How to Discover the Real France
with French Cottages Holidays
Your Guide to Organising the Best French Travel Itinerary You’ll Ever Experience
There is so much more to France than Paris!
This is Lesley and Neville’s story: two Francophiles from Australia who adore travelling in France.
Let it be your story too! Read on...
This is when I - Lesley - had a sort of epiphany!
Since we are
planning to go together, why not ask my travelling companion, and newly retired husband what he suggests?
So Neville and I started doing our research for our Grand Tour of
France. We both realised that we were beyond the idea of the standard “linear” journey starting at one point and moving on every 1 or 2 nights. Too exhausting!
It was Neville who came up with a cunning plan while cleaning out some of his old work
files. He happened upon a diagram of a networking concept called Star Topology used by his former company to design workplace computer networking systems.
Before you zone out with nerd alert narcolepsy let me explain it simply.
The network is set up with a series of hubs – with the server or “brainpower” of the computer at the hub and it sends information to individual workstations radiating out like
the spokes of a wheel.
“The hubs for our trip”, explained Neville excitedly to me, “would be logistically convenient bases we use to explore a particular region. We find an optimal hub and stay
there for a week or more while we explore that region. Then we move onto the next hub. It’s a win-win Les!”
It was lovely to see Neville so animated so I’m sure I would
have agreed to it had it been called Gobbledegook, but the concept did make perfect sense.
“But Nev”, said I, “that’s all very impressive but how are we going to select these hubs?”
“Easy peasy! We just make out our list of places we want to go to in three or four different groups and pick something in the middle of each group distance-wise as our hub. End of
story.”
I didn’t think it could be that simple but I was now so swept away by Neville’s enthusiasm I decided to see what he came up with.
There was no stopping him; he was on a roll!
“It so happens Lesley darling that I haven’t been sitting around the house these past few weeks doing nothing, I have actually been doing some research on the web and have made a list of destinations and even drawn up some maps showing where they are.
Take a look at this!”, he cried triumphantly as he unfolded an enormous map of France
splattered with red dots depicting his choices.
“That’s funny. So have I. So that’s what you were doing on your iPad at the other end of the sofa all those evenings.
I thought you were watching You Tube videos like that one about the magpie and the dog wresting each other around the Hill’s Hoist! So there I was doing the same thing at my end of the sofa.
Great minds thinking alike but not together...
I’m busting to know how your list compares with mine. Show me!”
“Not so fast honey-bunch. Where’s your map?”
“Now Neville, you know I’m no good at geography; actually I’m not even 100% sure of where France is if you want to know the truth.
But I did get a really good list together by reading all about each place that caught my eye and then I used my secret weapon.
I call it my weapon of mass instruction”
“What is this famous weapon then?”, he replied drily looking at me askance.
“Women’s intuition!”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake Les, that went out with the Ark”
“So you say, but show me your list and we’ll see.”
Anyway, to make a long story short, I laid out my list and Nev his humongous map with annotations all over it and you won’t believe what we saw next: we had chosen practically the same list of “must -sees/must-dos”!
It was creepy.
“I have to admit Lesley,” said Nev with a new look of surprised respect at my intuition-based ratings, “there’s something in your secret weapon I can’t deny. You’ve chosen really well. How long did it take you?”
“Oh about two days on and off.”
“You should patent that weapon Les. It’s taken me three weeks of painstaking research!”
I then had to confess about my secret discovery of the two “French Cottages” boys.
Their choice of hubs was so good that they had bought and set up their own fully equipped houses in
each one just for people like us. Without going into the nitty-gritty details right now, suffice to say Neville was convinced and so we put together our plan of attack, booking those of the recommended “hubby houses” that my trusty intuition told me would be right alongside practical things like how big the houses were, did they have proper kitchens, parking etc. I
won’t go into those mundane matters, but since they are important you can read the details
further down if you like. But I must say now, after the event, that every one of them surpassed our expectations and nothing we needed was missing.
We stayed in the four regions mentioned above in four different cottages, two weeks in each
one to give us time to really settle in and enjoy our little excursions.
The accommodation was
outstanding. Bryan and David give so much attention to detail it made life and changeover day
really simple. All cottages were definitely in living villages and very, very well equipped.
We could walk to everything as they were right ‘inside the walls’ so to speak. We only used
the car for day trips. We are planning a return trip sometime soon because we didn’t really
see half of what was on offer: our ‘bucket list’ only got half emptied!
I can really recommend the itinerary we put together, but of course you may have your own
ideas and variations.
To get you started I am quite happy to show you ours; here it is!
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE PACKAGES?
was my question the first time we went.
I asked Nev to check
this out (he’s the practical one) and this is what he discovered.
It all turned out to be true too!
Accommodation in your own apartment, cottage or villa (not sharing with any strangers!)
Of course we had to arrange our own Airfares, Hire Cars and Local Tours etc but our Travel Agent helped us there and the booklet we were given was really useful.
All accommodations are of an exceptionally high quality, clean, comfortable and fully equipped like a real
home with nothing lacking. They even have Australian/NZ power points with USB chargers!
They are all in the historic centres of World Class villages (the HUBS). You can wander out and find cafes,
bars, restaurants, mini supermarkets, shops, boutiques, etc within a few steps. All the basics are supplied:
condiments, dishwashing powder, clothes washing liquid, toilet paper.... Local support is there in case of any
problems. Free use of phone and internet in each property. Cental heating, air conditioning and much else.
Some of the time we were to have a hire car and I wondered about parking. Nev said this was provided either
just outside the property or else in a nearby lock-up private garage. The village where we weren’t having a car
had plenty of bus/train connections.
A beautifully printed individual directions booklet for locating and settling into each property as well as
a local tour guidebook detailing all those nearby sites we wanted to see with suggestions about day tours was
provided in our final package. And lots of other things which really made it a special time for us!
HOW I MADE THE BOOKING
Nev gave me this job.
You’re the iPAD wiz he said.
It was pretty easy!
Firstly I checked the website to see if the weeks and cottages we wanted were still free.
They were ! This is the webpage...
CHECK AVAILABLE WEEKS HERE
I then just contacted my Travel Agent and asked her to book us in as soon as possible while the weeks were
still free. She checked and they were still free (whew!) and proceeded to complete the online booking form.
But she also pointed out that I could have completed that form myself. There’s a question on the form asking
if we had been referred by a Travel Agent. You just say ‘yes’ (oui!) and put the Agent’s name and address info.
That way any commission that is due to her (or him) will be sorted without your worrying about it. Here is where the form can be found...
RESERVE YOUR WEEKS HERE
Talking of payments, we had a choice of paying a deposit then a series of instalments or paying in full.
We chose to pay in full as then there was no extra accounting fee.
We checked the cancellation policy and it all
seemed fine (they give you a full refund on weeks that are rebooked). Details were on this webpage...
TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF BOOKING
After that we received an email with a link to our own personal page with all the details of our French Cottages itinerary. Later, in our final visit to our Agent, she gave us the printed booklets with very clear and
full instructions. It all went as smooth as silk.
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759 RATHDOWNE STREET
CARLTON NORTH
VICTORIA 3054
AUSTRALIA
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Phone: +61 3 8657 4599