest door bars for €19.99 and the price rising rapidly to €40 or more - EACH !

Ouch.

No time though to buy some from the UK or to try to shop around further so I gritted my teeth and paid an outrageous €25 for each of the four door bars that I needed. Each needed to be cut to size to fit the doorways (did this bit very carefully - not going to make a mistake at this price), and of course some of the doors needed to be planed down a bit to clear the new flooring height.

Anyway it all looks lovely now and makes the upstairs look more presentable.

I did run out of laminate flooring though as there wasn't enough to cover the nursery area outside the third bedroom. It's taken me ages to track down the German manufacturer's phone number, find their UK distributor, find a local Bedfordshire distributor, and now to find that the carpet shop only 3 miles away from my UK home can order me some more flooring to match; but I'll go and do that in the next few days so I can finish the last section of landing.

And if ever I need to find a future French income stream I think I will go into the door bar import business. I'm sure I can make some money buying door bars in the UK and selling them in France!

Acquired some rubber matting

I guess I'm either lucky in being in the "right place at the right time", or perhaps I'm just an opportunistic scrounger, but with having a holiday home that's 12 hours drive away from me in Brittany means I'm often keeping an eye out for bits I know I need to get hold of and take over to France next time we're over there.

Earlier this year I was working at home for the day (yes really, I was doing some work that day and not skiving off watching the TV) and in the afternoon went to pickup Jack our youngest from school. When I got there I noticed that the school was having their play equipment refurbished and all the rubber matting that was underneath the climbing frames had been removed.

Ahah, the rubber matting looked as if it would be "useful" in France (not quite sure what) so it was time for a scrounge !

The school were happy with me taking away all that I wanted so later on that afternoon Toby and I returned to collect some of the matting in Liz's car.

'Flipping 'eck is all I can say to the experience of carrying large 1metre square sheets of rubber matting. Half of the matting is about 2 inches thick and requires two of you to carry each sheet, and the other half of the pile of acquired matting is about 3 inches thick and is a real struggle to carry for two people, and for one person it's almost impossible to shift.

Three car loads later and we'd got a large pile of rubber mats at home. Unfortunately they've then sat in front of the house for the last two months with Liz getting more cross at me leaving them in the way. It's taken me that long to determine what to do with them ... finally decided that I'll put them round the edge of our Gite swimming pool in France. Now all I have got to do is to get them to France on my own!

Bookings starting to pick up for 2010 after a very slow start

Maybe the recession is over and things are looking up?

The cynic in me says that the only reason that the press have started writing about how the recession is over is that they've got bored of writing about how bad the recession is.

But looking at the evidence I reckon things are looking up.

Bookings for our holiday Gite were definitely affected last year and I noticed a slow down in bookings as we moved into 2010. In previous years we've seen most of September, some of October, and Christmas/New Year booked in the cottage. In 2009 though once the peak summer and September season had finished that was it and we had no bookings at all after 25th September and we've been empty since then.

Also in previous years we've seen most of July and August booked in advance well before the end of the preceding year, and I've written for example about receiving holiday bookings up to 360 days in advance.

The bookings have definitely been slower this year and we didn't really start getting any 2010 bookings until January this year.

However things are now starting to look up and I'm seeing an increase in booking enquiries over the weeks so most of August is booked as is June 2010. July 2010 still has some holiday weeks free and we've taken one rental booking for May. I've also just confirmed our first booking for a couple who will be going over house-hunting in Brittany in March, and one week of Easter is now confirmed as well.

All in all 43 nights have now been booked in our holiday home which is great news.

Current available dates in our France holiday cottage are shown on our website.

Repairing a leaking gutter - requiring scaffolding, angle grinder and a brazing torch

When were over at our Brittany self catering holiday cottage in August last year I couldn't of course manage to relax for three whole weeks and so we organised in the middle week for Alan to come over and do some building work for me. Alan's a plasterer by trade but unlike many of the French tradesmen that tend to specialise on just one type of work, he doesn't mind doing other jobs.

One of the first things I asked Alan to take a look at was a leak in the zinc guttering over the patio at the front of the cottage. I'd tried on a couple of occasions to fix the leak using black guttering sealant but on both times the sealant hadn't worked and the water was again dripping down the wall. I knew that rainwater and walls don't mix well and so was keen to get the problem sorted.

In our part of France traditional guttering and downpipes are made of zinc, braised together with a generous dose of solder, so I expected that it'd be a straight forward job to just re-solder the joint together ... but I was quite wrong in my expectations.

