Fines for bad cyclists

ROAD safety authorities in France are calling for more fines to be issued to cyclists who put themselves and other road users in danger. 

It is believed that the widespread handing out of token fines would reduce the number of accidents involving push bikes, as well as limiting cyclist deaths, which are up 6% this year. 

It comes after a recent survey by an insurance company that found that 44% of cyclists had a feeling of impunity – believing that police were not interested in pursuing them for minor breaches of the Code de la Route. 

Cycling fines have already been tested out in Strasbourg, where more than 800 have been handed out since 2012. The city has reported a 37% fall in accidents since. 

Many believe that cycling fines should be extended to all French cities and big towns. Nine breaches of the Code de la Route would initially be covered,  including cycling up one-way streets, ignoring red lights and stop signs, using a mobile phone and refusing to give way to pedestrians on a crossing. 

And before the cycling lobby raise their hackles at this, the French are pretty tough on motorists, too.

Read more at: http://www.connexionfrance.com/cycling-fines-france-highway-code-proposal-16426-view-article.html#sthash.dDZLES7y.dpuf.

Ban of hoardings

Ban on advertising hoardings in Grenoble

ADVERTISING hoardings are being banned in the streets of Grenoble – and the ecologist mayor, Eric Piolle, is planning to replace them with trees.

The Mairie says it is not renewing its annual contract in a move that will cost €150,000 a year. Only stand-alone panels are affected as bus-stops will still carry advertising for the moment.

Grenoble was the first city in France to elect an ecologist mayor and getting rid of the hoardings was a campaign promise by Eric Piolle. It is a first in France and Europe.

- See more at: http://www.connexionfrance.com/Billboards-advertising-hoardings-Grenoble-Piolle-ban-16378-view-article.html#sthash.tr3dc34v.dpuf

A Nice facelift

Improvements at Nice airport

Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has announced that Terminals 1 and 2 will benefit from a €30 million renovation, which will commence in January 2015 and run until 2017. 

Read more: http://bit.ly/1zJ4sDV

New for Eurostar

London to Paris in just 2 hours
Eurostar passengers making the 306-mile journey between London and Paris will soon have their journey time cut by 15 minutes, after the company unveiled a fleet of new high-speed trains. The trains will go into service at the end of 2015.

The launch comes on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the start of Eurostar services in November 1994, when the journey time was just under 3 hours. There were just two trains a day when the service started. Today, there are between 15-17 daily services to Paris.

The e320s, created by Italian design house Pininfarina, will be equipped with free WiFi throughout and customers will have more space per seat, each equipped with power points and a USB socket.

The number of passengers travelling on Eurostar's trains topped 10 million for the first time last year, giving it around an 80% share of the travel market between London and Paris, and London and Brussels.

In another direction, May 2015 will see the start of a new year-round Eurostar service to Provence, stopping at Lyon, Avignon and Marseille. That will be followed at the end of 2016 by the launch of a route to Amsterdam with stops in Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam's Schiphol airport along the way.

Read more: http://dailym.ai/1tmZuHx

EUROSTAR ANNOUNCES NEW YEAR-ROUND CONNECTING SERVICE TO GENEVA

Eurostar has today announced a new year-round service to Geneva via Lille, in partnership with international high-speed train service “TGV Lyria”. From Thursday 9th October, travellers will be able to purchase tickets for the new Swiss route, with the inaugural service leaving London St Pancras on the 14th December 2014.

With an easy connection on to a “TGV Lyria” service in Lille Europe, passengers can travel from London to Geneva in just over 6 hours (London to Geneva will take 6 hours 18 minutes with a 37 minute connection in Lille) with services specially timed to ensure a fast transfer between the two trains.

Recent Eurostar customer research revealed that Geneva is one of the most desirable destinations for UK travellers. With four daytime services each week (on Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday), the new Geneva service means passengers can sit back, relax and enjoy beautiful views of France and Switzerland before they arrive.

