Foreign Perspectives

You may have seen some debate about whether a UK driving license remains legal when you’re actually living overseas.

Mine recently came up for renewal and I thought I’d have to change it for a French one. However, when I read the small print as to how they decide if you’re UK resident or not it turns out that, according to their own definition, I am actually legally UK resident despite having lived in France for three years!

That’s one of the odd things about living here. Even after living here for three years, it is still easier for me to prove that I live in the UK than that I live in France.

Much as we sometimes feel that we’re nailed to the spot over here in fact we’re planning several trips in the coming months so are starting to hunt out locations and where we might stay.

More than likely we’ll be looking for a hotel near Barcelona airport as it’s more than likely where we’ll be flying from and the HLG Sant is currently the front runner on that score as we’ll be able to park the car there for a sensible amount of money plus get the kids in free.

But, where to go? Well, first off we might be off to London for a few days at the start of September though ’tis early days for that one and we’re not even sure if we’re going so it’s a little early to get terribly specific about locations for that one.

Also on the cards is Rome but that’ll not be until mid-October at the earliest. Having said that, I quite like the idea of a B&B right beside the Vatican and the price ain’t too bad either considering the location.

Every year I send an e-mail to all the B&B and self-catering properties listed on the Our Inns websites telling the people what we’ve done with the sites during the year and the kind of improvements that we’re planning for the coming year.

Each year, I get a trickle of returned e-mails representing those properties that have been sold within the previous year. This year has been particularly sad in that almost 10% of the original people listed on the site have dropped out of the market and aren’t traceable. Now, if we charged for a listing we’d expect to have people drop out each year but the free listings that we provide just keep going.

Why do they give up on B&B (and, so far, it’s been exclusively the B&B properties)?

Well, many people come to France with rose coloured glasses courtesy of the many “moving to France” series that you get these days. In those, there are never any insurmountable problems but in real-life there are problems that you just don’t want to deal with day in day out. For instance, whilst none of the people on those series speak French (with the notable exception of Patrick & Collette of Chaos in the Castle fame), you DO need to speak French to run a B&B here (but not if you’re running a gite).

For others, it’s their first experience of dealing with paying guests on a regular basis and it’s just not their thing. Again, with rose-tinted glasses it might seem an idyillic lifestyle but in reality it’s pretty hard work.

Then there’s those that have never run a business before let alone one in France and don’t appreciate how much money is required to get a place fully operational. Others haven’t considered pricing. For instance, we’ve just heard of one more upcoming dropout who are packing it in because they were constantly full and it was just too much work yet they’re in a property which they could easily have charged almost twice as much and still been full but been able to employ someone.

Finally, some people who think they’re really committed francophiles, find that they just can’t stick life in France. Yes, it can seem the perfect lifestyle whilst on holiday but that very laid-back aspect of it which seems initially very appealing can become an annoyance when you want to get things done.

So, every year whilst we get a flow of new properties coming onto the sites we know that we’ll also see a trickle of the existing properties departing.

Whilst free B&B and vacation rental sites come and go, now there’s a new innovation in this market: a site that pays you!

The Our Inns family of sites which lists B&Bs in Europe and self-catering vacation rentals worldwide now pays £1 per new property that you recommend which subsequently lists with them. Once you’re signed up with them yourself (free), you can recommend further B&B or hotel or self-catering properties and get paid £1 (or 1.50‚€ or $2) for each one. All that’s required to collect on these is to quote a simple link on your website or e-mail, or even on a postcard.

Although introduced on a trial basis, it’s expected that these payments will continue indefinitely.

All payments will be via paypal but even that’s a free signup.

Planning for Belfast’s City Hall began, naturally enough, in 1888 when it was awarded the status of city by Queen Victoria (hence the relatively large number of things in the city named after her, of course) with building competed in 1906.

The city centre location makes the grounds a very popular area for lunch in the Summer months and they’re used as the venue for the Christmas markets and various concerts.

Although there are regular free tours of the building during the week, these aren’t terribly well promoted at the moment so many people miss the impressive Victorian architecture, stained glass windows and paintings which are certainly worth the 40 minutes or so that they take.