The first thing Alan did was to put up a scaffolding tower from the patio to the roof level so that he could more easily work on the problem. I'd been expecting him to shimmy up a ladder which is the sort of thing I'd have done, so I was wrong on that thought as well!

Alan explained that the way that the zinc guttering should be installed is to overlap any joints with a generous 4 inches or so of guttering, and then this gives a good strong metal-to-metal area that can be braized together.

When we got up the scaffolding we could see that for some reason whoever had installed the guttering had either made a mistake or had run out of guttering length because whereas most of the joints had been overlaid and jointed properly there was one section where two guttering pieces had been simply butted together and then solder applied across the top. And of course with the heat and cold expansion that you get throughout the year the joint had failed and it was obvious that no amount of guttering mastic was going to provide a properly sealed and permanent joint.

So Alan had to get the angle grinder out to cut out the broken section of zinc guttering and it was off to the builders merchant to buy a new piece of guttering to cut and braze into position. Of course zinc guttering only comes in 3 metre lengths so I ended up with far more guttering than I needed for the repair (and of course I just had to save the excess "just in case" it ever became useful!).

Repairing the broken section was quite time consuming as the new section needs to overlap the existing guttering so Alan had quite a bit of filing, cleaning and bending to get the new section into position, then out with the blowlamp to melt solder all over the two joints, then test for leaks.

Job done.

As you can see on the picture the gutters are attached to the roof with big brackets and when finished the guttering is really really strong. If you ever need to climb up the roof you simply put a ladder in the guttering, rest it against the roof, and climb up!

And of course when it was finished our boys wanted to climb up the scaffolding and "admire the view". Here's Jack "on high"

Trust in an internet world when renting holiday properties

I've written before about some of the various scam booking attempts that we receive for our French holiday rental Gite, and in the main I'd like to hope I've got reasonably adept at spotting the ones that don't look "quite right" and fingers crossed we've not had any problems in the 5 years we've been renting the Gite.

You can usually spot the dodgy looking booking enquiries, either by the use of an overseas contact telephone number (such as 00 225 which is the international code for the Ivory Coast), or poor English spelling and grammar in the booking enquiry.

If ever I'm not sure I tend to copy some of the key phrases out of the booking request into google and see if anyone else has reported the same booking enquiry. These scammers don't tend to be original and you'll find exactly the same booking request is used time and time again with only the contact name and disposable email address changing each time. Another sure sign for doubt is email addresses ending in numbers such as fred987@yahoo.co.uk or bill2004@gmail.com.

One website I have found particularly useful when researching dubious bookings such as a 'surprise' honeymoon present is laymyhat.com's forum which is a meeting place for other holiday home rental owners.

The other day I received another enquiry I wasn't sure about and when I google'd some of the text from the enquiry I turned up another useful resource for spotting scam bookings, rentalseal's blog where they report details of current rental scams and rental scams in the news.

But on reading further I found that RentalSeal are more than just a blog, they've a fairly unique Internet business proposition, and to be honest one that I hadn't considered as being an issue up to now.

Their raison d'etre is quite simple, "how do you know the holiday home rental you are just about to book genuinely exists?"

Basically they offer the customer who wants to rent a holiday home (or 'vacation rental' as the American's say) protection against scammers who have duplicated attractive photos of vacation homes from the web and copied content from other legitimate vacation rental property listings in order to create their own fraudulent listings.

And I suppose I see how this could be a problem. It costs practically nothing to create a website and it's easy to copy someone else's website so if you copy a property listing, get it well ranked on the search engines then potentially unsuspecting customers will book to stay in the fraudulent property, pay their money up front, then when they arrive they find that it's all been an elaborate hoax.

RentalSeal's solution to this problem is to offer a "trust seal of authenticity" on your property listing. As the property owner you provide RentalSeal with details of your property and proof that you genuinely do own it such as insurance documents, property deeds or previous guest references, etc. RentalSeal then reviews your application, verifies all information, and issues you with a trust seal that you can display on your property website.

It's an interesting concept and perhaps for the ultra-concerned customer I can see how this might be a good idea, but I'm not personally convinced that its really necessary, or more importantly, value for money.

Firstly there's the cost. This verification doesn't come free of course, RentalSeal ask for $100 to cover the initial registration and then $30 per year as an annual renewal fee.

Secondly there's the question of recognition of RentalSeal itself. If this trust seal idea really took off, customers readily recognised the trust logo and absolutely every property website needed to have a RentalSeal approval if they wanted to have a half-decent chance of getting bookings, then I can see that this would be something I'd have to subscribe to.