For those wishing to venture further, the new route offers passengers a convenient way to travel to some of the most popular destinations in Switzerland, with simple onward connections from Geneva to Aigle, Martigny, Sion, Sierre, Visp and Brig.

The new Swiss service coincides with the refurbishment of Lille Europe station designed to significantly increase the capacity of the Eurostar terminal in order to accommodate growth in the number of connecting passengers. The new look Eurostar terminal will be unveiled in December this year.

Return fares start from £116. For more information or to book Eurostar tickets visit www.eurostar.com or call the Eurostar contact centre on 08432 186 186.

€30 million refit for the Eiffel Tower

"It's a process of permanent reflection."

The renovation is part of the city's attempts to promote the tower as more than a top tourist attraction, but as a symbol of the French capital's dynamism and capacity for regeneration.

© ATOUT FRANCE/Jean François Tripelon-Jarry

The deputy-mayor of Paris, Jean-François Martins said: "Originally it was a challenge of engineering innovation; today the challenge is to continue that spirit, by modernising, renovating, reinterpreting the Eiffel Tower while remaining true to its history.

The work has modernised the pavilions on the first floor, introduced access to the outer platform with its spectacular panoramic views of the city to those in wheelchairs. A cinema room shows historic and recent film of the tower.

The project also aims to reduce the tower's carbon footprint by repositioning glass panels to reduce air-conditioning costs in summer, introducing solar panels, installing a rainwater collection system, and using LED lighting.

The renovated floor, however, has a new attraction that is not for the faint-hearted or those with vertigo. Visitors can now stand on a glass floor and see straight down to the ground from a height of 57 metres, rather as they now can on the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix, although in Chamonix the drop is rather greater.

The best place in France to live...

According to the annual “Better Life Index”, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the best place to live in France is in the Midi-Pyrénées.

The region scored 7.82 out of 10 across a range of 11 criteria, including employment, health, the environment, education, civic engagement, access to services, and public safety. 

The full list of French regions is: 

1 Midi-Pyrenees (7.82/10) 
2 Limousin (7.77/10) 
3 Pays de la Loire (7.71/10) 
4 Bretagne (7.70/10) 
5 Poitou-Charentes (7.56/10) 
6 Île-de-France (7.55/10) 
7 Aquitaine (7.54/10) 
8 Rhône-Alpes (7.47/10) 
9 Auvergne (7.46/10) 
10 Basse Normandie (7.42/10) 
11 Centre (7.30/10) 
12 Bourgogne (7.22/10) 
13 Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (7.10/10) 
14 Franche-Comté (7.05/10) 
15 Alsace (6.99/10) 
16 Languedoc-Roussillon (6.91/10) 
17 Lorraine (6.85/10) 
18 Haute Normandie (6.84/10) 
19 Champagne-Ardenne (6.68/10) 
20 Picardie (6.49/10) 
21 Nord-Pas-de-Calais (6.01/10) 
22 Corsica (5.66/10)

See more at: http://www.connexionfrance.com/france-oecd-better-life-index-midi-pyrenees-corsica-limousin-aquitaine-provence-alpes-cote-dazur-16106-view-article.html#sthash.ypCoxWTh.dpuf

Chamonix valley pays tribute to the Golden Age

In 2015, the Chamonix Valley will be celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the year 1865 and the Golden Age of Mountaineering, an intense period of alpine exploration and conquest that was pioneered by the Victorian mountaineers.

1865 was an exceptional year in the Alps! It was immortalised by 58 “first” ascents and 7 in the Mont-Blanc Massif, including the Aiguille Verte, the Grandes Jorasses and the remarkable Brenva Spur on Mont Blanc. 1865 was a bitter sweet year of triumph and disaster, too – Whymper’s ultimate victory over the Matterhorn turned rapidly to tragedy, when three mountaineers and Chamonix guide Michel Croz fell to their deaths on the descent. It was the 14th July – Bastille day.

