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Holidays

Use our Travel forum for recommendations on everything from day trips to the best family-friendly holiday destinations.

French villa companies

50 replies

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 10:42

Can anyone recommend a really good company? Am looking to avoid last year's last minute horror of trying to find anything at all possible on various dubious internet sites.

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Marina · 10/03/2006 11:19

Houlgate, Dives and Cabourg all rather lovely. Top scenery inland too - the ravishing Pays d'Auge.

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 11:19

Urk, had completely forgotten about bird flu! may be holidaying in blackpool after all.

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Marina · 10/03/2006 11:20

Air conditioning never needed north of the Loire IME!
Thermal combies, yes...

Marina · 10/03/2006 11:21

It has put us off risking booking in at our beloved free-range chicken ferme auberge actually. Daft I know but I am really concerned about their business. Lovely, lovely place near Boulogne. I think ks lunched there on our say-so in fact :)

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 11:25

Will look into all of those thanks Marina, but like you will try and avoid anywhere with a big chicken population. My DSes are sadly frightened of chickens anyway...

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Marina · 10/03/2006 11:34

Cooked fermiere style with locally grown veg and in luscious gravy they are not a bit scary Grin
Ds still raves about their food.

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 11:37

If I could get mine over their fear of vegetables...

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Marina · 10/03/2006 11:39

Ds has a grape phobia which renders him on the verge of slapworthy. Will watch daleks threatening the entire human race with equanimity and then start shrieking if dd brings her bowl of froots anywhere near him...

canadianmum · 10/03/2006 11:42

We have been to France a couple of times with:

\link{http://www.vfbholidays.co.uk/\VFB holidays}

and they were really good and quite reasonably priced.

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 11:43

DS2 is phobic about salad, even the word freaks him out. Made a beautiful fruit salad the other day and he ran screaming from the room. Next time will rebrand it as fruit cocktail..

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lummox · 10/03/2006 13:09

kp you have spent quite long periods at Hardelot with a small baby and a walker.

krabbiepatty · 10/03/2006 13:18

Ah, so I did, how embarrassing and it was nice too, no wonder it sounded familiar...

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Marina · 10/03/2006 19:28

ha ha thank heavens she has you to check up on her lummox Grin

Stilltrue · 10/03/2006 19:35

Private Properties Abroad are excellent. I'm not good at links but you can google for contact details. Very personal service and lovely properties. We're semi regular bookers.

lummox · 11/03/2006 09:14

well quite Grin

quick recap for the very pregnant:

Wimereux (my tip for the top). One really good restaurant, lots of OK ones. Long sandy beach with hard sand easy to walk on. OK shops - a few mum-friendly ones to poddle round (one particularly nice one with lots of little versions of those colourful cows that someone put all over London a few years back). Groovy Pas de Calais activities like a cowboy day where everyone dressed in slightly rubbish cowboy costumes and somebody found a horse to put in the little square bit. Only slight downside is it can get a bit crowded. But that is only PdC crowded. Even in the height of August it is empty enough to be a pleasure.

Le Touquet - you remember surely?

Hardelot - another good hard sand beach. Very long, quite empty. A little bleak for my taste - quite good dunes though. One parade of shops, nothing very mum friendly though.

St Cecile - same as Hardelot but a bit jollier.

Don't think I could stay for a whole week in either tbh (although both are only about twenty/thirty minutes from us and we've got a big garden with a climbing frame).

Merlimont - we've only just found this. It is a bit north of Berck. Seems nice. Bit bigger than Hardelot or St Cecile. Nice beach with toddler and buggy friendly sand. Haven't really explored it enough to know whether it would be nice to stay in for long.

There will be a short test on this next week.

thirtysomething · 11/03/2006 09:19

with all your criteria I would try Languedoc Roussillon as it's very sunny, a lot cheaper than the cote d'azur, a lot of gites and villas have pools, it's very pretty, relatively unspoilt and there are loads of places within half an hour of a beach. The area around Perpignan or between Narbonne and Carcassonne is also full of pretty villages and lots of gites with pool although some are a bit further inland. www.le-guide.com has quite a lot of good properties around there as does www.abritel.fr (think they have an english link too) and www.homelidays.fr. Happy hunting!

Marina · 12/03/2006 19:20

lummox, vous etiez auparavant LeTech je parie!

Can I once again pick your brains...we want an arriere-pays destination for a week in June (beach holiday in August). If you are LeTech, which are the nice villages in the Canche-Authie again? The Routard seems to like the Crequoise valley...Md'A Grin

keziah · 12/03/2006 19:47

how about scott dunn? I was looking at their villa holidays (wistfully!) and they have some villas on a site near the sea. Or Chez nous for private house rentals.

lummox · 12/03/2006 20:23

Am married to letech (he's not a guy with too much time on his hands - he does a little bit of techie stuff for MN).

We are in the Vallee de la Course which runs from Desvres to Montreuil. There are a lot of lovely villages here. What sort of thing are you looking for?

There's a fairly jolly seeming gite in our village (bit identifying, so give me a mail if you would like the name).

Good to get a reply - my "does anyone live in Northern France" thread has died a death. I can't always rely on krabbiepatty.

Marina · 12/03/2006 20:36

lummox, I'll mail you, thanks! prob tomorrow now.

Marina · 15/03/2006 09:17

Update for you lummox - we have been lured east to the Avesnois by the bigger availability of gites de charme Blush
Also quite curious to explore that part of France, never been before.
But are hoping for Torcy or maybe Woignarue near Cayeux for les grandes vacances next year...

ks · 04/04/2006 22:35

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ks · 04/04/2006 22:51

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JanH · 04/04/2006 23:30

Marina has used them at least once (on the recommendation of moi who hasn't used them at all Blush) and thinks they are fab, ks.

HTH.

mwaah.

ks · 05/04/2006 14:13

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