July is upon us and it’s nearly time to start packing for the car for your annual fortnight in the sun (I’m assuming you are coming to France!) so our friends at Buggs Car Hire suggested we think about what people should bring with them to be sure their trip isn’t a complete disaster.
If you are flying to France with Ryanair you don’t have much choice what to bring, since even a can opener and a jar of marmite will take you far over the allowed weight limit, but if you are travelling by car you have some tough decisions to make about what you should try and squeeze in.
I’d love to know what people do bring to France with them, the little things that they think they can’t live without when they get here. Firstly so we could be better equipped in our own gites, and second because I’m very nosy and like to make fun of other people’s little foibles, as if I don’t have plenty of my own.
For example, when I go away myself and stay in ‘French-style’ accommodation I always end up buying a mug, since drinking five very small cups of tea just isn’t the same as one big mugful.
Everyone has their very own peculiarities and its hard to predict what these are, and I’m guessing it would be a bit rude of me to wait until people staying in our gites go to the market and then search their belongings for knife sharpeners, packs of cards, illuminated key-rings and other useful knick-knacks.
So I’ve been trying to come up with a list of things that you might like to either bring with you, or check whether your gite already has them. Here’s my top 5 so far:
1) converter plugs – if you arrive in rural France and Johnny can’t charge his ipod all week it might ruin his holiday. And yours shortly after.
2) plug-in mosquito killers
3) umbrellas – no one brings them on a summer holiday but if it rains they can be quite useful. Otherwise we suggest you dive into the pool and wait for it to stop.
4) ipod docking station
5) torches – the kind of thing that always goes missing if you supply them in a holiday rental but useful if you are walking home in the pitch black after a night at the evening market. City folk sometimes forget just how dark the countryside can be.
Are there other little things that you think are vital but nobody remembers? Let me know now and perhaps I can get them in the gites before high season…
When traveling by car always bring the spare key, if you loose your key the costs and inconvenience can be huge. Keep it somewhere safe, (not in the car glove box), with your passports is always a good idea.
Likewise a spare pair of spectacles, for those of us that rely on them to do anything. The other thing I always take is my own special pillow wherever we go, even staying in a mountain hut, it goes in my rucksack, 100% down so it doesn’t weigh much. If we rent a cottage in England we always take a coffee filter cone and filters as there isn’t always the equipment supplied to make fresh coffee. Earplugs are often useful, especially if holidaying with friends with different sleeping schedules. I have ordered 20 adapter plugs from ebay uk for the next influx of visitors here in France, last summer lots of them disappeared, inadvertently taken home by guests with their laptops, chargers etc
We bring our own tea, tea pot and strainer. We like loose tea from single estates from the sub continent.If its a hard water area ie chalk or limestone then we would bring our water filter or buy bottled water. You cannot make good tea with hard water.We always bring our own bone china tea cups unlike Boris we cannot stand drinking from mugs, unless we are working in the garden. French English dictionary , far more use than a phrase book.English marmalade made by Wilkins of Tiptree by far the best you can buy.Montgomery Cheddar cheese and and Colston Bassett Stilton.A tin or 2 of Heinz baked beans if we are realy home sick. The list is endless as we never travel by public transport including air travel so it all fits in the car. We miss so much from home we avoid holidays at all costs unless one of the children talks us into it.
However I would always pick France if I had to holiday as the life style is spot on. I remember once we were staying at Chinon buying wine. We arrived at a cafe/bistro on the square at just after 10 am. and left at 3 having had morning coffee, lunch and afternoot tea chatting to a French couple from Paris who we had never met before. ( They visit us every year now for 12 years) You would not believe what they take back. )
Travel Scrabble plus huge dictionary to arbitrate, my pillow, kitchen stuff (like my knives, sieve that copes with rice and pasta and I’ve often taken my nest of saucepans & lids) and a more than adequate supply of the drugs that Him Indoors has to take. We had to buy a toaster in one gite and left it, but it was there when we came back for the second and third years. We always travel by car. As glassware is so cheap these days I can not understand why there is often only mismatched and small glasses.
As a gite owner, I was surprised that this weekend’s guests brought their own loungers when we supply six of them!.. we also supply, a picnic basket, cool box and blanket, a couple of picnic chairs, fly swat and spray, just about everything to make it home from home… the only thing I have ever been asked for are more cake tins (I had included a loaf tin) as one guest liked to bake a cake every day for ‘my husband and son’!!
Wow, lots of great suggestions about what people should bring and what we should start providing. Picnic basket and cool box sound lke a great idea I never thought of, likewise adapter plugs (although 20 sounds a lot Cathy – are your guests selling them or do you have lots of properties?)
Johnny, you’d be disappointed by our ‘welcome pack’ which includes various local specialities plus coffee, milk, etc and a bottle of wine but none of your suggested favourites – perhaps we should forget all that and supply things that would stop people feeling homesick? Might be a challenge though, given the variety of places people come from – Sweden this week, US last week, Belgium next week…
Curious note: since our welcome pack contains things people didn’t ask for or expect some leave the whole thing untouched, perhaps for fear we will give them a bill at the end of the week for ‘products enjoyed’. We don’t!
I actually prefere to bring as much of my own “stuff” as possible. The most impportant things to me are cleanliness, a good proper bed, and a true description of what to expect.I always bring my own cool box does not everyone. My list is not what I expect to find but some of what I bring, as I know I will never find it.If I am staying in a propery owned by a Brit I always ask if I can bring them anything. One chap wanted a Melton Mowbray pork pie. I took him the largest one i coild find, and he has been a friend for life.
The most popular request is for bacon.
It’s a bit sad that one can find most things that used to be thought uniquely British throughout France now, it makes going to England less special and I have to wrack my brains when guests offer to bring things,a pork pie is definitely a good idea..they don’t have those on the British shelves in Intermarche. I haven’t seen Cadbury’s Dairy milk chocolate either. and no, I don’t have a gite, just a big loft space and barn, now turned into dorms, I have just laid out & made up 12 beds/ mattresses on the floors for my student children & their friends arriving this weekend. Tour de France comes nearby next week!
You really need just the one adapter plus an English multi socket thing (6 socket) so you can charge lots of things at the same time.