Next summer, between June and September, the valley will pay tribute to the mountaineers, guides and artists of the Golden Age through a programme of exhibitions, memorial climbs, events, films, conferences and book publications. They will have the privilege of exhibiting the “treasures” of the Alpine Club (the first club of its kind, founded in 1857) and other private collections.

More information: http://1865.chamonix.fr/En

Fait maison

When is home-made, really home-made?

Visitors to France, especially those concerned about what they eat, should keep an eye open for a new sign – Fait Maison – intended to flag up restaurants where the food really is home-made.

It may come as a shock to many that in a nation renowned for its cuisine, many French restaurants simply re-heat pre-prepared food, rather than cooking it from scratch...not that this practice is peculiar to France, of course.

Conservative estimates suggest that barely 50% of restaurant meals were home-made, while the Union of Hotel Skills and Industries claims that 85% of restaurants make use of frozen or vacuum-packed food.

To many people this seems at odds with the perceived view of French culinary traditions, so a law designed to uphold those traditions was passed earlier this year, and came into force recently.

Now any restaurant that serves a home-made dish can indicate it on the menu with it new logo – in the form of a casserole with the roof-like lid. From next January it will be compulsory for all menus to carry the logo. So, if you don't see it, the food is not fait maison.

And does it matter? No-one is suggesting that any of the practices currently adopted results in poor quality food. But a high proportion of people think that the use of pre-prepared food by restaurants is incompatible with what they expect.

How will it pan out in practice? No-one can be sure. But it's an interesting development to watch.

French to hike hotel tax by 500%

Tourists in France are set to face a 500% rise in hotel tax. The controversial measure, already approved by Parliament after being initiated by Socialist MPs, will see up to £8 added to Parisian room rates.

If rubber-stamped by the Senate, visitors to French hotels would find a tax of £6.40 (8€) on their bills, rather than the current £1.20 (1.50€). This figure will rise to £8 (10€) in Paris – the most popular tourist destination in the world, where, among some 30 million a year, the biggest visitor group is British. 

While small hotels will be able to charge less, critics said the measure will stop people coming to France, which has plunged into economic chaos since a Socialist government came to power in 2012.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2674495/French-hike-hotel-tax-500-cent-Controversial-set-add-8-cost-room.html#ixzz366Q7iweA

Rude Parisians

The world's most popular city, Paris, has a reputation as the rudest place on earth for tourists. In an effort to combat this, French authorities have launched an appeal for locals to refrain from the ‘Gallic snarl’ in encounters with foreign visitors.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, warned that surliness was a pothole on the road to tourism victory: “The logic is simple. An unhappy tourist is a tourist who never comes back.”

No doubt there are many Parisians, in particular, who would not find that a matter for regret. Every summer they must endure an invasion of big bottoms in bad shorts, booming foreign voices and boors who fail to realise that under the French code of courtesy, any approach from a stranger should begin with a polite “Bonjour” – and be followed by at least a minimal effort to start the conversation in French.

But the fact remains that international surveys have repeatedly found that foreign visitors rate the French capital as one of the world’s most hostile places - although France is currently also the world’s most visited country.

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/RudeParisians

Mobile roaming charges to be dropped

MAKING a call or sending an email from a mobile phone is set to cost the same across the whole of EU as it does in France from December 2015. 

Under proposals adopted by the European Parliament’s industry committee, mobile phone companies will be obliged to offer 'roam like at home' packages across whole of the EU or allow customers to subscribe to other service providers without changing their SIM card.

See more at: http://www.connexionfrance.com/european-parliament-mobile-phone-roaming-charges-law-action-operators-warning-15573-view-article.html#sthash.U9FS46oU.dpuf

Brittany Ferries deals

Brittany Ferries have just released a great new offer for all destinations in France!

Only £156 return package to all routes to France with car (up to 4 passengers!!)

