House swapping is the way to go for a truly authentic holiday experience – and it is a really affordable way to travel abroad too, writes FIONNUALA BRENNAN
LAST YEAR with the arrival of our fourth child the luxury of a foreign holiday was under threat. Two children are in school, and I work in education, so we’re tied to high season prices in July and August. Now that we have four children we need a six-seater car if we want the freedom to explore. I appreciate the value of holidaying at home – we live in Tramore and are well accustomed to both grey and blue sky beach days – but I love nothing more than bringing the family to a place where people do things differently.
And that’s where the house swap idea came in. My sister lives in Singapore, in an old colonial-style house, with a swimming pool and live-in home-help. She regularly house swaps with similar properties, mainly in the southern hemisphere, so I thought, why not? We have a modest four bed semi-d, and we don’t want to travel further than a three-hour flight. I went online, searched around and put our house profile on a site that looked a little less “Drinks by the pool at 8” and more “Spaghetti Bolognese at 5”. The listing was free for the first year.
It takes hours, first of all tidying the house and waiting for the sun to shine so as to take pictures of your home in its best light. Then you need to upload the photos and write your profile, in a way that isn’t misleading but yet sounds like a potentially fun holiday destination. Then there’s the trawling through all houses on offer on the site, mainly in France on this particular one, to find a suitable match. You send off expressions of interest and wait for people to get back in touch with you. It’s just like waiting for a phone call from someone you met at the weekend (back in the day). I have Google Earth open on the desktop at the same time, so I can search and see exactly where they are, how far from the nearest beach, lake, city etc. I have a guide book to France beside me and can check out the general area. Our “tick boxes” are that they have enough beds, a big enough car, and they are at the same life stage – with small children.
Over a number of weeks I e-mailed 20 families, less than half responded and none were a good match, we were inflexible with dates because of a family wedding. And then one arrived in that was perfect; a modest home in a beach town called St Gilles Croix de Vie in the Vendée region owned by the Lewkowitz family, who had three young children and a six-seater car. There were inexpensive direct flights at a reasonable time of day from Cork to Nantes with Aer Arann. We agreed to swap for two weeks in August.
A huge advantage of the house swap is being able to book the flights midweek – €716 for six of us, including one infant. This was the only direct cost involved in the holiday. We budgeted €100 a day for spending money including food, or €1,500 overall.
Then we just had to wait six months wondering, is this really going to work out? We posted each other brochures and tourist information about our areas. All our correspondence was in English though I would throw in “Amitiés” at the end of an e-mail to show I was making an effort. We scanned and e-mailed drivers’ licences and included each other on the car insurance – our insurers didn’t charge anything for this. We wrote detailed instructions about the house, including how to use the central heating and how to get hot water. The obsessive “is the immersion on?” seems unique to Irish and UK households. We recommended things to do while on holiday – drawing little maps of our favourite local beach, which isn’t signposted, and giving them a list of our favourite day trips.
On the day of travel we drove to Cork airport and left the car in short-term parking. I loved this part of the swap – being able to park close to the terminal building and paying for just a few hours airport parking. The security office in the carpark facilitates the handover of keys for a €3 charge. You put your car keys and the parking ticket into an envelope addressed to the person who’ll be collecting the car. Airport security hold this in their office in the short-term car park for pick up. We texted the location of the car to la famille française so they could find it once they had the keys.
The only time we saw the family was when we touched down in Nantes and they waved frantically at us from behind the glass as we walked the tarmac (in glorious heat). And then we picked up their car keys at the welcome desk and had a short stroll to the short-term parking to load up and drive to their house, which was immaculate. Oh dear. I was very glad that I had made a casserole for their dinner when they arrived at ours (in the rain). Our house is clean and tidy, by Irish standards. Theirs was very clean and tidy, by any standards, and I loved it. For example, when a lego toy arrives in our house it is opened, the spaceship, or motor car or whatever, is built once, then it’s thrown in the “lego box”. In our hosts’ house, the lego was kept separately in ziplock bags with the relevant instruction booklet. It did not feel like a showhouse though – there were toys everywhere and the children’s art was stuck up on the walls.
It was a whitewash house with blue shutters on the windows in the busy seaside town, which was originally two towns before a bridge was built between them, hence the long winded name of St Gilles Croix de Vie. There was a back garden with swings and slide and a picnic bench for lunches under the patio canopy. Inside there was an open plan living area, and five spacious bedrooms. Again, that was a huge plus – it makes bedtime in our family much easier if the children have their own rooms. It is far more comfortable than being divided between two bedrooms in a holiday house or apartment.
The house had some lovely old furniture, lots of curios and interesting books, pictures and music. It was very French but not unlike the feel of our own home with plenty of stuff, IKEA storage put to good use, and very family friendly. It was fascinating living as someone else does, seeing how they organise their lives, and certainly feeling that we were chez nous en France. The children were lost for hours in the bedrooms upstairs with the lego, playmobil and all the sorts of toys that they have at home but which are more attractive in someone else’s house.
