Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Last time we left John S in the dust when we were listed as THE CHEAPEST accomodation in Perpignan.

That was Monday. Tuesday, we figured it would be at least a couple of weeks before we got any bookings from them and may as well go up to Gracay to get the pillows, soap, mail, etc. from William Gowdy. Gracay’s not an awful lot south of Paris and takes about eight hours of driving to get to so that was an overnighter.

William’s settling in pretty well and has acquired a car. He’s not got a landline yet so no internet access but he does have a mobile; if you want to call him let me know and I can pass on the number. Gracay is a nice little village; shame it’s so far from here or we’d be calling in now and again. He’s also getting his first visitor on Tuesday this week who will also be my first visitor as the whole lot of them are going camping in the south of France so will be camping in the field that I don’t know what to do with across the road. Have to see about getting the lawn mower out to tidy it up a bit for his tent.

We called in with him on the Wednesday morning and filled the trailer up with the stuff that he’d brought over. Between one thing and another we didn’t get away ’til almost lunchtime. Incidently, the road down (the A75) is brilliant and toll free but has one or two stretches that haven’t been completed, notably the big bridge at Millau just to the north of Beziers which you may have heard of. That road is part of the Paris-Barcelona european highway which should bring us a whole lot more visitors when it’s completed. William tells me that it was just filled with UK registered cars yesterday which is a good sign.

The late start meant that we didn’t get to here ’til after 11pm. I generally check the mail in the morning and evening “just in case” and it was just as well I did that on the Wednesday night as we’d seven separate bookings awaiting us and one for the Thursday! It certainly looks like the Ryanair/FlyBE site is a good one to be on: up to now we had the problem that the tourists coming off the planes had already booked somewhere to stay. Since the cheap Ryanair/FlyBE flights are booked a few months ahead we figure that we’ve probably missed a heap of people who would ordinarily have stayed here but there’s nothing we can do about that. We might pick up some of them later though as all the other accomodation listed on the site seems to be fully booked right through August.

That site is quite an expensive way to book accomodation as it follows the Ryanair model ie give us your money and we’ll keep it regardless oh, and give us a couple of quid to cover our costs in taking your money. So, you need to pay a booking fee of £3 plus 10% of the accomodation price to the booking company. Since 10% of the accomodation is about £3 in our case it means they’re billing you getting on for 20% of the cost of the booking if you’re only booking the one night. However, from my perspective it seems quite good as, so far, they’ve tended to book the rooms that I wasn’t bothering to list elsewhere (ie the two non-ensuite ones) and, so far, I’ve cleaned up on the meals & airport pickups so their charge is much less than 10% of my income from the bookings. The only downside is that their reservations are “guaranteed” which means that if we get a booking from them we have to honour it which in turn means that we need to keep our reservation calendar up to date all the time. We can still take drivebys though as they’ve set us up as needing 24 hours notice of a reservation so if a room is empty tonight we know we can let people have it.

To further complicate our lives, we’ve registered on another guaranteed booking site today. Just in case we’d get double bookings, we’ve had to reduce the number of rooms a bit but I figure that two sites like that is about the limit that we could juggle. As it is, we can’t put the gite on the second site as we’ve only one of them although it’s pretty much booked up throughout August now anyway.

Oh, and then there’s the small matter of our own direct reservations! We’re only taking guaranteed ones for those too now (via Paypal, as suggested by JW) and have had our first couple of those for August. We’ve also had our first couple of “no shows” in the last week as a result of which, we’re going to start taking deposits from people who call in to make a booking too and will be checking with the bank as to how we go about making the French equivalent of “customer not present” transactions for the telephone reservations.

As you’ve probably gathered, I spend a fair chunk of time finding ways of getting this place listed, preferably free (though I have paid £30 for the greatbedandbreakfast.com site which I’ve already recouped in bookings from it). I’m also branching out a bit in other areas so, all being well, we will be able to accept American Express cards fairly soon and the restaurant will be becoming a Ticket Restaurant and taking “Déjeuner Cheques” (the French equivalent of Luncheon Vouchers). I’m still looking round for the accomodation equivalent of LVs but, so far, have only come across “Cheques Logis”. Roger: suggestions welcome here!

