Brittany Cruising

[mrsmelly]

59 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Same here . 

Boat hire for a  week or two holiday is a sensible idea.

I agree but " The Boss " wont go on a boating holiday  I wanted to do the Jockland canals but it aint gonna happen.

[Naughty Cal]

13 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

I agree but " The Boss " wont go on a boating holiday  I wanted to do the Jockland canals but it aint gonna happen.

The Caledonian has to be a must for anyone. Better in your own boat but I can imagine it would still be enjoyable on a hire boat.

[koukouvagia]

When we stay in hotels abroad sometimes I pay in advance, sometimes at the end of the stay.  It depends on the policy of the hotel.  You almost invariably get a better price if you deal with the hotel direct rather than via an online booking agency.

One thing I never pay for in advance is car hire.  I have found you can you get a much better deal on the spot.  I always pay in cash - never with a credit card.  Once a hire firm has your card details you may find unexpected deductions have been made.

[Naughty Cal]

We are taking our own car this time. The difference in ferry fare for taking the car or not wouldn't have paid for a hire car so we were better off taking the Datsun!

[IDS]

We cycled a bit of the canal in this area, and it is very quiet and small compared to other waterway areas in France. Have stayed in Malestroit and visited Josselin, both very attractive Medieval small towns with lots of timbered buildings and interesting corners. The tourism offices have local information. Market day in Malestroit is Thursday, and Josselin Saturday. There is an interesting Museum of the French Resistance near Saint Marcel about 5 km from Malestroit if you have bikes.

[cheshire~rose]

Try getting the free Duolingo App on your phone and start now doing a few minutes of exercises each day and you will be amazed how much it improves your French, it is not only about being able to be understood when you speak English, being able to understand posters and notices gives you a much greater understanding of the culture and people of the area you are in.

Once I managed to tuck a few words under my belt I signed up for the Facebook page of a French newspaper that was local to my chosen area and started trying to understand some of the articles that appeared in my newsfeed really helped 

I would also recommend another App: Larousse English French dictionary which will translate any word you get stuck on. 

[Momac]

9 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

I agree but " The Boss " wont go on a boating holiday  I wanted to do the Jockland canals but it aint gonna happen.

Thankfully my chief officer is very much in favour of boating holidays , especially if it involves a  warmer climate than the UK (therefore not including Scotland).

[Naughty Cal]

41 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Thankfully my chief officer is very much in favour of boating holidays , especially if it involves a  warmer climate than the UK (therefore not including Scotland).

Which is a shame as you are missing out on a beautiful stretch of water.

We will certainly go back at some point.

[Wanderer Vagabond]

12 hours ago, koukouvagia said:

When we stay in hotels abroad sometimes I pay in advance, sometimes at the end of the stay.  It depends on the policy of the hotel.  You almost invariably get a better price if you deal with the hotel direct rather than via an online booking agency.

One thing I never pay for in advance is car hire.  I have found you can you get a much better deal on the spot.  I always pay in cash - never with a credit card.  Once a hire firm has your card details you may find unexpected deductions have been made.

I'm genuinely interested by this one, who do you hire from? I regularly hire from Enterprise and as far as I'm aware, there is no cash option. There is an excess of £1000 so they require your Credit Card details to cover this, they also ask for a £200 deposit, I can't say I've tried to pay that in cash. I've also hired through Rhino who are an agent for a variety of other companies and all of these require your credit card details. When flying to a destination, from what I have seen with others, the on the spot deal is massively worse that pre-booked. The example of that was when we went to Cyprus, at the airport office there were a number of heated arguments because the agents were effectivley trying to rip everyone off for fuel (claiming you had to buy a full tank at a rate vastly more than the local rate). One gent decided that he wasn't having any of it and stormed off to another car hire desk, who promptly ripped him off even more.

Which hire company do you use?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

I'm genuinely interested by this one, who do you hire from? I regularly hire from Enterprise and as far as I'm aware, there is no cash option. There is an excess of £1000 so they require your Credit Card details to cover this, they also ask for a £200 deposit, I can't say I've tried to pay that in cash. I've also hired through Rhino who are an agent for a variety of other companies and all of these require your credit card details. When flying to a destination, from what I have seen with others, the on the spot deal is massively worse that pre-booked. The example of that was when we went to Cyprus, at the airport office there were a number of heated arguments because the agents were effectivley trying to rip everyone off for fuel (claiming you had to buy a full tank at a rate vastly more than the local rate). One gent decided that he wasn't having any of it and stormed off to another car hire desk, who promptly ripped him off even more.

