People’s life experiences make so much difference. My MIL had never ever used her passport, and refused even to visit us here as the idea was too scary. Whereas it was only my sisters who stopped my Mum jumping into our removal lorry (so to speak). Her last solo voyage was walking in portugal at 85, and she carried on travelling until she was 93.
So you know your MIL best!
As for gîtes, it really depends what you want out of it. We have one, and find it not too much work now it’s up and running and largely enjoyable, apart from the ironing. We’ve made a couple of friends through it too. But we are happy with about 20 or so weeks a year rental, and target the french family market as we know what makes them happy. We don’t bother with bookings.com or airbnb or those sorts of things. Our basic income is sufficient, so what the gîte brings in is nice to have but not essential so we are pretty relaxed about it. If the income was critical to one’s livelihood then it could feel very different.
Getting the gîte building renovated and up and running was another story. So unless this is something that excites you I would look for a ready made business,
I had to laugh! Yes, the ironing Jane would be my worst chore…always has been!
I am a ‘do-er’ and have always enjoyed setting up something new. I’m fairly savvy with social media and have built a couple of business websites. I also had a very busy and successful coffee shop for a few years and that was hard work! So I’m hoping running a couple of gites won’t be anything like as hard (apart from the ironing! (and the cleaning)
A ready-made business would be good though, ready to launch straight in with. So again, any tips/advice, learned along the way, that you’d be willing to share, would be most helpful.
I agree , go for it you can’t worry about what might happen. My mum worried about what would happen to my inheritance if she was to need residential care when she got old. She died at 61 so the what ifs were for nothing
2 Likes
I really don’t know anything about the Charante, and what the gîte market might be like round there. However one suggestion would be look at towns that have a thermal cure station (cure thermale) as they have doctors! I was stunned when I went on my first cure that the tiny town had 19 doctors - most aren’t GPs - but it still seemed that the town had better services than normal because of the thermal station. And also a steady stream of french curistes looking for 3 week accommodation from feb to november, although usually budget prices. We go in early spring or autumn because during the season we are busy with our own gîte, and the gîtes we book are pleased that the thermal station helps them extend their season.
Sites like this will give you an idea of what sort of things are available.
We decided to keep to one gîte (we also have a 1 bed flat let on an annual basis) as we wanted to make sure we could do the changeovers easily. Cleaning and preparing a one 3 bed house and garden between 10.30am and 4pm on a Saturday is manageable - doing two of them is no fun! But then we are not dependant on the income, our gîte is more that we are used to working so need something that allows us to pretend that we haven’t really stopped! And we get pleasure from ensuring people have a great holiday.
1 Like
I had a relative go to A&E in Vichy ,a spa town ,and the doctor had good English. One of the nurses was trying to learn other languages and so decided to practice on Jon. Unfortunately his English appeared to come from his mates dodgy porn videos. Poor Jon already in agony with broken ribs nearly did himself serious damage trying not to laugh
1 Like