Catherine Daly, who has been going to France since she was a child, tells you everything you need to know to find your perfect holiday home, and, right, Joyce Hickeyexplains why the devil can be in the details
Where to start
Booking can be bewildering, with such a huge variety of gîtes on offer. So, before turning to the internet or opening a single newspaper or brochure, make a checklist of what you want in an ideal holiday.
The first thing to consider is size. How many people do you need to accommodate? Do you want them all to have bedrooms or is someone happy to make do with a sofabed? Do you need a cot?
Large properties that can accommodate more than one family tend to book up early, but smaller ones may have extra beds, in which case check how many bathrooms the gîte has and whether it has any separate lavatories. Try telling a toddler to wait for the toilet when the only bathroom is in use.
Next consider location - not just the region of France but whether you want to be in a rural farmhouse far from anywhere or within walking distance of a shop and restaurant. The idea of rural isolation is attractive until you have to get into the car every morning to buy your baguettes and croissants - and, worse, you face a drive home after every meal out. (French drink-driving laws are stricter, and random breath tests more frequent, than in Ireland.)
Also consider what the area offers for every member of the family. Are you looking for museums and historical sites or fun parks and watersports?
Ask yourself if you want a pool - private or shared - or easy access to a beach, lake or river where you can swim. Do you mind if the property is overlooked or would you rather be private? Do you want a garden or is a terrace enough?
Consider what facilities you expect to find inside the house. Most owners in France now offer linen and towels with the rental - some provide them at an extra charge - but there are still hosts, particularly near ferry ports or those who cater mainly for guests arriving by car, who expect their guests to bring their own.
Many owners will provide a welcome pack - a nice touch, especially if it includes toiletries, which cut down on your luggage.
A washing machine and iron are fairly essential for anyone on a limited baggage allowance, and a tumble dryer is useful in case of bad weather.
If it is very hot, an electric fan is essential, especially for very young children. Ideally, look for a fan in each bedroom. Some properties may even offer air conditioning.
Also add to your facility checklist a barbecue, dishwasher, microwave, oven (some older properties only have a hob), television (check if it's satellite or just local channels), hairdryer, DVD player, music player and internet access.
Before booking, see as many recent photographs of the property as possible. Listings alone will not tell you what condition the property is in or when it was last decorated.
Finding a property
The classified pages of newspaper travel sections, where both holiday companies and private owners advertise, are especially useful for late availability.
Local tourist offices have lists of registered rental properties, which is handy in low season, when you can travel without pre-booking.
Check out Gîtes de Frances ( www.gites-de-france.com), an official organisation for registered, inspected gîtes, which you can book online.
Private agencies, such as Purefrance ( www.purefrance.com), have listings of properties that they have inspected and can recommend.
Some ferry companies, such as Brittany Ferries ( www.brittanyferries.ie), can book accommodation as well as travel. Agencies and tour operators handle payments and streamline the booking process.
Unvetted advertising websites are basically listings sites, and your contract will be directly with the owner. All descriptions are supplied by the owners, and properties have not been inspected.
Usually these sites have useful search filters: search by date, by area, by number of bedrooms and then, more specifically, with pool, near beach, with garden.
If you book through these sites using a credit card, you have some protection in case of a dispute.
Reliable unvetted sites include www.villarenters.com, www.holidayrentals.co.uk, www.visitfrance.co.ukand www.frenchconnections.co.uk.
Some owners have their own websites and don't advertise elsewhere, so you'll need to find them using a search engine. Be specific with your search terms, to cut down on irrelevant sites - "self-catering Aquitaine near village private pool" will provide more useful results than "holiday France".
Again, always ask for photographs, so that you can be certain that the gîte you book is the gîte you get.
Eating in France
One of the joys of self-catering is that you get to choose what, and when, to eat. And there is no better place than France to buy food or eat out. So make the most of it, and try to introduce the family to foods they might not eat at home.
Eating in If you don't want cooking to be a chore, shop differently from the way you would at home. Buy your staples at a supermaket, then shop daily for fresh food, as the French would. The markets are the most enjoyable place to do this, and you will quickly be able to work out who sells the best produce by the queues in front of the stalls.
