Recent Posts

We've just changed to Net Plus with Orange, having been paying them 56 euros a month for the last couple of years. It now costs us 37 euros for virtually the same service except we no longer have a landline. If the Livebox goes down, we always have our mobiles.

You could start by looking at this site http://www.degrouptest.com/. Just pop your French landline number in and it will give you lots of options.

I've always had broadband with Orange. True, you do have about 40 Euro's a month to pay plus your FT line rental. I do get free calls though and up to now the service has been very good. I could have TV as well, but as the connection is slow it's impossible to access TV on demand. Orange do supply a satellite decoder as the broadband speed is slow, but the main drawback to this is that in order to work it must be connected via an ethernet cable to the Livebox. Needless to say, I haven't bothered with this. There are other companies desperate to get you to either change or sign up as I know by the amount of cold calling I'm getting.

I'm curious to know how all of a sudden your village has broadband? Have they renewed cables and shortened the distance from the exchange? By the way, if your line distance is more than about 7km from the exchange I think it won't support broadband. I'm just over 6km and my speed is just about 1MB.

Pete

I'd like to pick the collective brains of site members, please.

We can finally get broadband in our village, so wondered which was the cheapest way to access it, given that our house is a holiday home, not a permanent residence. We don't have a TV there, and don't want one, so some of the packages just aren't worth looking at. We're hoping that someone else has been in a similar position, and will share their experience with us.

At the moment, we spend about 8 weeks in France over the year, but may spend more if we have reasonable internet access, so can work from there as well. Should we look at a monthly contract, given that we'll be paying for a lot of time when we aren't there, or look at alternative methods?

Help, please!

 

You also get a £10 bonus when somebody books as a guest using your club number, so you can easily cover the membership cost over a year if you get a lot of visitors.

I too am rather at a loss how people get the claimed savings with LD Lines. They must book up well in advance. I generally can't be certain of travel dates until a few days before, and often find LD Lines is considerably more expensive than the equivalent BF service for the required dates - sometimes they offer lower fares on alternative days. Worst was once last year when LD quoted me more as a foot passenger (even using the alternative dates option) than BF wanted to take the car.

Even in the days of Speedferries, we found that BF was often cheaper, because of the tolls, fuel etc. I know that some people use LD Lines, but I just don't seem to be able to find their low cost cossings - they always work out more expensive than BF when we want to cross.

A recent discovery on the Normandie is Magic Rod, he is something of a life saver! We've always gone straight to our cabin from the car, dumped our stuff, had a coffee, then returned to the cabin to read or doze - anything to keep away from all of those excited children. Now, when we bring our grandsons over (twins aged 5 and their brother, 3) we can't do that, and it has been a real culture shock. However, Magic Rod and his balloons help the journey to pass more quickly, and the boys absolutely love the crossing, there is so much to do.

Until BF decides to do the decent thing, and sedate all passengers under the age of 25 for the whole of the journey, Magic Rod gets our vote.

Just got my renewal notice through today .  The annual charge for a Member plus an Associate Member has gone up £10 to £90 pa (another one of our expenses that has gone up more than 10% this year) .  However, I realised something that I've been overlooking for years which is that £30 of this cost is for the Associate Member.  As we now always travel together its been an easy way of cutting the cost of annual membership for us.
I remain a fan of BF because they provide what is a generally a reliable, comfortable and clean cross Channel service.  I realise that when compared with other ferry services they are more expensive, although I suspect not everyone fully takes account of extra toll charges and fuel costs when calculating costs. 
Also, my impression when travelling with other carriers, particularly over the shorter routes, is that their standards have dropped markedly over recent years, particularly when it comes to comfort and cleanliness.  So, I'll continue to pay the extra.   

I dont know why you don't scotchguard him, I'm sure it would help.

I have a large goat's head as you probably remember, and apart from it getting a little dusty, it has not  deteriorated in the 10 years I've had it. I've also recently acquired a stag's head and although it's missing an eye(which I can replace via the internet), it's in pretty good shape and anyway I think a bit of moth eaten looks good.

Those of you who know me will recall that I had an unfortunate experience with a wild boar some years ago. At the vide-greniers in Villaines last Saturday I was delighted to find a fairly recent stuffed, mounted boars head, in excellent condition. We've called him Boris.

My query is - how do I keep him looking pristine? So many of the ones I've seen look moth eaten and battered, and I don't want Boris to go the same way. If he was a pair of shoes I'd Scotchguard him. Is there a stuffed head equivalent?

I saw the Who at the Blue Moon club in Cheltenham, just a few years ago. They came in between Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd.

The club had a strict over-18s only policy, so if anyone ever tells my mother, I'll deny it!

Hello Chris, I hope you're well. Love to catch up with you some time.

It appears to be running normally now, but there were problems with loading and unloading. The ship about 12 years old, and was built as a freight ferry (so not too much in terms of passenger facilities). She previously ran under the names of T Rex and Dawn Merchant, with Norfolk Lines among other operators, and is a sister ship to the Norman Bridge.