But I'm not sure its there yet. Unlike some of the other 'safer shopping' logos such as Thawte, ShopSafe, WeTrust and TrustGuard, and merchant schemes such as Verified by Visa for secure credit card handling; I suspect that pretty much no-one has ever heard of RentalSeal and thus the value of the "seal" is severely diminished.

And finally there's the question of market penetration. After a bit of investigative searching on RentalSeal's property directory I've concluded that they've currently got 63 verified properties on their books, of which only 4 are in Europe (in Italy and Greece). And with such a low number its not going to be an organically growing trust seal any time now.


Returning back to the question of whether fraudulent property listings is really a big issue that needs a trust logo like this, personally we've never had any queries from customers worried that we might be trying to take their money and not have a holiday home for them to rent in return. Of course it may be because we've not got the RentalSeal logo that such concerned customers never lodge a booking enquiry in the first place, but with 80+ bookings over the last 5 years I somehow doubt it. If a potential customer was worried then I've got enough photos of the property, I'm more than happy to talk to customers on the phone, and of course there are all the previous happy customers that could act as referees if it really came to that.

I'll finish with one final thought though. How do I know that RentalSeal itself is to be trusted and isn't a form of even more elaborate internet scam? How do you trust the trustee in a potentially unsafe internet world?

All in all too complicated a problem I think.

"Checking out" Google Checkout (and Paypal) transaction fee structures for card payments

Google Checkout

A few weeks ago I wrote about how Google Checkout had re-instated my seller account after they'd changed the rules about what was allowed to be sold and included timeshare and holiday rental properties.

Since then I've finally had a chance to look at the fees charged by Google Checkout to compare them to other electronic card payment mechanisms.

When Google Checkout launched in the UK the fees were a very reasonable flat rate of 15p handling fee plus 1.5% of the transaction amount.

Then in March 2009 Google Checkout revised the fee structure to a tiered structure, and depending upon your monthly revenue through Google checkout you pay a lower fee rate:

Monthly Sales Through Google Checkout	Fees Per Transaction
Less than £1500	3.4% + £0.20
£1500 - £5999.99	2.9% + £0.20
£6000 - £14999.99	2.4% + £0.20
£15000 - £54999.99	1.9% + £0.20
£55000 or more	1.4% + £0.20

So unfortunately a rather substantial increase unless you're already doing serious business with Google checkout.

How does this stack up against the competition? Well the lead alternative contender for taking credit card payments is of course Paypal and the Paypal transaction fee structure is amazingly absolutely the same as Google Checkout.
(Well it's not quite the same as Google Checkout, there's 1p difference on each transaction band, so it's 3.4% + 20p for transactions valued from £0.00 to £1500.00, then 2.9% +20p from £1500.01, etc, but I'm not quibbling over this 1p difference!)

So in this age of the internet driving an open marketplace and price transparency with the smaller, newer and nimbler players being able to compete on a level playing field with the established big boys, it's surprising to see that these two companies have decided to price exactly the same as each other.

Where Paypal does come out cheaper is cross-border card payment transactions (e.g. an American guest pays to stay in the Gite), the Paypal fee is then an additional 0.5% higher whereas Google Checkout add on a full 1%. A small but noticeable difference.

So although I've now re-instated Google Checkout on the rental rates page as a method for guests to pay for their French holiday, if truth be told I'd actually prefer that our guests didn't pay by credit card because I lose such a large chunk in commission.

Given the choice I ask guests if they can send me their holiday booking deposit and the final rental payment by cheque, and it's simply because then I end up with the full rental amount in my bank account and don't give away a chunk to an intermediary. Pretty much all our guests do pay by cheque, the exception being those that book our Gite direct from VillaRentals (aka RentalSystems) to whom I have to pay a 10% commission.

Of course for guests coming from overseas countries (and over the years we've had guests from Ireland, Sweden, Holland, the USA and Australia) it's not practical for them to pay by cheque so I generally ask them to book and pay for their holiday via RentalSystems, and as RentalSystems treat the transaction as a referral from me I pay just 2% commission - saving me roughly 2% over Paypal.

As well as Paypal, RentalSystems and now Google Checkout, we also can take debit/credit card payments from Nochex.co.uk (who charge 2.9% + 20p) or MoneyBookers.com (1.9% fee for transferring money from a credit card).

As a "small business" there seems to be a plethora of card provider options out there but with some high fees to match. For now both us and our customers have been quite happy with cheque payment and whilst we do offer all these card payment options we're never asked "how do I pay by credit card?".

What's your view - would you expect to pay by credit card or are cheques OK, and are there any cheaper payment engines that come recommended (and are easy for customers to use)?