Keep it simple. Pile your lunch table with artisan bread, a few cheeses and meats, and wild strawberries and peaches, then let everyone help themselves.
Don't be afraid to ask for help when shopping, even if you cannot speak French. You may point at the fish display, for example, and say "pour barbecue?" in your best French accent, and the stallholder and other shoppers will happily advise on the best of the day's catch, in sign language if necessary.
A good option are the freshly prepared hot foods in markets or on deli counters, usually as good as you would get in a small family restaurant. They are quick to heat up. No good French market is without a roast-chicken stand, which you will find by following your nose. There will also be other birds on offer (quails being popular with kids) and roast potatoes, dripping in the unhealthiest but tastiest gravy you are ever likely to eat.
Shopping for interesting food is also the best (and cheapest) way to introduce children to new food. A tray of frozen snails stuffed with garlic butter is quick to heat up in the oven, and there's very little lost if the entire family rejects it.
Eating out The best value is probably at noon, especially for a family on a budget, when a formule midi - a staple for local workers who can't make it home at lunchtime - can offer four courses with wine for between €10 and €15. Look around to see which restaurants fill up with locals on your first few days, then arrive before 12.30pm if you want to get a table. The other way to get recommendations is to check the welcome book or guest book in your gîte, to see if the owner or previous holidaymakers have mentioned anywhere.
Going by air
Aer Lingus (
www.aerlingus.com) flies from Dublin to the larger French airports, including Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyons, Marseilles, Nice, Paris and Rennes. It also flies from Cork to Paris and Nice, and from Belfast to Nice.
Ryanair ( www.ryanair.com) flies from Dublin to a number of regional airports, often close to holiday destinations. It also flies from Shannon to Biarritz, Carcassonne and Nantes, and from Cork to Carcassonne.
Aer Arann ( www.aerarann.ie) flies from Galway and Waterford to Bordeaux and Lorient, and from Cork to Lorient, Nantes, La Rochelle and Brest.
Air France ( www.airfrance.ie) offers connections to most regional French airports from Dublin via Paris.
Rental cars are available at all airports and most major train stations. Book before leaving home to ensure that the local office is open when you arrive (virtually everything closes on Bastille Day, July 14th, for example, and Sundays are tricky in the smaller offices).
Going by ferry
Direct sailings Irish Ferries (
www.irishferries.com) sails from Rosslare to Cherbourg or Roscoff on its new Oscar Wilde ferry.
Brittany Ferries ( www.brittanyferries.ie) sails from Cork to Roscoff. It also offers a crossing from Plymouth to Santander, in northern Spain, if you want to take a car to the south of France but can't face the drive.
Celtic Link ( www.celticlinkferries.com) sails from Rosslare to Cherbourg. This is a container service that takes some car passengers. Service is basic, but all meals are included in fares, which keeps spending down, especially for large families.
LD lines ( www.ldlines.com) is a new service, due to start in October, from Rosslare to Le Havre.
Sailing via the UK Landbridge crossings - catching one ferry to the UK, then driving to catch a second to France - offer more frequent departures and are likely to be cheaper than direct sailings. The Channel Tunnel ( www.eurotunnel.com) is then an option.
Driving in France
French roads are well signposted, but bring a good map or use GPS. Print a detailed route planner from
www.viamichelin.com,
www.mappy.fr(which also gives the locations of "safety cameras") or
www.aaroadwatch.ie/routes.
Motorways are the best way to cover long distances; they provide frequent rest stops. Tolls operate on most routes apart from city ring roads.
For up-to-date traffic conditions, roadworks, closures and peak-period warnings, see www.bisonfute.equipement.gouv.fr(click on the British flag for an English translation).
Be warned that, from July 1st, all cars travelling in France are obliged to carry, along with other safety equipment (such as spare bulbs, first-aid kit and fire extinguisher), a warning triangle and a high-visibility vest or jacket for use in the case of breakdown or emergency.
Going by train
To France There are excellent services from London (
www.eurostar.com) to destinations throughout France - an option worth considering for business travellers or those late joining a family holiday.