A question: since France Telecom are charging me a fortune to rent the coin payphone in our lobby, I’m looking for alternatives. Any suggestions folks? And, no, removing the facility isn’t a realistic option. To give you an idea of how ridiculous it is, we have a total of less than ‚€4 in coins in it (and that’s including ‚€1 from the previous owner) yet are forking out ‚€70-odd a month to rent the thing.

Hi folks,

Here’s what we’re about to say in Chez Nous for next year:

Town/Village Mas Camps, Maury

Type of Accomodation B&B rooms for 2-4; apartment for 2 to 6.

Mas Camps offers you an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life in a selection of wine-themed rooms all with views over the surrounding mountains and vineyards. Twenty minutes from Perpignan with regular FlyBE and Ryanair flights from London, Birmingham and Southampton (with airport transfers if required); 90 minutes from Carcassonne and Girona. We are also a popular stopover to/from Spain. Satellite TV on request. Sorry, no pets.

B&B continental (‚€6) or English breakfast (‚€10); evening meals also available.

One bedroom Apartment within the mas has two double beds (an additional twin room can be included if required). Satellite TV.

For further details

Contact Arnold or Wendy

Telephone UK: 0871 919 6551; France: 04 68 29 10 77

e-mail cheznous@mascamps.com

web www.mascamps.com

Rental charges

October-March April-June July-September

B&B £28/ ‚€43 £33/‚€46 £38/‚€53

Appt £250/‚€350 £280/‚€390 £320/‚€450

Comments welcome; we need to send this off in the next day or two so you’d need to get your feedback in quickly.

Just a short note this time as we have, yet again, run into the sand with the French bureaucracy.

We thought we’d have a go at getting a social security number, child benefit and register with the health service last week.

Of course, as is always the case, the French equivalent of the DHSS is the civil service at its worst. Well, actually it wasn’t nearly so bad expected and, on the whole, fairly reasonable considering French bureaucracy in general. Anyway, courtesy of our visit to the social security folk we now have a list of documents to acquire (several of which don’t exist in the UK, of course). The UK child benefit people have been very decent to keep paying for James as indeed have the child tax people (in spite of them having been told that we’re off here). Actually, I suspect that one consequence of the career break status (ie I am still employed by NIO) means that I’m still entitled to them both. However, since the French pay more, I think I’ll have to see about getting the UK payments stopped so I can get the French ones started.

Optimistically, we went round to the health service place right afterwards. Somewhat inconveniently, it only opens in the morning which makes it rather difficult for us to get there and we’ve not managed it just yet. They’re the guys who give you a social security number and fork out for doctors bills (which, as you’d expect, are mounting up). Anyway, we’re going to give that another go next week.

Separately from that, we’re upping the ante with the advertising which if nothing else is increasing the number of hits on the website. We’ve a slight problem with the advertising as whilst, in practice, we’re a hotel restaurant, legally we’re a chambres d’hote with a restaurant. Net effect of this (and to increase the number of hits) we normally advertise in English as a hotel and in French as a chambres d’hote (in practical terms, we get almost exclusively French people via the “chambre d’hote” pages and everyone else via the “hotel” pages). However, since I came across a bunch of “bed & breakfast” sites we’re now also advertised as a bed & breakfast (eg allbedandbreakfast.com). Due to the incredibly hot weather last year there’s something of a shortage of cash amongst the locals this year but we’re planning on running an advert for the restaurant in the local paper to see how that goes. Funnily enough, the French, in spite of their gastronomic reputation, eat, almost exclusively, beef burgers with chips (so much for Wendy’s flashy dishes!).

The ADSL modem turned up last week and didn’t work. Well, of course, you’ve to send a copy of your bank details first (the RIB): just typing the whole heap in online ain’t good enough. Anyway, after the dial-up dropped down to 9.6k (which definitely isn’t usable for online banking as it times out all the time) I gave the modem another go and hey presto: I’m sitting out in the sun typing this letter to you guys courtesy of the Mas Camps wireless network. Haven’t quite sussed out how to offer it to the guests but that’s a challenge for next week. One things for sure: it beats surfing in a cloudy Belfast anyday!

