French Life-expat France

The gite booking season for 2008 is more or less finished now, and it’s time to turn your thoughts to 2009. Apparently bookings are down this year, and if the state of the economy is anything to go by next year will be no easier.

So now is a good time to make sure your holiday-rental website is ready to attract the customers for next year.

I’ll assume you have already taken care of the content – nice clear pictures, easy to use menu system, nicely written text etc – without these you are doomed to failure. Try and look at your website as if you were someone wanting to book a holiday – if the site looks poor you will struggle to make people think your property is great.

Having taken care of the basics there are a few SEO (search engine optimisation) things that you can attend to to make yourself more visible in the search engines – google in particular. Before you start you need to know what phrase(s) you want your site to show up for…

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Long-standing regular readers of this blog will know that during the three weeks of the Tour de France I seldom get to the computer, but I wonder how long that might continue.

In recent years the Tour de France has had many problems related to drug-enhanced-performance, and lots of big name cyclists have been lost along the way. But this year was the year the ruling body of the Tour de France were getting tough, after previous years catastrophes. They knew they had to get the race back on track if it was to survive.

Teams and riders all signed agreements saying they agreed to be hanged, drawn and quartered if so much as an aspirin was found in their hotel, and just for once it looked as if it might be a clean race.

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I understand that the flood of expats arriving in France from the UK has slowed down quite a lot recently in the face of falling house prices and an interminable number of TV programmes telling everyone what sad miserable lives we expats lead, battling against poverty, bureaucracy, and of course the French.

Ah well, not to worry, I’m sure those of us here will muddle by somehow. But before you think the flood has finished first read this quote I came across:

‘No Egyptian ever dreaded the approach of a swarm of locusts more than the native residents of the little towns of France do the settling down of a flight of English. For the result in both cases is the same…

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Motivated by the Tour de France I went out for a long bike ride yesterday afternoon. Common sense would have told most people that cycling too far, too fast, in baking sunshine, was not the best idea but I am not most people and it seems I have no common sense.

So about an hour and a half into the ride I suddenly lost almost all strength. From whooshing along at 35 kmh I was suddenly barely able to manage 20 kmh. And with at least 20 km left to get home things were looking a bit grim. I had the distinct feeling I was going to fall off the bike at any moment, and didn’t have much water left so was drinking it sparingly. Inevitably I had forgotten to bring the portable phone along.

This, you will note, is why the contestants in the Tour de France eat and drink so much during the race.

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I’ve admitted before that once you’re up and running with gites they are really not much like hard work - apart from Saturdays when they need cleaning of course.

Personally I manage to avoid that by claiming I need to cut the grass -coincidentally this mowing takes me exactly the same amount of time as Mrs B spends sweeping and mopping.

Finding a cleaner to help who is willing to be paid ‘legally’ with the cheque d’emploi system - rather than ‘cash in hand’ - is slightly more complicated. I don’t know why because it doesn’t cost the person any extra, but i guess people like the small of real money. Anyway the search continues.

This week, and last week as well, a new challenge has presented itself.

The people staying in the house have happily gone out exploring each day, and left the bedroom windows and shutters open. Fair enough, their choice.

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Looking at the statistics for our gites in France section I can get a reasonably good idea of which regions of France people are looking at the most - which also tells us whether you are going to end up squeezed in a traffic jam and queueing an hour for an ice-cream…or whether you will be all alone on deserted streets.

So without further ado, these are the ‘popularity ratings’ for regions of France 2008. These figures are based on the last 250,000 page views in that section of the site - so hopefully enough to give a reasonable idea of the popularity of a region.

1. Provence
2. Languedoc
3. Brittany
4. Normandy
5. Dordogne
6. Atlantic coast
7. Loire Valley
8. Champagne
9. Midi-Pyrenees
10. Poitou-Charentes
11. Burgundy
12. Auvergne
13. Alsace
14. Vendee
15. Corsica

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Well, after years of resisting, and much good advice to the contrary, we have become a SARL. A SARL is a fully fledged French company with shares, proper accounts, and - so we are told - enormous associated expense and bureaucratic effort.

I can hardly wait.

I won’t trouble you with the reasons why we have embarked on this dangerous path, suffice to say our accountant thinks it is the best option given our ‘circumstances’.

The actual act of creating a SARL was straightforward - a couple of meetings with the accountant, the opeining of a bank account in the company name (seems to be obligatory), and a sprinkling of cheques (about 250 euros in total) to various organisations that like to stamp forms. The 250 euros doesn’t include the accountant charges.

Thrown in for the price of creating a company we also get mentioned in an official newspaper, that exists solely for boring legal notices and is clearly a journal that no-one in the world would dream of actualy buying.

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I made an interesting discovery a couple of days ago that might be interesting for people like us who live in France and only have French television, or for owners of second homes in France.

We get out television using TNT - digital signals that are received through the aerial and converted by a decoder. Hence lots of channels (all French), a good quality picture, and no need for a satellite dish. I think in the UK the same thing is called ‘free-to-air’ television.

The TNT decoders cost about 50 euros to buy separately, and about 60 seconds to install. A lot of new televisions have them built in.

All very interesting, I hear you say. Well a couple of days ago I noticed at the beginning of a programme that a little message flashed up in the corner of the screen saying ‘VO sous-titrage, TNT’. That is, ‘original version (English language) available through TNT.

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Well I’d never heard of QROPS (Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme) until I was sent this article - but they actually look quite useful if you are an expat with a substantial UK based pension fund. Could be why I hadn’t heard of them, perhaps? Read on, you might just save a few pennies…

What exactly is QROPS

QROPS (Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme) was brought about following changes to UK pension legislation on April 5, 2006. The structure of a QROPS is similar to that of a UK pension, i.e. there is an investment vehicle which is owned on your behalf by a pension administrator (trustee). The difference arises where the pension administrator is based outside the UK and only reports back to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs).

