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'Well, the reason we are now here and not in Devon, is as a result of a home exchange 18 months ago! You have been warned.'

This was how the description in a Home Base Holidays renewal listing began - and I was intrigued to find out about the story behind it. I contacted the member, Kathy, who responded right away with a full article detailing her exchange to France and how it lead to a major life change for her and partner, Mark. This is Kathy's story:

'Mark and I were both working in Devon when I first added our small cottage to Home Base Holidays. We'd been in Devon for about three years, and thought exchanging would be a nice way to see the world. When I received an email from a member in France, I hadn't even thought about a holiday that year as we had been busy spending money on our new house. However, when I asked Mark, "Do you fancy two weeks in France in August?" of course he said yes and so we went ahead and accepted the exchange offer.

Our exchangers were a younger couple, Gaelle and JP, living in Vienne, which is South Westish France near Poitiers. I had email conversations with Gaelle and we spoke on the phone a few weeks later. She teaches English, which was good 'cos my French wasn't up to telephone standard! Anyway, by the time August arrived, we both felt happy with our plans, and off we went.

We arrived at the house in France late on a Saturday after having followed Gaelle's Dad for the last 3 or 4 miles, as he had the key.

The house was amazing. As we entered the kitchen, I exclaimed, "Goodness, their kitchen is nearly as big as our downstairs!" Of course Gaelle's parents didn't understand me, but I was pretty taken aback at the size compared to our small cottage, and was imagining my exchangers having a similar but less positive shock!

The house was lovely, in a beautifully quiet situation, no passing traffic, we hardly heard any cars, just the odd tractor now and again. We love peace and quiet and spent many days sitting reading under the trees or swimming in the small pool. It wasn't long before I began to calculate, and scheme...

I had a fair idea of what Mark's pension lump sum would be (he was able to retire early if he chose) and a fair idea how much we could sell our Devon cottage for. We had both travelled and holidayed in France as children and again as adults, this being our second time as a couple. I started to use the Internet to look at house prices in France and, after an evening surfing the net (just like home from home!), I realised that we could afford to buy something really nice over here, and possibly live on Mark's pension. The next day I told Mark what I was thinking. We then spent the rest of the holiday in fantasy land, me researching on the net and discovering more and more about how to live in France! As we left at the end of our two weeks' home exchange, Mark and I had decided that we would return to France to live, agreeing a time scale of about three years. We were very excited (I was, and Mark probably was too but he isn't as noisy about it as I am!) I cried as the ferry pulled away from St Malo ... I was so sad to be leaving. I couldn't wait though, to continue my research in England and get some idea of the value of our house, and up-to-date projections of Mark's pension. I am a pretty organised and determined person and, to cut a long story short, our time scale reduced considerably. Our house was on the market by Christmas and by July the following year (just 11 months later) we left the UK to live in a rented property near to where we had exchanged the year before.

We had kept in touch with Gaelle and JP, our exchange couple, and we met them in May as we made a trip to decide where to begin our new life. They were so nice and so helpful (and we are now friends) and helped us find a house to rent. We have been here now since July 2006, and we moved into our own lovely home last November. We are loving being retired and have found a lovely spot, a little less isolated than the exchange home, but with loads of space and quite quiet.

The other best bit about this story, which started out with our home swap in France, is that, as we headed home to England from our exchange visit, Mark proposed to me. That he did it in France was so romantic ... but the rest of that story is another story! Oh, I said yes by the way and we got married in April. Isn't life amazing? You never know what is around the corner. I would never have believed it if someone had said to me that this time next year, you'll have given up work and be living in France!'

Now, even if your fantasy doesn't become reality quite as dramatically as Kathy's did (retired, a new home in France - and a new husband!), you might at least sample the good life in rural France during a home exchange holiday. See if Kathy's description and photos of their new home in Saint Savin, Poitou- Charentes will tempt you:

Our 3/4 bed longhouse is set in an acre of wooded garden, plenty of shade for the heat of the summer. Cool interior, plenty of outdoor seating. Beautiful rural France, 40 mins from Poitiers and Furturoscope, 1.5 hours to Limoges, 20 mins Montmorillon (The Town of Writers) and within the triangle of ancient churches. 10 mins from the beautiful town of Saint Savin and it's wonderful abbey. 20 mins from the medieval town of Chauvigny, glorious Saturday market, and a great bird display in the ancient city.

