 Poster: A snowHead
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| Chaletbeauroc wrote: |
| Spam knows no time limits, apparently. |
Search for Bonglats username and you'll see he's been softening snowheads up with some daft threads that have created a lot of replied before starting his spamming.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Since having and skiing with the kids in school hols (in France). I've never used a TO. Part of the fun is DIY and, when done once, becomes an easy blueprint for future years (with a bit on ongoing refinement!).
Accomodation takes up the research and I always use Abritel.fr. The French don't tend to shaft their own so prices etc are quite sensible. Sometimes I've even booked direct if I find the owner has a website. Much cheaper.
Interesting learning point this year. Booked a place in Tignes VC that was advertised as 1 bed. Actually had 2 (which I what I needed but had to double check). Turns out that s bedroom can be only advertised as such if it has a window in it. This didn't but was a perfectly adequate bunk bedded room with a slidey door (not in the hallway!).
Appartements with beds in hallways just don't quite cut it for me!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| kettonskimum wrote: |
Accomodation takes up the research and I always use Abritel.fr. The French don't tend to shaft their own so prices etc are quite sensible. Sometimes I've even booked direct if I find the owner has a website. Much cheaper.
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I'm always astonished just how few renters take the time to search for the property directly. We're on two of the larger booking sites, where of course we have their exorbitant commission to pay, so our own prices are significantly lower, but the majority of bookers just don't seem to think about it. Returning guests always go direct, of course.
As for the sofa-bed, well we do have one, in fact two, in two of our apartments, but in neither case would I dream of including them in the max beds count on the listings. Only if guests contact us and ask if we can squeeze more does it ever get included on their booking, with a small extra charge to cover the cost of bed linen.
We have had loads of experiences in French ski apartments, so know full well that for a comfortable room for two we'd always need to book a 4 or even 6 person apartment. I gather that newer properties, and some recently renovated ones in e.g. Avoriaz are not quite as small as they used to be, but do they still do the 'two bunks in the corridor and a sofa-bed in the living room' sleeps 4 type of thing? That was the basic model in Flaine and other places back when I used to do SCGB repping.
| MorningGory wrote: |
@kettonskimum, A friend has a French chalet with a separate apartment underneath which has a window in the internal bedroom wall as that still counts  |
Strictly speaking there are additional criteria for what can and can not be counted as 'living space' in French houses, not simply whether there's a window. How that filters down to holiday rentals, i.e. if there's any regulation defining it, I don't know.
Edit: I just saw that you said an internal wall, so no, that could not be counted in normal property law, and therefore I assume that rentals are not (strictly?) controlled.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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@Chaletbeauroc, Possibly built in a 'grey' period of law!!
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Our apartment has a bedroom window opening onto the external lobby, as do quite a few others in the residence. It also needs to be 9 sq m to count as a bedroom. The apartment does sleep 4 with 2 single sofabeds in the lounge but more often sleeps 2.
French families are fine with the layout though.
We've made sure there is plenty of storage for clothes, hooks for coats and shelves and space to put bedding away. Full oven and 4 ring hob and a decent sized fridge/freezer too, and seating for 4. We'd be happy in there ourselves for a full season I think.
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@Hells Bells, I hear that to get on to the official Tourist Office accommodation listings that there's quite a detailed questionnaire to complete in order to ascertain how many Stars your accommodation is.
Size of the fridge being just one let alone how many sofa beds 
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| Quote: |
We have had loads of experiences in French ski apartments, so know full well that for a comfortable room for two we'd always need to book a 4 or even 6 person apartment.
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I always look at the floor area not the number of people it accomodates.
Our apartment is advertised as 2 rooms and I am sure the bunkroom is under 9m2. It holds 2 bunk beds and a sizable storage area. In fact when just one's wife and one stay in the apartment we use the "alcove" for sleeping as described by @kettonskimum. The bunkroom doesn't even get used.
We do have a sofa bed and it gets used quite a bit. It is not unusual for us to have friends sleeping on it, and indeed using the sleeping bench alongside. We sleep 6 or 7 quite often and have had 8 sleeping in the apartment in the past (it was an emergency). The important thing is managing the baggage not the people. I have one friend who just dumps his bag by the door and lives out of the suitcase. I do not like this.
One thing that annoys me about some apartments we have rented in the past is shortage of seating areas. I like some comfortable seats around a coffee table for more than the number of beds. Afterall you will probably want to invite some people around for drinks and just sitting around the dining table just doesn't feel right to me. We can seat 6 before people have to sit on the hard dining chairs.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@Weathercam, star rating is done by another organisation. Did that during lockdown. Not on TO list though. Sent off the stuff ages ago but they've not responded
Last edited by You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net. on Tue 21-06-22 11:00; edited 1 time in total
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Notwithstanding the age of the thread and spam resurrection, I think it's an intrinsically interesting topic anyway. My initial response was to say that as an apartment owner, given the extra cost of a decent sofa-bed and the time and effort of acquiring and delivering one, I'm surprised it should be seen as a negative feature by anyone. Particularly when - in our block at least- the overwhelming client expectation seems to be that sofas should be sofa-beds by default. They're useful if you have overlap i.e. when some people in the group briefly overlap their visit, you can accommodate them for a night or two on the sofa-bed, without having to rent an extra bedroom that's unused the rest of the holiday. And as mentioned, for some groups, they make the rental affordable compared to having another bedroom.
