The rentrée – return to school after the holidays – takes on a significance in France that it doesn’t have in the UK, or perhaps elsewhere, so I thought I’d give a quick run-down of what it’s all about.

It’s always a stressful time when the summer holidays come to an end – not for me of course, since I have an unnatural ability to ignore everything that goes on around me - but for Mrs B and the girls. The panic starts a few days before school restarts, when long lists of obligatory stationery and books are suddenly produced from school bags that have been gathering dust for the last two months. 

The list of requirements can run to two or three pages, with hysteria setting in if a single item isn’t exactly as specified. Apparently turning up with a 48 page writing book, when it is supposed to have 96 pages, can have consequences you (and I) can’t begin to imagine.

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Thought I’d offer some slightly more constructive advice than usual today, for anyone looking to make money from home with their favourite hobby or interest. And it’s not me offering to pay so you don’t need to worry about bouncing cheques.

There are now apparently well over 150 million websites on the internet, the vast majority of which are a load of old rubbish, but that still leaves a lot that are active and interesting sites. Approximately 100,000 – 500,000 would be a reasonable estimate.

One of the big challenges for website owners is keeping their sites up to date with interesting features and content – and a site that never changes or gets updated sooner or later ends up in googles great internet dustbin, never to be seen again.

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Today was one of the few days in the year that I look forward to and dread at the same time – the day when we (myself and the local chap I usually cycle with) go out for a bike ride with the regional cycling group. It’s all very nice thinking you’re doing a great job on your own, but it doesn’t mean much if you can’t keep up with anyone else.

So today was the big day that we were to find out. Each year a route is planned from one of the local towns that us mere mortals can attend, without the usual need for multiple copies of a doctor’s certificate.

If you go along to one of these group rides yourself (most towns hold them), the most important thing is not to have a bike that looks more expensive than anyone else’s. If you have a flashy bike and do well, everyone will think (or at least claim) it was because of the bike. So if you usually ride around on the latest Trek Madone carbon fibre model you need to leave it at home and hire something decrepit from the local bike hire shop. Preferably with a shopping basket on the front.

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Everyone tells me that discussion forums are nothing but trouble – forum members are rude to each other; spammers sign up just to tell of the delights of via*ra;  everyone thinks they know better than everyone else; and worst of all – there is no possibility of ever making a penny from a forum despite the time and effort they take.

So what to do? Ignore public opinion!

france this way have taken a bold step into the unknown, and added a shiny new France forum. At the same time I also added a ‘comments and questions’ box to most of the pages in the ‘main’ site so that people can, well, ask questions or leave comments.

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Occasional storms aside, it has been very hot and sunny down here for a very long time. This is good for holidaymakers, who expect nothing less, and less good for the garden, as many plants have long since abandoned all hope of rain and chosen instead to shrivel away and wait for winter.

While the holiday makers are bounding around outside in the sunshine and hopping in and out of the pool,  I tend to sit inside with an industrial fan about 50 centimetres away from my face and turned on at full power. It does mean my hair looks a bit startling when someone knocks on the door wanting to borrow a cup of sugar  but otherwise it works quite well.

Problem is, I do like to ride my bike every day – and by the time I’ve finished my ‘urgent tasks’ for the day, the temperature is well into the 30’s (around 90 degrees if you like ‘old money’ temperatures). So every day I put myself through the same torment – I set off cycling through the French countryside at about 2pm, full of energy and well prepared with two bottles of cold water.

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Eymet is a very pleasant bastide town near Bergerac, worth a visit if you are in the region to explore the 13th century arcaded houses around the main square and to amble along the river.

It’s not exceptional compared with other similar towns in the Dordogne department, which has many stunning medieval towns and villages, but somehow the town has attracted a reputation that means that Eymet has a constant stream of journalists and reporters, and a fame that exceeds its size and importance – it is known as being the town full of English.

Not unfairly perhaps, because the town does have a lot of English families, along with an English cricket club, an English tea-shop…

If a UK newspaper wants a story about expat invasions, happy expats, miserable expats, rising house prices in France, falling house prices in France, or anything else that concerns the expat community they send a couple of reporters off to Eymet.

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From 1 July 2009 the VAT rate on restaurant meals was reduced in France from 19.6% to 5.5%, in an effort to encourage us to all eat out more and bring prosperity to the catering industry.

Many restaurants haven’t actually passed on the reduction to their customers, and it is very doubtful whether we will all rush out to restaurants more often anyway – how many people really think ‘Ah, good, the fixed price menu is now 22 euros instead of 25, let’s start going out more often…? ‘

But anyway, that’s the big idea – and apparently it will cost the French government two billion euros a year. Oops, little slip there, it should read ‘will cost the French taxpayer two billion euros a year’. A subtle difference, but I think you will agree it’s an important one.

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I received an email a couple of days ago, the second of its type I have received in the last week. :

Hi, I wonder if you can help. Family friends are currently in France and are extremely disappointed in the gite they have currently booked and do not wish to stay until the end of the week as currently planned.
I just wanted to check if you had last minute availability (starting tomorrow) for 2 adults and 2 children – they are flexible on the area – as long as they can find somewhere.
Many thanks for your help.