Valid until: 26/04/2014

Travel Dates: 

Until 1 May 2014 (ex UK)

Routes: 

All Routes to France (Portsmouth to Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, St Malo, Poole to Cherbourg, Plymouth to Roscoff

Offer: 

£156 return car and up to 4 passengers (£39pp)

Up to 4 days away

All other fare elements as public fares

Supplement:

Portsmouth/St.Malo ex UK £35 per booking

Restrictions:                           

Certain travel dates over Easter will not be available

Excludes BF Holiday bookings

Excludes other promotional fares

How to book:                                       

Online - see link below

Conditions:                             

Promotional conditions apply

Note – This offer can be booked within 24 hours of travel

Travel can commence in UK or France

Other:                                    

Motorcycle 50% of vehicle fare

Additional supplements apply for extra passengers, pets, larger/over height vehicles plus trailers and caravans.

Book online here:

http://tinyurl.com/BFerries-1

REMINDER

Other offers available at the moment:

Save up to 20% on French villas and apartments

Valid until: 31/03/2014

Book online here:  

http://tinyurl.com/BFerries-2

Save 25% on selected gites in Brittany

Valid until: 31/05/2014

Book online here: 

http://tinyurl.com/BFerries-3

'No-frills' ferry service

Brittany Ferries’ new no frills “économie” line will begin sailing on March 25. It will offer four weekly services between Le Havre and Portsmouth and one weekend service out of Santander in northern Spain.

Bookings will open online at www.brittanyferries.com/economie in a few weeks. Until then, they can be made by calling 0871 244 1400.

See more at: http://www.connexionfrance.com/no-frills-ferry-service-le-havre-portsmouth-santander-britanny-ferries-15509-view-article.html#sthash.dTNnxDFU.dpuf

Riviera Michelin stars come and go

Four restaurants in the Alpes Maritimes have been awarded their first Michelin star - the highest honour for chefs around the world. But it wasn't all good news with the release of the latest edition of the Michelin Guide, six restaurants actually lost their coveted star.

More information @ http://tinyurl.com/Restostars

Save on InterRail Passes

A new special offer from Voyages-sncf.com, the UK’s leading expert in European rail tickets and passes, will see InterRailers saving 15% on the cost of their pass this spring.

Anyone booking a pass on or before 31 March 2014, for travel starting on or before 16 May 2014, can benefit from a reduction of 15% off the usual price.

Travelling on an InterRail pass is the best way to explore Europe by rail. Covering up to 29 European countries, a Global Pass offers travellers the flexibility to travel around the continent by train, visiting cities, beaches and mountains and anywhere in between. Valid in a variety of durations, there is a pass available for every style of holiday or break.

Promotional fares, including the 15% saving, start at £136 for a youth (12-25 years of age) or £208 for an adult (26 years+) standard class pass valid for 5 days of travel in a 10 day period. Alternatively, for those with time on their hands, a standard class pass valid for one month of travel throughout Europe starts at £327 for a youth or £494 for an adult.

Visit Voyages-sncf.com for more information on this new InterRail offer. This offer is only available to book until 31 March 2014, via the Voyages-sncf call centre on 0844 848 8885 and at the Voyages-sncf Travel Centre at 193 Piccadilly, London W1J 9EU.

Toll charges on the rise

From 1st February 2014, the toll charge on Escota motorways in the south of France will rise by up to 20 cents. The increase will affect people travelling across the Alpes Maritimes, the Var and from Aix en Provence to Italy.

In the Alpes Maritimes, just one toll price will rise in Antibes by 10 cents, pushing the total cost to three euros. Meanwhile in the Var, toll rates will jump by 10 cents between Le Muy and Puget sur Argens, and also between Saint Maximim and Trans en Provence.

On the Aix en Provence and Italy stretch, the toll price will hike by an extra 20 cents. This adds up to a 0.73% rise on average for motorways managed by Escota.

Chill out in a French chateau

Enjoy almost 50% discount when you stay at the Hôtel Château Cléry, Rue du Chateau, Hesdin Labbé, 62360. Tel 00 33 321 831 983; http://www.clery.najeti.fr.