It is always a disappointment for the small number of members who don't receive any replies to their home exchange offers. For this reason, it seems a good idea to publish ideas for increasing response rates from time to time.

Celia, who lives in Dungaran, co. Waterford, Ireland, has recently sent this plea to fellow home exchangers:

'I am writing to ask members who receive requests for an exchange to please reply, even a one liner. I never fail to send a reply immediately either saying that I am definitely not interested, or to leave it with me to think about. It's only good manners after all.

I have had two extremely successful exchanges, and can supply references. I don't think that is the problem. I think some people just don't bother to reply if your house is not in a country that they wish to visit, which is frustrating. I have sent two requests in the last year for exchanges and I have not had any reply.'

See the recent blog post, Tips for Increasing Response Rates to Home Exchange Offers, and do forward any other tips you have.

Celia's home is an ideal base for any tourist wishing to tour or holiday in Ireland's 'Sunny South East'. See her full exchange offer, HE15369.

In contrast to the problem of not receiving replies to exchange offers, I published another post recently, Bomb arded with the Same Home Exchange Offer? based on a member's comments. Returning home after a week away on business, this member found that he had been sent the same, increasingly urgent, offer message from the same member! Being so impatient that you don't leave a few days before re- contacting a member (and then, if they don't reply, sending your message several times, really isn't likely to increase your chances of having your exchange offer accepted. Quite the opposite - if someone is so impatient and persistent on a first encounter, there's probably a good chance they would also be irritating and demanding exchange partners!)

As you know, Travel the Home Exchange Way, the Home Base Holidays blog, is updated regularly with information on various subjects related to swapping homes. I like to mention, and include links to, good articles about home exchange on other blogs and websites whenever found. There have been a few such articles recently and, to make it easy to find the answers to this competition, all you have to do is give the names of the sites where the following three articles were published. You will find this information in blog posts that have been published during June or July - to make it even easier to find the answers! Here are the titles of the three articles:

1. '6 Convincing Reasons To Try A Home Exchange'
2. 'Home Exchange Tips'
3. 'Britain: Exchanging Places in the Spirit of Harry Potter'

When you have found all three answers, send them to me, along with your full name, and type 'Home Swappers Competition' in the subject line of your message. One entry will be drawn at random on 1 September. The winner will be informed and instructed on how to claim the prize of a year's free home exchange membership. If the winner is already a Home Base Holidays member, their listing will be extended for a full extra year from the current expiry date.

The competition is also another way to encourage you to visit the home exchange blog. To receive notice whenever a new post is published, either add your email address to the 'Get email updates' box on the blog, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Do leave comments you have on any of the posts and send your suggestions for topics to cover on the blog. If you read through some of the posts, you will see that many are based on members' exchange offers - I'm always on the look-out for good quotes to use that spark an idea for the subject of a post. Such posts include (visitors) links to the members' listings to give their exchange offers some extra publicity.

The June/July issue of the newsletter featured an article by an Australian member, 'Do You Prefer a Bed to a Couch...?', in which he outlined an idea for a variation on home exchange, i.e. making a room available for a period for members' grown-up children when travelling - a room swap rather than a home swap. Many of us, with empty rooms in the family home when adult children move out, already do this. My own home is often 'London hotel' to young Canadian visitors (three more next week!) Here's some feedback on the article from a newsletter subscriber:

'I have provided a room for children of friends for years. Usually they stay 3-5 months and this has been fine with me. This gives them time to start looking for a job or actually to start their new job and save some money at the same time. I'm now 68 years old and have always enjoyed the energy of these "youngsters". I'm single and handicapped so right now my travel is limited; however, I would encourage you to offer this type of exchange to your members. I would even enjoy some "oldies" staying with me, if they wished. Thanks for the great newsletter and best wishes, Sharon'.

It's still early stages for this idea (although there are already options available such as hospitality offered and bed and breakfast offered) but, if you are a Home Base Holidays member and would like to offer a room (or request one for your own adult child), do include this in your listing. Also, let me know and I will draw attention to your special offer in a blog post.

