Owning your own home

It is hard to believe!

It's pretty common, however.

Amazingly common, one chap didn't bother with a skip and stuffed three tons of rubble under the floorboards.

I rented a newish Bovis home and had reason to take the kick panel off the kitchen units, behind it I found all the kitchen fitter's rubbish from 6 years before, including the kicthen packaging, fag packets and a handy copy of The Star that enabled me to precisely date the find.

If you'd waited 20 years that would have looked ace.

We found an 80+ year old lightbulb packet under the floorboards at ours, that would have been someone's rubbish back then.

Your kitchen fitter was trying to make you a time capsule and you fucked it up!

Don't worry, I put it all back ready for the next intrepid treasure hunter.

Just got my council tax rezoned.. £780 back to me thanks to effectively overpaying for the last 4 years. #csb

When I was doing up our cellar I found a copy of the Sun from 1986, when our house was split into two flats, in the crawl space under our living room floor. Then I found a copy of the Sunday People from 13th May 1934. It had some good adverts in:

Found an old victorian medicine bottle too which still had the stopper in, but unfortunately the contents had evaporated so I couldn't try them out on my eczema.

We just got over £300 back because someone who lives in the flat we used to live in must have got it rezoned. Complete surprise. It felt a bit like getting a good Chance card in Monopoly.

That's ace, did you frame any of it? I can't remember where the bulb box is now, buried under piles of rubble somewhere. We found a lot of nice green Victorian fireplace tiles under the floor as well which we'll try and make use of.

Your advert reminded me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8LcwQX_rw8

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property/property-49421741.html

On the route of this year's tour.

Forum buy...

£84k, that is tempting

Found a paper, stuffed in the floorboards in our master bedroom,from when ours was being built, May 8th 1938.

Bloody builders leaving rubbish since before the war

Got a TV Times from 1958 amongst the papers under our carpet.

£84k, that is tempting

I just wasted a couple of hours marvelling at what 1-bed-flat-money gets you on the French-Spanish border. Plenty of stuff out there that makes that hotel look a bit pricey.

The appeal of the hotel is that it could be a business- hire a manager, a chef and a mechanic, do some promotion, get groups of 10-15 cyclists out there for 1-2 week training camps.

Given the location you could potentially run it year round.

Dibs a job there

Having travelled extensively in the Pyrenees, I'd save your money and look elsewhere.

There's a reason why property there is so cheap.

Forgive my ignorance, but why is that? Cycling very poor around there?

My brother's looking at some property in Chamonix - summer seasons are just as busy as busy seasons. Lots of competition out there, but he's already got some rather significant connections lined up.

Bastard...

The cycling is great, but the mountains are very linear so doing circular routes is difficult. The area is remote and sparsely populated and is nowhere near as developed as the Alps. There aren't many ski resorts, which tend to be busy all winter and have enough trade to tick over in the summer.

A friend of mine is from the area, and her brother still lives there, but he struggles to make ends meet and is almost always contemplating moving away.

I've stayed in St Marie de Campan a few times and there were two hotels, although I think one is closed now, and they were almost deserted in June, which is when you'd expect them to be fairly busy. The village is too low to be a good base for skiing in the winter and has to compete with La Mongie, 10 kilometres up the Tourmalet. I think hotels there just about make enough money in the high season to see them through the rest of the year but it's tight.

Thanks for the insight. How much of the year would you say would be valid "cycling holiday/training camp" time?

Can anyone give me a pointer on putting a new shower in my bathroom? I understand the practical differences between electric and power showers, but have no idea as to a rough cost difference. I've just moved in and cold water pressure in the house both upstairs and downstairs isn't great.

Currently there is just a shower head connected to the taps and the pressure is pitiful as the hot water tank is on the same floor as the bathroom. Decisions is:

• Get a power shower which has a pump built in to work with the pressure, but expensive.
  
• Get an electric shower installed (with a pump) which just works off the cold water but pressure won't be great.
  
  

Any comments/ideas on price would be really helpful.

My experience of cycling in the Pyrenees at the end of September was that there were lots of potential customers, and very few people on the French side prepared to provide a service. Top of the Tourmalet there were at least 40 cyclists all celebrating/wheezing/throwing up. I dare say most would have been happy to pay for an overpriced badly-made espresso, but they couldn't, because the cafe at the top was shut. In L'Adour du Tourmalet, everywhere was shut at lunchtime except one place, which was packed. At the top of the Portalet, everything on the French side was shut. Both places on the Spanish side were open, and were full of customers. On a few occasions we went into a bar or restaurant, sat down wanting to order food, only to be told by the owner that they couldn't be bothered to serve us. Usually after they'd sat staring balefully at us for 10-15 minutes summoning up the energy to tell us that they couldn't be bothered to serve us. Like the owner of the cafe by the river in Arreau. She'd served 8 people, and apparently that was enough for one day, so we had to go elsewhere.

The problem on the French side of the Pyrenees didn't seem to be the lack of customers, but the lack of anyone who actually wanted to have any.