| The long term trends look poor. There are | | | | want to inflict one on our locataires |
| 500,000 English owned properties in France - | | | | (=renters). |
| that's half a million families that will no | | | | |
| longer be renting holiday cottages in France. | | | | 4) As a holiday is a time to relax we try to |
| | | | make it so. It helps if everything is |
| We have to say that it doesn't quite feel | | | | included in the price, so no worries about |
| like that for us. Every year we seem to | | | | electricity, gas or wood fuel bills. French |
| manage sufficient "fullness" to be happy with | | | | gite owners (god bless 'em) read the meter |
| the outcome. Even this year when summer was | | | | before and after your holiday. |
| rained off and we had to pay French taxes for | | | | |
| the first time. | | | | 5) If possible we thought each gite or |
| | | | holiday cottage should have its own garden. |
| As inveterate holiday cottage renters in | | | | Quite unimportant if you're off sightseeing |
| earlier times we decided upon several things | | | | every day, but as gardeners we knew we would |
| when we started on the venture:- | | | | enjoy providing them. |
| | | | |
| 1) A holiday cottage does not have to be big | | | | 6) Finally we decided fairly early on to |
| enough to live in - just big enough to be | | | | accept any bookings over three days in |
| enjoyable for a fortnight. Small really is | | | | length. Changeover days are a pain in the |
| beautiful. | | | | neck for the gite owner (you write off every |
| | | | single Saturday in your life) and |
| 2) The things that go wrong or are missing | | | | inconvenient for holidaymakers who want to |
| are the things you would notice yourself, so | | | | have cheap ferry crossings. The odd wasted |
| at the start we made a list of all things | | | | days are when our gites have their own |
| we'd ever wanted in a holiday cottage and | | | | mini-holiday |
| provided them all. Next we decided to live in | | | | |
| our gites from time to time so that we knew | | | | On the whole we may be dinosaurs - throws |
| their failings. Sometimes we have been aghast | | | | back to the past when low property prices |
| that people have not complained about | | | | made financing all this quite |
| something or another that we've realized is | | | | straightforward. |
| wrong. | | | | |
| | | | The supply of cottages to rent for holiday in |
| 3) The holiday cottages had to be | | | | the UK is tending to decline because "buy to |
| sufficiently comfortable and welcoming to be | | | | let" schemes, and realising the capital value |
| a place to live in - even for a fortnight - | | | | of the cottages is more attractive than the |
| rather than just a dormitory. We had stayed | | | | rather labour intensive activity of providing |
| in dormitories (too uncomfortable to stay in, | | | | people with holidays. |
| other than when we were asleep) and didn't | | | | |