There was an espresso maker and we’d have strong coffee in the morning with fresh baguette or croissants – they had left us notes on which boulangerie to buy from (La Poulichette on quai de la République) and what baguette to ask for (there’s more than one kind?). One of us would go down at 8am on the bike – there were bikes there for all the family including a little trailer for pulling along an infant, and the coast had miles of perfectly safe cycle track.
There was a choice of beaches, the closest one a 10-minute walk and then two-minute journey by mini-ferry. We were a five minute walk to market, which sold almost everything. Our kids learnt that some children manage without a television in their lives, imagine that! We fell into a rhythm of mornings on the beach, long lunches when the baby would nap, and walks or visits in the afternoons.
The “to-do” list the French family left us included a local windmill tour (le Moulin des Gourmands, rue René Bazin, Saint Reverend, 00-33-251-601672, www.cc-atlancia.fr/tourism/ moulins-des-gourmands), where we were shown how flour is milled and French bread baked, and a local heritage park (Le Daviaud, La Barre de Monts, 00-33-251-938484, www.ecomusee-ledaviaud.com), where we saw how families prospered in the Marais or marshland in centuries past, including demonstrations on how the most delicious salt is harvested from the sea.
We visited the very impressive castle in Nantes (Boufay quarter, 00-33-251-174948, www.chateau-nantes.fr) on the same day the Lewkowitzs were visiting the very impressive castle in Kilkenny. I enjoyed going to Mass in the local church, bribing my two older sons to come with me. There was a great choir and being a seaside fishing town they had a big celebration for the feast of Marie, Étoile de la Mer, on August 15th. Mass was moved from the local church to the town hall to accommodate the hundreds of people who made their way there carrying flowers.
The French family did some detective work on our behalf and found the nearest pub showing the Waterford-Tipp semi-final – just about 50 miles away in Nantes, but worth the trip. (John McByrne’s, 21 rue Petites Ecuries, 00-33-240-896446). My husband’s highlight of the whole holiday was arriving back in St Gilles with two tired and happy boys in their Waterford jerseys, and someone shouting “Up the Déise” from a passing car.
We were a little anxious about how the French family would fare in Ireland. The weather was not great, and that’s putting a positive spin on it. But they were insistent that they did not come to Ireland for the weather. Their older boy took surfing lessons in Tramore (T-Bay Surf Wildlife Visitor Centre, 051-391297, www.surft bay.com) in suitably blustery weather and all three of their children were able to enjoy the Irish water in our kids’ wetsuits.
They visited Hook Head lighthouse (Fethard-on-Sea, Co.Wexford, 051 397055/4, www.the hook-wexford.com), saw the abbey ruins and round tower in Ardmore and walked the beautiful cliff path there on the one day of glorious sunshine they enjoyed on their stay in Ireland (www.dungarvantourism.com).
They drove up to Mahon Falls in the Comeraghs and had plenty of picnics in and out of the drizzling rain. When the rain turned more persistent they went indoors to Splashworld in Tramore (051-390176, www.splashworld.ie) and Run Amuck, (Riverstown Business Park, Tramore 051-390551, www.runamuck.ie).
Their boys built lots of impressive lego spaceships for our children to admire and their daughter celebrated her first birthday in our house. They were charmed by the pre-match build-up in the county, watched the semi-final in our sitting room and were truly converted. They went out and bought hurleys to bring home to France with them. My mum and sister-in-law came to babysit for them so they could eat out in Tramore, and their friends organised a babysitter for us so we could go for a moonlit dinner in a local harbour restaurant (46ème Parallèle, 4 avenue Jean Cristau, 00-33-251- 558735, www.46parallele.com).
It was a really enriching experience. Besides giving us a sunshine holiday we couldn’t otherwise afford, we felt less like tourists and more like welcome house guests. I was truly amazed that it was such a smooth exchange. When we came home we both created Picasa web albums – putting our holiday snaps online – and were each fascinated to know how the other enjoyed the experience. We’ve been keeping in touch since.
This year we’re doing a two-week swap in July with a family of five, in a village close to La Rochelle – five bedrooms and a seven seater car. Their house looks somewhat more impressive than ours and does have a swimming pool, but they’re interested in deep sea fishing and there’s plenty of opportunity in Dunmore East and around.
Our children are thrilled that the house is close enough to spend a day in St Gilles and visit the Lewkowitz family. It is reassuring to think that we can look forward to brilliant sunshine and new experiences, and know that it’s a break we can afford.
House swapping: the websites
www.1sthomeexchange.com. This website was offering the first year free when we first registered. When we renewed this year there was an offer of two years for the price of one, meaning that for $75 (€56) we got membership for 24 months.
www.homexchangevacation.com. This website has members from a wider range of countries. We’ve had interest from families in Italy, Spain and Malta through it. It costs $29 (€22) for three months.
www.homeexchange.com. This website featured in The Holiday, the film with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. So if you are property rich and cash restricted, go for it. You could be swapping with beach houses in NZ or penthouse apartments in NY. It costs $99.95 (€75.35) for 12 months.
www.intervac.com. The original of the species and on the go since the 1950s. Before the internet era, Intervac published a book each year with details and photos of houses.
Go there
Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to Nantes from Shannon on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and from Dublin on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Aer Arann (www.aer arann.com) flies to Nantes from Cork on Tuesday and Saturday during the summer.