A little while ago I posted about ‘Does Your Villa Exist‘ but that is really very unusual. A much more common problem is the one above – where you turn up at your ‘attractive cottage in the countryside’ and find that it is quite horrible, for a bunch of reasons that usually include cleanliness, location or wildlife.

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We get a lot of ‘farmers protest’ type billboards along the sides of the road near us, mostly to do with the fact that supermarkets sell the farm produce for a price that is way in excess of the price the farmers receive. OK so French farmers aren’t top of the list for the public sympathy vote, but I can see their point.

One of the more common placards at the moment reads ‘Le lait c’est la vie, le produire c’est mourir’ (’Milk is for life, producing it is is to die’ _-a poor translation but you get the idea). The dairy farmers have seen the price they are paid for their milk drop dramatically this year (the price is set by Brussels) and are losing money fast.

What can they do?

Some local farmers here in south-west France are now taking the enterprising step of selling their milk directly to the public and apparently they are doing a very brisk trade with demand exceeding all expectations.

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This is part 3 in a series describing how to create your own website – see Gite websites for others.

We have seen how to create the world’s most simple (and least interesting) website, now we need to improve it – firstly by making the page interesting and second by adding links to more pages.

Making the page interesting

There are two aspects to this: the content of the page (description of your business, pictures etc) and appearance. These two aspects should be seen as separate processes, and this week we are only looking at content – I’m afraid you have to wait for the next tutorial before it starts to look nice!

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In Provence there are restrictions on access to substantial parts of the countryside during the summer months because of the fire risk, and nowhere more so than in the forested regions around Marseille.

The tourist offices in the region hand out leaflets offering good advice – such as ‘don’t park your car in long dry grass’, and ‘anyone caught smoking in a restricted zone will be publicly guillotined’.

Despite the precautions, about 15,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of forest gets destroyed each year by one of the 3,000 fires in the region! (Note: if you are a heavy smoker planning to camp out in Provence next week read some advice about avoiding forest fires before you get the barbecue out.)

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This is part 2 in a series describing how to create your own website – see Gite websites for others.

Getting everything set up ready

OK you’ve spent your hard-earned money and got a decent website name – or perhaps you already had one. You’ve also got your hosting sorted out,  so now you’re all gung-ho to get a website up and running. Good. Let’s get the tools in place.

FTP

Before we start we need to look at something callled FTP (file transfer protocol). This is how you are going to get files from your computer onto the internet – FTP is used to transfer files between your own PC and your website.

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A lot of you will have heard of the recent scandal in Spain where someone had advertised villas for holiday rental which didn’t really exist. They took the bookings on the non-existent properties then disappeared with the money.

This makes everyone nervous – people booking vacation rentals, for obvious reasons, but also owners because if the public become nervous about booking with private owners then the number of bookings they receive could be at risk.

It’s important not to over-exaggerate the problem, since it represents only a tiny minority of villas, but it is a good idea to be extra vigilant before handing across hundreds or thousands of pounds to a stranger. It’s hard to be 100% sure in any online transaction – but there are some things you can do to gain some extra comfort. Here are some suggestions:

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I’ve avoided talking about the Tour de France this week, because I know that 99% of readers will go off and have a nice cup of tea instead, but today there is an experiment in the competition that is interesting even if you couldn’t care less about the race itself, so I’m going to tell you about it anyway…

The cyclists in the race all use earphones to keep in contact with their support cars. They say it is so they are warned of impending danger, while everyone really knows it is so that their team captains can give them clues about tactics. For example if a break-away group is five minutes ahead and there is only 25 kilometres left to go, it’s time to speed up a bit…but if you don’t know how far ahead they are, you don’t know what to do.

(It’s actually quite complicated because of the way the race uses aggregate times – so a rider likes to know if someone five minutes ahead of him today is going to overtake him in the overall positions etc. – i.e. do they care if they catch up or not.)

Is this use of radios cheating? Life saving? Life threatening? Completely uninteresting? Everyone has a different opinion. Whatever the risks and benefits, today’s stage of the race is the first in more than a decade in which headphones have been banned.

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This is part 1 in a series describing how to create your own website – see Gite websites for others.

I’m often asked if I can make websites for people, but unfortunately I never have the time, so I thought instead I would explain how to create your own gite website (or any other website). I won’t bother to explain your need for a business website, that’s probably self-evident nowadays.

There are plenty of people who will happily deprive you of your hard earned cash to produce a website for you. The main things that put people off from making their own websites are (1) cost and (2) technical challenges. Well, you can do it yourself, often just as well as the professionals, and you’ll hardly need to get your wallet out. And you’ll get more satisfaction and more control.

This is the first of a series of entries, one to be released each week for the next few weeks, that has a very clear goal – to enable anyone to make their own website, at minimal cost. Although the example I will use is a gite / holiday rental website the exact same principles apply to any business, so whatever your need for a website you will hopefully find it useful.

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