This scheme has been specifically designed to enable non-UK resident individuals who have accrued pension benefits in the UK, to transfer these out once they have left the UK. Provided that the UK Registered Pension Scheme and the QROPS provider both have the appropriate transfer authority, individuals who leave the UK and establish a QROPS are able to request a transfer of their UK benefits.

Due to the fact that this scheme is an international contract, future benefit payments can potentially be received without deduction of UK tax. Individuals will be responsible for declaring the income in their own country of residence. A QROPS provides asset protection and tax efficient planning opportunities. More importantly, after the policy has been running for five years there will no longer be any obligation to report to the UK HMRC.

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Given that summer is here at last…I thought I’d take a look at the best ways of heating your house in France. Better late than never, and it might just help reduce the cost of fuel / oil next year - which I’d guess won’t be any less than it is now. There are now several more environmentally friendly alternatives for heating a property, which may also be cheaper, though until now I’ve been unconvinced. In this post I talk about pompes a chaleur - heat pumps.

Pompe a chaleur

The pompe a chaleur (heat pump) is a system that extracts the energy in the air or soil and uses it to heat your home. The version of the pompe a chaleur - from now on referred to as a PAC - that uses the energy ever present in the soil is commonly called a geothermal system (discussed separately below). The PAC system can be linked to your existing central heating system to provide the hot water to heat your home, or can be used to heat air which is passed around your home.

That sounds ideal don’t you think? Well, there are limitations. Although all air contains energy, the colder the air is the harder it becomes to extract the energy. And below a certain temperature it becomes more or less impossible.

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Mrs B has now returned from her Loire Valley exploration and all is returning to normal. Apparently I was supposed to have prepared a slap-up dinner for her return, not hunt in the bottom of the freezer for old fish fingers, but apart from that momentary lapse all is well.

Her most exciting discovery was this carving at Chauvigny - look at the picture again - what does go through people’s minds I wonder? Still perhaps it put the fear of God into people a few centuries ago.

The little chap getting his head bitten off doesn’t seem too bothered though.

Meanwhile back at basecamp…the (only) toilet broke in the little gite yesterday, happily during normal work hours so I could call a plumber out quickly. It did make me wonder what we would do if it happened on a Sunday evening though.

The plumbers first reaction was ‘I’ll come around tomorrow afternoon’, until I explained that it wasn’t very practical for the people in the gite to wait 36 hours before using the toilet…

Luckily it’s quite rare that ‘issues’ arise but we have had a lot of storms this week, and I always get nervous during storms that a roof will blow away. I don’t know why really, since the same roof has been there for at least 150 years without particular incident. I think it’s because I don’t have the stress of a ‘real job’ so I have to track down other things to worry about.

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A long time ago I had a good camera and took lots of ’slides’ of fascinating places. Remember slides? Little bits of plastic that you watched by projecting the picture onto a big white screen. These are now sitting in the attic going brown and spotty until I get them converted to digital photos.

But for the least few years I’ve used a cheap digital camera - not bad, but not very impressive either. Then that broke and for the last year I’ve been using Mrs B’s little portable camera - not very good at all.

So I thought it was time to sort things out and recently bought a ‘proper’ digital camera (Canon EOS 400D if I remember right, I can’t check because Mrs B has taken it to the Loire Valley with her this week).

This new camera is a whizzy SLR thing with more functions than I could ever dream of using, but also takes very good photos with little effort, which is all that matters. And it cost less than my ancient camera did four years ago.

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I just got back from my whistle-stop tour around the Camargue, Arles and Nimes, and very nice it was too. I saw everything I wanted to see, ate all alone in restaurants while others sat in happy family groups, and generally rushed about with an “it’s Tuesday so this must be Nimes” type visit.

There is one thing that troubles me about Provence which I haven’t come across anywhere else in France and that is the commitment to depriving tourists of their hard earned cash, and more importantly the impact it has on the places concerned.

Larger towns like Nimes or Arles escape the problem, despite attracting loads of tourists - they are big enough to need other industries I suppose, and keep their unique charm. But then we get to the pretty villages.

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Let’s try and keep our spirits up. Petrol prices mean that everyone needs to stay at home, petrol shortages mean that we can’t go anywhere anyway…and I’ve hired a car starting this evening so I can go and do research on the Nimes region.

So either I won’t be able to set off, or I’ll set off and won’t be able to get back, or the trip will cost so much that I’ll have to sell the children into slavery to pay for it.

In any event the timing is looking a bit dodgy - the weather has been pretty chaotic recently with floodings and storms breaking through the sunshine with alarming frequency, so I’ll probably be hit by lightening as I stand on the Pont du Gard even if I do manage to get over there.

Still I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself as long as I can hang on to my umbrella.

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Much as in other countries, the choice of schools in France occupies a great deal of time and effort. It is currently occupying our household although I think we are over the worst of it now!

Broadly speaking, primary school (ages 4 - 11) and college (11 - 14 years old) are not a big issue, because most children simply go the school nearest them. There are exceptions - international schools and private schools among them - but these affect a very small number of children. College finishes with the ‘brevet’ exam. The final score in the brevet includes results of work during the year and also the results in the final exams.

The only subjects currently examined in the final brevet exams are French, Geography / History, and Maths (so English, although taught in all schools, is not examined).

The brevet qualification is then followed by three years at a lycée, which leads to the baccalauréat - usually referred to simply as the ‘bac’. (This is broadly equivalent to A’levels in the UK or a high school diploma in the US). The bac is less standardised than the brevet and students can opt for a general, technological or professional bac, or options more focussed on particular trades.

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