Within France Times and train tickets are available on www.sncf.fr. An English- language version of the site is promised on the opening page, although once you get down to local-service level it's all in French. The site is still accessible, however. Trains, which are clean, frequent and punctual, are a good way of getting around in France, especially for visiting cities, as you will generally be deposited in the centre and won't have to navigate or find parking.
Catherine Daly is the author ofA French Affair, Charlotte's Way and All Shook Up
Feast or Famine
I HAD THIS IDEA, aged 14 and on holiday in France with my parents, about returning to that beloved country with my own family in the future. We'd barrel down the autoroute, he and I and our lovely children, shopping in the market on the way to our glorious gîte, which we'd find without any requirement for satnavs or directions.
We'd find respite from the sun in our own azure pool and enjoy picnics on the sand between salty dips and games of volleyball. We'd discover exquisite galleries around medieval corners in walled cities, feast on local produce and savour the finest of wines.
And, voilà, 20 years later, lucky me. With him and our lovely children. In Cherbourg, on a wet Sunday in August after a dodgy ferry crossing.
France appeared to have closed down. So we grinned and bore it and barrelled along with our map (and our copy of Top Ten Normandy - under top 10 things to avoid you'll note "August"). We passed all the closed petrol stations and deserted villages until we found a town near ours that had a glimmer of life and a kind Mme Boulangère who took pity on us and our two damp squeaking toddlers and produced a litre of milk from somewhere to accompany our baguettes and cheesy pastries. At least supper was sorted.
Our house was how we'd imagined, as it was described very accurately by its owners on www.cheznous.com.
A tall, elderly red-brick town house one room deep and three across, with a rambling garden, it was an easy walk from the village, with its two bakeries, two small supermarkets, a pharmacy and a playground.
The weather was awful, though, and it was hard to keep two small boys (one of them crawling) in clean clothes. So we didn't. And we had to wear most of our own clothes most of the time to keep warm, so they didn't get washed much either.
For day trips we drew a circle on the map that encompassed a one-hour drive and visited many of the highlights of Pays d'Auge: Lisieux, Bayeux, Alençon and William the Conqueror's castle at Falaise.
The fondest impressions linger from Claude Monet's house at Giverny, to which I'd return in a heartbeat: a gorgeous terrace lunch, the thrill of being in the artist's home and studio, the calm of the lilies, the soft overhanging green of the bridges that even the rampant commercialism can't defile.
Last month, with the boys two years older (though still mostly grubby), we returned to France with friends. We had decided to leave the car at home and fly to the Mediterranean coast, where the long days would be sunny, the sea would be warm, the house would be bright and the town would be alive and pretty.
But on a wet Sunday, as we descended through Carcassonne's grey skies, picked up our hire cars and muddled along a stormy A9 to who knew where, it all seemed horribly familiar. We managed, who knows how, to find our closed-but-for- one-boulangerie town and then, eventually, our house and its friendly owners, who welcomed us with broad smiles and a kitchen full of eggs, bread, biscuits, milk and cereal.
We'd found this house on www.ownersdirect.co.uk, and again it was well described, but we didn't register that the owners lived in a ground-floor apartment, so our access to the outside was not so direct.
Delighted as we were by the prospect of a riverbank along which to run, cycle and go on ant-probing expeditions, we forgot about the mosquito quotient (we were savaged). Nor was there any mention of the clear view of two main roads.
We had a good beach, though, with showers and toilets at the car park, and we had an easy walk to town for grown-up dinners.
At home there were plenty of bathrooms to remove the rest of the sand, mercifully few breakables, and a well-equipped kitchen for feeding ourselves and our five under-fives.
Like many French holiday houses, ours had a pool, and over the fortnight most of the children gained confidence in the water.
In fact one of our reasons for choosing France was the law that requires pools to be surrounded by lockable fencing. We were considering renting a house in Spain until we noticed all the doors opening directly from the bedrooms to the pool terrace.
Another thing is, if you're holidaying in France, you have to have a very orderly appetite. Restaurant hours are absolutely non-negotiable, and it's no fun telling two small, hungry children at 6pm in a small town an hour from home that there's nothing to eat.
Happily, though, while the marvellous old city of Carcassonne would take two days to see properly, you would never go hungry there.
These French holidays have made me an expert picnic- packer and stocker-upper. And autoroute-navigator.