Which hire company do you use?

Same here. I have only hired in the main in the US with Alamo and various other companies and have never been able to take a car without providing credit card details.

In early days they used to take an imprint of your details with one of those machines and get you to sign it with the amount left blank!!

So yes I'm curious too.

[koukouvagia]

8 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

 Which hire company do you use?

 I regularly hire in Thessaloniki and Crete  I've also hired in Athens, Rhodes and Cyprus.

In larger towns the hire firms are clustered and you can simply go form one to another asking for the best deal.  I'm pretty sure you get a worse deal if you hire at an airport.  (In case anyone is interested, I use Inter-road in Heraklion.  Excellent, friendly service.)

I've never tried doing this with the larger international firms like Herz.

[mrsmelly]

14 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:

Which is a shame as you are missing out on a beautiful stretch of water.

We will certainly go back at some point.

Yes Jockland is incredibly beautiful and right on our doorstep. We have been abroad umpteen times and I travelled a lot of the world in the RN that's why we don't go any more as its better here.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, koukouvagia said:

 I regularly hire in Thessaloniki and Crete  I've also hired in Athens, Rhodes and Cyprus.

In larger towns the hire firms are clustered and you can simply go form one to another asking for the best deal.  I'm pretty sure you get a worse deal if you hire at an airport.  (In case anyone is interested, I use Inter-road in Heraklion.  Excellent, friendly service.)

I've never tried doing this with the larger international firms like Herz.

Funny enough my daughter has just come back from a week in Crete, The way she talked about the whole car rental thing there (she hired one for a day) it struck me how 'laissez-faire' the whole industry appears to be. I'm not surprised they don't ask for credit card details TBH.

[Naughty Cal]

2 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Yes Jockland is incredibly beautiful and right on our doorstep. We have been abroad umpteen times and I travelled a lot of the world in the RN that's why we don't go any more as its better here.

We have done it the other way around and explored this country. It's now time for us to branch out and explore other countries together.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

We have done it the other way around and explored this country. It's now time for us to branch out and explore other countries together.

I would be amazed if you don't enjoy France, we manage to get to some part of it once sometimes twice a year and have never been disappointed.

A nice treat on the overnight crossing to St, Malo with Brittany is a meal in the Les Abers restaurant. From memory it's not that expensive either. That was often our regular route into France but since we now take the dog we go via. the tunnel which is fast and convenient (but not a part of the holiday in the same a ferry crossing was. )

[Naughty Cal]

After making this booking Le Boat have offered us a cruise at a price that we just couldn't turn down for Easter 2019 sailing on the Cirrus B from Nieuwpoort for seven days so if anyone has any info on this area as well it will be much appreciated.

https://www.leboat.co.uk/boats/cirrus-b

https://www.leboat.co.uk/holidays/destinations/belgium

We will be heading in the direction if Bruges for this one.

[Athy]

You may already have a waterways guide book to the region; if not, I can recommend the Guide Fluvial series published by EDB (Editions du Breil). They're about foolscap size, the mapping is very clear and the text is in French, English und German. There's one for each region of France, including one for Brittany. We got ours (for the South-West) off French eBay from a couple who had travelled extensively in France but had given up boating.

[Stilllearning]

On 11/10/2017 at 13:55, MJG said:

I would be amazed if you don't enjoy France, we manage to get to some part of it once sometimes twice a year and have never been disappointed.

A nice treat on the overnight crossing to St, Malo with Brittany is a meal in the Les Abers restaurant. From memory it's not that expensive either. That was often our regular route into France but since we now take the dog we go via. the tunnel which is fast and convenient (but not a part of the holiday in the same a ferry crossing was. )

It is possible to take the Portsmouth to Le Havre ferry with Brittany ferries, and have a pet cabin on the top deck. Dog comes out of the car and into the cabin with you.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Stilllearning said:

It is possible to take the Portsmouth to Le Havre ferry with Brittany ferries, and have a pet cabin on the top deck. Dog comes out of the car and into the cabin with you.

Indeed it is and we have looked at this option but the requirement for the dog to be muzzled when in public areas on the ferry deterred us.

It seemed a bit of an unnecessary requirement to us especially when their are alternatives like Eurotunnel which don't have such a stipulation, the other benefit is Eurotunnel usually works out cheaper too when compared to a long overnight crossing.