Day du Patrimoine

The Journee du Patrimoine are literally day of inheritance when many of the historic buildings are open to the public, These can include privately owned properties so on the third weekend in September you have a chance to look around at some of these historic treasures.
This year I choose to view two of the best. The chateau de Bessay in the south of the Vendee, built in 1577 it saw many changes before falling into seriously bad repair. Saved twenty five years ago and restored to much of its former glory it made an enchanting specticle in the dazzling September sunshine.This chateau is open to the public during July and August, every afternoon except Sundays.
On the Sunday I visited the Chateau-du-Parc-Soubise near Mouchamps in the Vendeen bocage. The property of the Chabot family it is only open on the Journee du Patrimoine. The guided tour of the exterior of the chateau and parc and a look at the Chapel, the medieval farm building which included a tythe barn and a beautiful building with cellar below and a grenier above, the later of which had an amazing bateau roof built in the shape of an upturned boat by shipwrights from Mont-Saint-Michel.
You can view the videos of both of these properties on Chateau de Bessay video and on Chateau-du-Parc-Soubise.

Gite Advertising

With the 2010 season drawing to a close it is time to be looking forward to next season. So now is the time to think about your advertising of your gite, cottage or holiday home. With some 9 million visitors to the vendee each year you would think that getting bookings should be easy, but alas that is not always the situation.
How do you advertise? in hard copy in glossy magazines, on the internet, but should you have your own website, go with an international company or use a local specialist.
Of Course the answer is probable a bit all of them. There are still some people who don’t use the internet so to find them hard copy is the only answer, along with post cards in shop windows, women’s institute and other such outlets. The internet is altogether another problem. Yes you should have your own website if only to add all the extra information prospective renters need and where as it is difficult or almost impossible to get to the top of the search engine rankings it is still a useful tool.
The question between the large international advertisers and the local specialist is all together a different question. Sure the big companies with all their clout are easily found for the big keywords, but they are expensive and there is no guarantee of success, you may find you are on page 20 of the results and very few people troll down that far. On the other hand a local specialist usually only charges when they find you a client and you are free to except or decline it. The charge should be no more than 10% and quite often this can be added to the price you want. You can use as many of these specialist as you want as very few demand an exclusive on your property, so with this system you only pay on results and if you take in to account the time and money you spend advertising, answering emails, doing accounts etc then this can and is a very effective system. I personally use Holiday1.net for my gites and get all the booking I need.
Spreading yourself around is a great way to ensure your property gets in front of the public, there are several free advert publication, or look on the net for sites that come up frequently, you often find that the advert rates are very low. One such case here in the Vendee is the New Vendee Guide which not only turns up on Googles front page for hundreds of search terms on the Vendee but is also a useful resource for both you and your prospective clients. Remember the search terms that people type in to Google to find you are rarely what you think, for example one of the most used terms to find our Gites-with-Pools site is in fact “Naturist beaches of the Vendee” or similar.

Autumn Work.

It is now starting to feel like autumn as the first measurable rain for some considerable time fell overnight with thunder and lightning, so perhapsa the garden will change from looking like a desert landscape and return to more mellow greens. This has forced me to do some work indoors this morning so I choose to put a video on the Valley de Poupet. It is an area of the Haut Bocage that I particularly like, it combines a beautiful valley along the Sevre Nantaise River, a watermill with its adjacent weir, a camp site and the Vendees largest outdoor music theater.
You can view the results of my labours on Valley de Poupet

Vendee Guide

For those of you that are holidaying in the Vendee and seek tourist information, then you may wish to look at www.vendee-guide.co.uk as this now has over 650 pages packed full of information and photographs. Should you wish to to comment or add photos ect then their new blog at www.vendee-guide.co.uk/blog/ is an ideal portal for you.
Much of the information that was originale posted on the gites with pools website has now been transfered to this site where it can better inform a wider public audience.

Vendee Guide

As anyone who follows this blog will know it has been my intention to expand the gites-with-pools website to take on both more properties in the Vendee but also to take in other areas of France.
One of the main problems has been that the site was getting top heavy on information about the Vendee instead of gites with pools. So to allow the expansion i have created a new site dedicated solely to the Vendee, it is call Vendee Guide and it can be found on www.vendee-guide.co.uk. To date over 300 pages have been created and many more are planned. There are many of the pages you would normally expect on a guide and perhaps a few that are a little more unusual. Let me know what you think.

Vdeos of the Vendee

Its been a long hard summer and because of that i've not been able to put up posts as i would have liked, that is not to say that i've not been busy on the website and collecting information for the site.
I have put up on the site several new Videos and these include 5 on the Puy du Fou; The Gardens, the Vikings show, the Gladiators, the Falconry, and the Bataille de Donjon I have added videos on Fontenay-le-Comte, The Mervent Forest, Vouvant, and St Gilles-croix-de-Vie.
Additional pages on many of the towns and villages of the Vendee have been added as well as more restaurant reviews.

Gites-with-pools weekly update

It seems that i never have enough time to finish all the work that needed around the gites complex and write more articles for the website.
I have tried this week but it has ment burning the midnight oil.Luckily Tate has produced another well time article on the pretty port of St.Giles Croix de Vie so with my addition of La Tranche sur Mer pages its been a productive week after all.