French Conections www.frenchconnections.co.uk

Lovely stay in France in the South of France...super weather (always helps) and a very uptodate villa with British satellite TV plus great wifi, bluetooth speakers. The owners clearly love the place and have lavished time and care getting it ready for guests.

The pool is heated and has as salination system.. no chlorine so better for skin etc.There was a hot tub. Good in the evening which we used when we didn't want to swim after a busy day sightseeing. This owner left a bottle of wine as well....

Just remembered the oven, gashob etc are all new in the past 12months as was the large fridge freezer.

My hint..... send loads of questions before you book... if the owner is on top of questions and comes back to you quickly then Im pretty sure that the owner is very on top of the property. Only choose an owner who is quick to respond. Check the testimonials too.....

We booked a house via French Connections in 2015 but when we tried to submit a review (a balanced one- we had a lovely holiday) onto their website, they told us their "review" system was only for testimonials!!. As our review contained some less positive information as well as the good stuff it was sent to the owners for their approval. It has not been published.

So bear this bias in mind when you look at "reviews" on their site. You will probably only see good ones.

We booked through French Connections and were very disappointed with their service. The are an advertising agency so if you have a problem with the gite you have to take it up with the owners. We stayed at the Limes. The staircase looked steep in the advert - which showed a photograph from behind and the side. It did say the gite was suitable for children so we thought ok it's a reputable company we'll book. When we got there the stairs where so much steeper and narrower than the photo's suggested and in our opinion not suitable for our 3 year old (or the elderly). It's a shame there is not photograph taken from the top of the stairs. You had to walk down crab like sideways!! Even though they were sent photographs French Connections just felt as no one else had complained before us there wasn't a problem. Wouldn't use them again.

I have no doubt that the people at frenchconnections are lovely but it seems they don't have a system whereby the available dates are updated efficiently on their website once bookings made - as I found out after hours of trawling the site with our dates as a key part of the search criteria.

I don't know whether it is the house owner's responsibility but what a pointless exercise, renders the site useless when booking last minute.

We all stayed here to celebrate a family 60th, and it was wonderful. From the very beginning it was easy - we used frenchconnections.co.uk, and found the site easy to use, and it was all an easy ride from there. I don't travel well so I felt a bit ill when we got there, but the air soon perked me up. I can't wait to return.

French Connections is a service my parents put me on to a few years ago now. I first used them in 2002 and we've booked through them each year since. Its essentially an advertising portal for owners of various kinds of properties in France. The site also features a hotel finding service, but its key strength is the range of self catering properties available.You book directly with the property owners but the French Connections team are really helpful and knowledgeable should you have any questions or queries. I've just booked a Gite in the Tarne valley for a fortnights fishing and boating break to keep the kids happy (and me too of course)! And as ever, the site and service was excellent. I had a few questions as you may do, so I was really pleased to receive an email the same day answering all my queries with extra info thrown in.All round a great service that I'd be happy to recommend to anyone interested.