Oh, nearly forgot: there’s a cheapy holiday to the Spanish coast 90 mins south of us on Teletext. My Aunt & Uncle are using that to pay us a visit next month (it’s direct from Belfast).

We’ve sort of settled into a routine now: early morning, get breakfast stuff; mid-morning work on the French degree; 11-ish to 1.30-ish have lunch; afternoons: alternate between admin/tidying up and battling with French bureaucracy.

In the evenings we were hoping to be flogging meals to the locals but money’s a bit thin on the ground ’til after the harvest in September so we’re in the process of attempting to widen out our definition of “local” which hopefully will bear fruit in due course.

On the French bureaucracy front, we finally managed to acquire our “KBIS” (ie business registration number) a few weeks ago. For some reason, which totally escapes me, the accountant reckoned that there was no great rush on that as it was “in the works”: so, even though I’d specifically asked for him to get it way back in February, he didn’t get off his bum ’til late April and toward the end of May we received said document (which he said in February only took 3 days to get) with a start date for the business of May 1st (which will probably cause problems in due course). Over here, you basically can’t do anything without it. To give you an idea of the implications some things that you can’t do are: have a business account (so I couldn’t cash cheques made out to Mas Camps); accept credit cards (nearly had to turn away a couple of people over that); get a social security number (can’t claim Wendy’s medical bills without that); get a card for the local cash & carry (nearly ran out of several items for the hotel over that one)… the list is endless. As I say, it escapes me why he thought there was no rush on it.

Oh, and one other “small” item: you can’t have a business phone line. Thanks to the wonders of the timing of French bureaucracy, now that I have the KBIS and have paid the two months overdue bill (of course, without the KBIS they wouldn’t take the money from me), they have cut me off for not paying it. Which is why it’ll be a while before this reaches you (I’m guessing at minimum a week but it could be more).

He’s also of the opinion that I don’t need the TVA number (Value Added Tax number) ’til the end of the year. This one isn’t quite so serious though it has cost me several hundred pounds so far as it means that I can’t claim any UK VAT that I pay (which mounts up quite quickly when you count the computer I’m typing this on, a load of pillows and stuff arriving late June, all the UK adverts plus a bunch of other stuff we’ve bought in Spain).

Needless to say, we’ve been actively looking for a new accountant for the last month or so.

I can see why Roger’s friend said that people have gone bust waiting for French bureaucracy!!

We’ve now had three folk applying for a job here. However, I’ve looked at some of the bureaucratic loops that need to be gone though to employ someone here and I figure that it ain’t worth the hassle unless you’re employing at least 2 or 3 (which we couldn’t justify just yet). Also had a painter call while I was out: Wendy said that he went completely round the building and had a job getting rid of him; got a call later that evening to say he’d be prepared to do it for FF50,000 (they still count in francs here) ie about £5,000 which is a whole lot of money for painting (well, it’s a whole lot of building too I suppose).

The website is coming along nicely and the regional guide page seems to feature quite highly in the Pyrenees Orientale tourism searches, in both the French & English versions. I’m currently concentrating on that as the hotel gets quite a few hits via the regional guide. Also have to see about developing the sales side: so far only one flight booked, and a couple of books & a DVD sold but that’s not too bad seeing as I didn’t really do much in that line with the site. As you know, we recently came across a little brochure on the early history (ie Roman & Templar eras) of Mas Camps so I added the first version of that onto the site the other day and I’ve added a bit of that to the main hotel page too. The general aim is do an update of the main pages every two or three weeks but in practice it’s been nearly every week for the regional page since we got here as I’ve been adding photos of the local attractions and souping up the descriptions of them (which, in turn, is upping the number of hits). Laughably, thanks to John’s assistance, I now feature as the top site when you look for “pyrenees motorbike tours” (though, so far, we’ve not had any “greasy bikers” staying)! Actually, with that spurring me on, I’m hoping to target more directly wine enthousiasts, walkers/ramblers and cyclists so if any of you have suggestions of what kind of things I’d need to write in those areas, let me know. And, no Brian, I’ve not forgotten about the golf courses: just haven’t been around the areas where they would likely to be recently.