Misrepresentation of the accommodation is a separate issue and not intrinsically related to whether there's a sofa-bed or not. Any description should include the m² and number of separate bedrooms and the no beds in each of them. And nowadays, if a site doesn't have complete photos' of the interior then it should be regarded as suspect. I'd also be concerned if I couldn't place the accommodation on a map, so as to check the claimed nearness to lifts and shops. Ditto the broadband provision: if the website doesn't say anything about this then that'd be another black mark against the place (because you can be sure that if it had wired 100Mbps unlimited broadband, they'd say so).
As a generalised observation, it seems to me that Swiss apartments trade bedrooms for larger living areas, whereas for the same m², French ones opt to have an additional bedroom at the cost of a smaller living area. Neither is right or wrong, just that it was one reason for us buying in CH - I'm sure our 2-bedrom, sleeps 4 adults, 68m² Swiss apartment would be three bedrooms in France, but we like the larger living space. And in CH, the dividing walls tend to be concrete, not plasterboard, as we often found in French rentals. Plus, we have a proper bath, not just a shower, which again uses up space, but we like it for a good soak after a hard day's skiing or hiking and wouldn't want the extra bedroom if it meant only a shower room.
Last edited by Ski the Net with snowHeads  on Tue 21-06-22 19:38; edited 4 times in total
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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When I used to work in Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia almost all private homes I visited had a single bedroom in which the children slept and the parents slept on a sofa bed in the lounge.
ps @LaForet, I agree with you totally. We even have a sofa bed at home.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@countryman, having participated.... in what way?
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| Quote: |
And in CH, the dividing walls tend to be concrete, not plasterboard, as we often found in French rentals
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The French love concrete! In our new MGM-build apartment all the interior walls were concrete.
Otherwise, I agree entirely with @LaForet. It's ironic that the OP of this thread said he was looking for a "cheap deal" then got all hoity toity about sofabeds. Nobody is compelling anybody to sleep on a sofa bed. Feel free to pay more for more "proper" bedrooms. We had a sofa bed but I confess I didn't like having people sleeping on it, unless they were willing to get up promptly in the morning, fold everything out of the way and make the place look respectable for breakfast. Teenagers were a menace, though I found a way..... I used to put my CD of "French café music" on loud until they got the F up. That did the trick.
And, as always, it's personal choice. We had a bath with a shower over. I'd very happily have traded the bath for a slightly bigger second bedroom, or even for a bidet. I never bath and nor did my OH, or many of our visitors. We DID have a separate toilet, which was a blessing, though in normal French style it wasn't equipped with a hand basin as standard.  We had one fitted at significant extra cost.
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You know it makes sense.
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I sort of agree with the OP in that I do not want to sleep in the lounge, nor force others to. But then you have to pay the extra price for that by paying for a further 10+ m2 of apartment for another bedroom. If you can afford to and are prepared to then great, you don't need a sofa bed.
The size of some of the (mainly French that I see) apartments that are advertised for 4 or 6 is bloody amazing sometimes. It can be less than 20m2. But as has been said by others above, some people love to find the cheapest accommodation they possibly can, and some have to, so it's great that there is this type of place available.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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@pam w, when we moved into our current house, our loo was separate and there was no room for a handbasin even if we'd wanted one in there. Knocked the bathroom wall down so it was one room eventually, making two v small rooms into one reasonable one. Most semi-detached single bathroom houses up here were the same, my parents have only recently changed that as they needed to knock theirs into one room to allow my father to get round more easily.
Until the 1950s most properties had outside loos and a tin bath. A wash basin in a bathroom would have been seen as an unnecessary luxury when there was a basin in the room next door.
@johnE, trouble with that is I see small boys having competitions as to who can pee into the basin. 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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@Hells Bells, how's that different to a normal basin?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@JailBaitMcFlude, cos it is in the top of the loo. Their aim is not good, but I would like to bet they would try to pee into the basin on top rather than into the loo. Or is that just my kids 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Quote: |
Until the 1950s most properties had outside loos and a tin bath
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Yep, the house where I first lived (from 1947 - 55) had an outside loo and a tin bath. I don't think the tin bath got much of a workout - not enough hot water. The big sink (which would now be called a butler sink I guess) in the scullery did the job. I didn't live in a house with a bathroom till I was 17. In the French place, if we'd not put a basin in the toilet, folks would have been coming out and washing their hands in the kitchen which drives me absolutely mad, not just for hygiene reasons but because in a small kitchen you don't want company! Having the loo separate from the bathroom (where there wasn't one) was a boon, in the morning rush hours.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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We used to play ocean voyages in the tin bath, with beach spades as paddles.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Hells Bells, your boys must lack ambition/imagination if they haven't tried peeing into a normal basin anyway
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Peeing into an ordinary basin is easy enough for boys. I had to do it on a sleeper train once.
