Let the train take the strain

I'm just back from a trip to LPO by train. A very pleasant experience. It did mean rising before dawn because I had enthusiastically booked myself onto the 05.25 departure from St Pancras, but it was worth it.

Why? Because I ate my breakfast at a Parisian street cafe, watching the morning rush hour go by. Because I sat and worked, then snoozed, in comfort whilst travelling at 250km/hr to Nantes. That's faster than my car, by the way. And because I had the satisfaction of knowing that the carbon emissions were less than a tenth of those for cars or planes.

You can travel via Lille if you choose the right connections - and there you simply change platforms from Eurostar (London, Ebbsfleet or Ashford) to the legendary French TGV Train a Grande Vitesse. But via Paris there are loads of connections and you have a relatively simple journey from the Gare du Nord to the Gare Montparnasse - just get on the right metro train and get off again after 14 stops. Or you can take a taxi of course.

At Nantes I changed to the local line all the way to St Gilles, a short taxi ride from the park. I headed off to meet the accountants, but you could take the same route for more pleasurable purposes......

French Sunday trading

The French have been getting a bit excited about Sunday trading. The nation that prides itself on its secularism has long struggled to remove from its calendar public holidays based on religious festivals. Ascension Day is being chipped away at, with some workers no longer entitled, on the grounds that the resulting national benefit will be channelled into social care.

Anyway, back to Sundays. Monsieur Sarkozy had an embarrassing moment recently when he arranged for President Obama and his wife to go shopping in Paris - on a Sunday. He had to make a few phone calls......

There's a good article about the current situation at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8139301.stm

Meanwhile, at Le Pas Opton, Sundays are really special. The shop is open for your fresh breakfast croissants, but the focus is on morning all-age worship, a massive lunchtime BBQ and picnic, then maybe a lazy afternoon by the pool or the river.

Money, money, money!

Let's face it, most of us have to make our holiday decisions with a fixed budget in mind. It's only the odd rich-lister who can just decide to head off, via limo and First Class, for a five star hotel on a sun-soaked island.

And over the last year or so, quite a few factors have converged to make a holiday in France feel rather more expensive than it used to be. Oil prices pushed fuel costs up, exchange rates made everything pricier.

But now there is good news......

Have you noticed the euro exchange rate recently? Around Christmastime, a pound would buy you little more than one euro. GOOD NEWS - your pound will buy you a lot more than that today. I've just checked Yahoo Finance (good website, btw) and it's trading around €1.17, showing a steady improvement since mid March. I can't forecast the markets, but this is great news already.

And I've been noticing the price of diesel. I drive to France regularly and on my last trip I filled up with diesel for less than one euro per litre - that's around 15% cheaper than in the UK. Always fill up at hypermarkets for the best prices; you pay a lot more on motorways and at local service stations. Petrol costs more than diesel in France; my latest observation is that prices are very similar.

Finally, the cost of eating out in France went down overnight on 30th June as Monsieur Sarkozy slashed the rate of VAT on most cafe and restaurant prices from 19.6% to 5.5%. We've introduced a range of set meals in our restaurant that are priced around the €15 mark including an aperitif. That is very competitive pricing.

So I hope that encourages you to venture out to France this summer - there is plenty of good news around.