Set in 12 acres of parkland, and just a short drive from Calais, the 18th-century Hôtel Château Cléry is easily accessible via the Eurotunnel or ferry. With this offer, you can visit this historic hotel for just £79 per room, per night.

What's included and when

• Valid Sunday-Friday from 1 February to 30 April
• An overnight stay for two people in a Deluxe double room
• A buffet breakfast (worth £26)
• A welcome cocktail – this will vary, depending on the day you arrive (worth £16.50)
• Complimentary access to the hotel's fitness area and sauna
• Alternatively, stay on a Saturday night for £99

Mobile beneath the waves

The Channel tunnel has until now meant a pause from the multifarious ringtones of mobile phones. But, from this spring, Eurotunnel passengers will be able to make calls from beneath the waves.

The north tunnel, through which Eurostar and car-carrying shuttle passengers are transported from Britain to the continent, is to be plugged into the mobile phone network for the first time.

British operators Vodafone and EE, owner of the Orange and T-Mobile brands, have recently signed a 10-year contract to offer mobile and internet services beneath the Channel, and expect to have the service ready by March. EE is promising 4G by summer 2014, and Vodafone intends to make the fast mobile internet technology available in future.

Save up to 25% on 2014 Holidays

Customers can save up to 25% on Brittany Ferries range of cottage holidays, apartments, villas and hotels in France, Spain and Portugal on both accommodation and return sailings. This is available for travel throughout 2014 (this is even available during the Easter and summer holidays).

Booking until: 03/02/2014. Website link.

Fixed-rate taxis to/from railway stations

Those busy bees at SNFC, the French Railway Network, continue to work at improving their services. One of the newer ideas is the Porte-à-Porte taxi service to and from certain train stations (currently Paris: Gare de Lyon, Montparnasse, Gare de l'Est, Austerlitz and Bercy; Aix-en-Provence; Lyon; Massy; Nantes; Rennes and Strasbourg, with more stations being added gradually) for a pre-paid, fixed price starting at €9.90 for up to 4 people including bags.

All you need to do is complete the form online with your address and train info and it gives you the price (click on 'Nos Tarifs' to get a quote without train info). The driver will send you a text message just before your pick-up, and will wait if your train is delayed.

As it’s a fixed rate and pre-paid, you both avoid waiting in line or getting overcharged. Book the day before your trip no later than 8pm.

Note: At the moment  this service seems to exist only on the French website, not on the English site. http://www.pap.sncf.com/starcab/ Of course, that may change.

Memorial tourism

The year 2014 will see two major commemorative events in France: (1) the 100-year anniversary of the start of the First World War, and (2) the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

This so-called 'Memorial Tourism' offers the opportunity to experience heritage sites that contribute to the visitor's knowledge of the history and culture of a place. Fundamentally, Memorial Tourism has four key elements:

1. to bear witness to the events of the past

2. to explain the events, and put them in perspective

3. to encourage reflection by future generations

4. to encourage economic development of places that might otherwise lack significant tourist attractions

Some people question the validity of this form of tourism, but the counter-argument is that it enables visitors to understand history in a positive, if sometimes emotional way. In particular, there are four types of sites that are favoured as part of this approach:

1. Historical sites, where significant events occurred, such as Oradour-sur-Glane.

2. Commemorative sites, i.e. places dedicated to paying respects and remembering, e.g. the Somme BattlefieldMemorials

3. Informative sites, that approach history from a specific angle, e.g. the Caen Memorial

4. Educational sites, which seek to place history within a wider, more educational approach.

More information: http://connexionfrance.com/Memorial-tourists-visitors-First-World-Day-D-Day-Normandy-Christian-Mantei-15335-view-article.html

New Year changes in France

Postal charges increase by an average of 3% with the price of a stamp passing from €0.63 to €0.66.

VAT on cinema tickets drops from 7% to 5.5% with under-14s offered a new flat €4 rate to see a film.