Anyway, tasks for the rest of this week are to erect the next couple of signs, hopefully Thursday and Friday evening (it’s way too hot now to do serious work before about 7pm here: I managed to put myself out of commission with a touch of heatstroke for the last couple of days trying to), see about getting James a Carnet de Santé (health book), acquire a social security number (which is required by quite a backlog of forms that I’ve built up) and, of course, see if we can’t do something about the phone.

We’re hoping to place our first advert for the restaurant in the local paper within the next week or so which at least only needs to be in French. It’s getting to be something of a nuisance to have to write everything in both french & english: the website in particular is quite a chunk of paper if you print it out and it all needs written twice.

We were up at the mairie again on Thursday (we seem to be going there every week or two for something or other). They’ve not heard anything about Wendy’s european residence permit: we suspect that, as was the case in NI, it’s very rare (she had the only one issued in NI as far as we can tell). Our big bins are still on order (we’re running with household size wheelie bins at the moment which fill up surprisingly quickly when we’ve restaurant customers). From before the time of the previous owner we’ve been in the Fenouilledes area accomodation list but we should be appearing under the restaurant heading as well soon. Snag is, that the Fenouilledes area is in the wrong direction: by the time people get to their touristy sights, they’ve already passed us by and ideally we’d like to be in the Agly tourist area list instead (ideally, in both, of course). We had one go with the Agly people a few weeks back but have since discovered that their “welcome to Agly” sign is on our land so we’ll be returning to them in due course to have them either remove the sign or add us to their lists.

The ADSL modem has turned up but, of course, it won’t work without the phone line working so that’ll be a while. When we do get it going it will be a major, major speed improvement. At best I can get 30k here and most of the time it’s more like 12k (I even got down as low as 9k once) which is seriously slow: even retrieving the email takes ages and you can’t really open more than one window at a time (downloads are a total nonrunner).

Techies: does anyone know how I can use a GPRS mobile with infrared as my “modem” for surfing etc.? It’s coming up “no dial tone” when I connect to it via the infrared and try to use it as an ordinary modem. It’s using a French Orange Mobicarte (pay as you go) but I bought the phone separately, so perhaps I need to set something up on the GPRS end? (everything else seems fine though)

Once upon a time…

Twenty-two centuries ago, the Romans completed the conquest of Narbonne. They constructed the Roman road of Aquitaine, which led to Montl¿rrand and to the doorstep of Naurouze. Along the Mediterranean coast, they built the Domitrienne Road towards the Pyr¿n¿es Orientales and which led to the first conquest of Roussillon. Everywhere that there were strategic grounds, they established military camps, for example Ruscino between Perpignan and Canet Plage, at the same time camp and town (there are numerous relics); another example mid-way between Estagel and Maury, on the border of the RN117: Mas Camps, military camp, commanding a vast plain in the Agly Valley (relics, Roman mosaic).

From the 12th century, the Templars arrived in Roussillon, taking the side of the King of Majorca. The Roussillon Templars depended on the Province of Aragon, but they were also autonomous. At the end of the 13th century, they had in Roussillon, two large commands: Perpignan and Mas Deu, near to Vinca. They also had in Roussillon more than 120 chateaux and domains. In the Roussillon, you must also include Fenouill¿des, which as vassals depended both on the Kingdom of Majorca and the Kingdom of France. The Templars had therefore the goods in all the cantons of the Pyr¿n¿es-Orientale. Notably mentioning the castle of Prugnagnes and associated domains, the castle of Sournia and associated domains and then the ancient roman camp which was on the large plain and valley of Agly and where they had chosen to stay in a very large manor house (“maison forte”), Mas Camps.

The two large commands of Perpignan and Mas Deu, had as chiefs at the end of the 13th century and start of the 14th Guilaume d’Ollers (for Perpignan) which was also chancellor and prime minister of the King of Majorca, and Raymond of Guardia (or Saguardia) for Mas Deu, supervising one part of the Templar province.

Or in short, this place has been around for a while. We’ve also some info of the last of the Camps family who lived here (we have his WW1 medals and some other stuff).

There’s more, but as it’s getting late my translation skills got too ropey towards the end, so more anon.