Foreign Perspectives

I’m hoping to rope people into writing articles for the Whole Earth Guide in exchange for a link to their own website (or just for the fame that it’ll bring if they don’t have a website).

Anyway, my first volunteer has produced a truly excellent article on Hawaii which puts my humble effort on London to shame.

Still, ’tis early days and I will be gradually upping the ante with the quality of articles that are planned for the coming winter.

If you’d like to contribute to this effort, you can add your contribution here (select “Whole Earth Guide” as the property type and don’t worry about the talk of charging etc.).

We’re about set to choose our next car and aren’t too sure what to get at the moment.

In theory, we’d like to get another Suzuki Alto as it was a brilliant little car with getting on for 70 mpg but they don’t make them anymore so that’s not an option. So, we looked at the next model up which is the Wagon R but I’m not too keen on that one. Their Ignis is a baby 4×4 which looks interesting and would let us go up to the ski resorts this winter plus we’d not need to use the tailer all the time as we did with the Alto. On the diesel model the mpg isn’t too bad either at around the 50mpg mark.

We were also looking at the Chevrolet Matiz but it seems a bit tiny and I suspect that when they say it’s a five seater they mean three kids in the back rather than three adults. Still in the running, but we’d need the trailer all the time with it and, until very recently, the Matiz range didn’t have type approval for trailers so we might not be able to get a tow bar fitted.

We’re still looking though… ideas welcome… ideally what we need is a four door, five seater car with a large luggage capacity and very economical on the petrol/diesel. Preferably 4wd but not necessarily so. Oh, and cheapish but reliable.

Actually, it’s not the last week of the holidays but the French don’t go on holiday in the last week so it’s the last week that they are on holiday.

Traffic isn’t quite the word we’re looking for either, as in many places the motorways are pretty much carparks rather than places where traffic actually moves. Many people think that they can avoid the snarlups by simply leaving the motorway when the traffic gets too heavy but, as you can see, a LOT of people think the same thing so you can look forward to tailbacks at every motorway exit.

But you’re thinking “ah, I’ll use my in car navigator and avoid the queues”. Well, no, that doesn’t work either as when the price of Tom Tom and the like dropped last year, loads of people bought them and you’ll see massive tail-backs on the recommended routes. They’re actually worse than the motorways as the navigation units tend to direct you along B roads which elsewhere would be fine but in France these are often quite windy roads and, in many cases, they’re just not up to coping with the traffic volume that the navigation units are now directing down them.

Your best plan is to find somewhere nice for today and tomorrow and stay there. Not only will this avoid needless aggravation on the roads but you’ll also miss out on the incredibly aggressive driving that this generates and indeed the corresponding jump in road accidents.

Last year we thought the bookings were pretty late – just a few days ahead in many cases – but it’s much, much worse this year. In fact it’s increasingly common that people will book and come not only the same day but even as little as a few hours later.

Now, I can understand people booking in the morning and arriving later that day. After all, peoples’ plans change. But whereas in years gone by you’d have had driveby bookings in fairly large numbers at times, nowadays it seems as though that driveby market has moved online.

That means that we in turn need to tighten up our systems as we used to assume that the bookings for the day were in when we checked our e-mail in the mornings but it’s no longer unknown that we’ll get someone turn up after 10pm with a booking form that we’ve not yet seen because we’ve not picked up our e-mail since teatime.

I’m sure too that it can be a little confusing when a driveby does knock at the door and you have to check the computer first to see if you still have room for them.

One of the things that make it hard to satisfy people is that often the view that two people will have of the very same room can be completely different.

For instance, yesterday one couple checked out saying that the room was dreadful, it was noisy and the bed was so bad that they didn’t get to sleep all night.

This morning, another couple checked out of the same room saying that everything was absolutely perfect.

In another room, we have a bed which we’re planning on replacing once we get ourselves sorted out with a new car yet a number of people have said that it’s the best bed they’ve ever slept in.