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Fairly common in Japan and great for water economy.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Somebody who cannot contemplate sleeping on a sofa bed on holiday has clearly never been camping, or stayed on a boat, or in a camper van, or in their aunty's on a Lilo. The Princess and the Pea come to mind.
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@JailBaitMcFlude, they most definitely have, but I think it would have been more likely in a basin on top of the loo. And I won't mention their father................
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@pam w, Did you not have a water boiler next to the coal fire with an oven the other side along with various grills that you (actually my mother) could swing over the open fire for pans, kettle etc. We did. And yes we had our weekly bath in the tin bath in front of the fire, me, my brother a sister following each other, one at a time, not as depicted in the meaning of life. The pantry was outside with the single cold water tap for the the whole house. The toilet was a seperate building next to the coal house.
We were a coal mining family from Burnhope (West Stone Row). @Hells Bells, would know the place.
ps I could add mountain huts to your list of places you just muck in and sleep next to complete stangers.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@johnE, I know it. My family are from Dipton and Annfield Plain so I drive through it regularly.
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You know it makes sense.
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| Quote: |
My Sister-in-Law's bed pulled out from under the main bed in the room. She moaned every night that she was confined to sleeping in a Drawer....it was only on the last night that she discovered the fold up metal legs that lifted it off the floor
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Ah! we had one in La Rosiere this year, but we discovered after one night the legs to raise it. As an excuse we didn't get to the apartment until 23:00
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| johnE wrote: |
| Quote: |
My Sister-in-Law's bed pulled out from under the main bed in the room. She moaned every night that she was confined to sleeping in a Drawer....it was only on the last night that she discovered the fold up metal legs that lifted it off the floor
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Ah! we had one in La Rosiere this year, but we discovered after one night the legs to raise it. As an excuse we didn't get to the apartment until 23:00 |
We discovered that the complaints dried up in direct proportion to the wine that was consumed....which may have contributed to the length of time it took to discover the legs. 
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Poster: A snowHead
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| pam w wrote: |
| We DID have a separate toilet, which was a blessing, though in normal French style it wasn't equipped with a hand basin as standard. |
It isn't just a quirk of our place then. It is one of the alterations that we are considering, bearing in mind the issues about organising improvements from the UK that you don't really want to happen while you are living there. It would need a very small basin crammed in the corner somehow, not that different from @johnE's solution.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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One of our friends fitted a little basin in himself, but my OH's DIY skills didn't extend to any kind of plumbing!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| pam w wrote: |
| One of our friends fitted a little basin in himself, but my OH's DIY skills didn't extend to any kind of plumbing! |
That was the very first job I did when we moved into our French house 20 years ago. I had to rip out the bath on the other side of the wall to do it, mind, but that whole bathroom was coloured "goose poo-poo green" so was due for replacement anyway, and unusually for French properties there was actually a second bathroom, even with a proper bath, which we used until the new bathroom was fitted.
But yes, a separate toilet with no wash basin seems to have been very much the norm, something that shocked us coming from the UK.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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We owned a house which had been built in 1955 in the UK which had a bathroom with no toilet and next to it a toilet on its own no sink. If we had stayed longer we would have added toilet to bathroom and added a sink yo toilet (and changed from the wonder greyish pink suites!).
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Yeah, my UK house built in the 1930s also had 2 separate indoor toilets neither of which had a wash basin as originally built. I was shocked that they had two bathrooms, both indoors, but then it's a rich area.
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The houses I grew up in were terraced (Cardiff) and originally 3 bedrooms. No indoor toilets till far later than they were built. The only way to have a bathroom was either to sacrifice a bedroom or to split one in half - problematical either way and although we owned our houses most around us were rented, and landlords were obviously not inclined to splash out on such niceties. My parents had no spare cash for building work - in the second house we lived next door to my grandmother who had a bathroom (which you had to go through to get to the back bedroom which could have been described as "en suite" by a fanciful estate agent ). We used her bathroom, on request and by permission. And her telly. We didn't have one of those either, but that was more through choice than lack of funds.
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| Quote: |
a separate toilet with no wash basin seems to have been very much the norm, something that shocked us coming from the UK.
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I guess no washing of hands after using the toilet?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| abc wrote: |
| Quote: |
a separate toilet with no wash basin seems to have been very much the norm, something that shocked us coming from the UK.
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I guess no washing of hands after using the toilet? |
People from the UK shouldn’t act too pretty. When I was in student halls, a room with a sink was referred to as “en-suite” 
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I guess no washing of hands after using the toilet?
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Not necessarily. Just had to go from the outside loo round to the sink in the scullery to wash hands. And having a basin is no guarantee people will use it.
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FAQ