Over the next few days after this newsletter is published, we at Home Base Holidays, and our partner agencies, will be thoroughly testing a new, upgraded system, and hoping that you won't notice any major difference once the system goes live shortly. Having been one of the very first home exchange agencies to offer an internet service 10 years ago, the time had come to have our programmer overhaul the site to make the system more robust and able to easily cope with increasingly complex enhancements that we will want to add over the coming years.

Although our programmer has been concentrating on ensuring the change over to the new system goes as smoothly as possible, we already have some ideas for additional features in the pipeline and these will start to be added shortly. A few that you will see immediately after the change over:

1. If you have more than one home listed, you will now be able to access all your listings from the same member area, using only the first password you set.
2. A new symbol, 'Pets Welcome', will be added to the summary search results. Pets Welcome will appear on the membership form as an additional tick box option alongside the current Pet Care Offered and Pet Care Required options. The new option and symbol to easily identify homes where pets are welcome (once members start using it) is being added as a result of member requests (many people like to take their pets on holiday).
3. Once you are logged on to your member area, you will see a reminder that you are logged on on each page you visit, along with a Sign Out link at the top of every page (so you won't need to return to your member area to sign out).

Working with the website day after day, it's easy to forget that not everything we take for granted as logical and easy to understand, may seem so to all new users. Just a few days ago, a member wrote:

'We were misreading the party section of the web listings. We thought it indicated the number of folks that could be accommodated by the listing. It appears, however, that it indicates the number in the offering party. Can you clarify?

Call me a dumb Canuck but we were not contacting listings that indicated a party number of less than 4 thinking they wanted a fewer number.' - David

As others may also have misunderstood the term, 'Party', as David did, I am including my answer to him:

I definitely won't call you a dumb Canuck (as I am a Canuck too!) The Party field is made up of the combined 'Adults in Exchange Party' and 'Children (if any) in the Exchange Party' fields on the membership form, and is included in the search results summary listings so you can quickly tell if your home will accommodate the number of people who will be taking part in the exchange. Then, view the full listing to see the number of people their home will accommodate and the number of bedrooms (most members will provide more detail within the description on whether beds are singles, doubles, etc.)

Do log on to your member area and search the listings again and check for any possibles you may have missed before so you can contact them with your exchange offer. Note: to narrow your results to those homes that are most likely to comfortably accommodate your own family (in your case, four), use the Refine Search feature (link included on all search results pages) or click Detailed Search (below the main search box on the Browse Listings page accessed from your member area) and choose 4 from the drop down list beside 'Homes which accommodate' before searching.

David's family has a very attractive exchange offer:

Three bedroom, 350 year old modernized and appealingly quirky cottage in the centre of the boisterous market town of Dorking. Upper windows overlook beautiful Box Hill, the picnic site from Jane Austen's novel 'Emma'. Award-winning Denbies Wines, the largest vineyard in the UK is just down the road. Named in the 11th C Domesday Book, Dorking has also hosted artistic and literary lights such as composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, Laurence Olivier and Benjamin Disraeli to name a few. Pubs/restaurants nearby but also easy access to rural pursuits including hiking/equestrian events. Direct train connections to Central London a 5 minute walk. Victoria Station is approx 25 min train journey. Good train connections to Gatwick, Guildford and the beach town of Brighton. The best of village life with easy access to London's many delights!

And to explain the 'dumb Canuck' comment:

'We are a family of four living and working in the UK. We moved to the UK from Vancouver Island in 2005. We are enjoying our extended working holiday in England and wish to broaden the experience to include Europe. Our children are well behaved teenagers and we are all particularly interested in urban and rural Spain, Italy and France but are willing to go just about anywhere. Recent trips have included Morocco, The Netherlands, Paris, Spain, Scotland and Wales. We are touring Europe this summer and hope to home swap during August. While we are not experienced exchangers, we have others caring for our Canadian home and we will care for yours.'

As we (hopefully) enjoy the last few weeks of summer in the northern hemisphere, thoughts of holidays later on this year and next year are probably far from most people's minds. However, August is an excellent time to join Home Base Holidays if you want to arrange an exchange over the Christmas/New Year holiday period or you are looking ahead to an exchange next spring or summer. The sooner your listing is in circulation, the more home exchange choices you will have.

To encourage new members to join Home Base Holidays now, we have reduced the cost of membership for August 2007 only by £8 (8 pounds sterling) so that you will pay only £21 for one year membership or £31 for two years when joining this month. Our regular rates have remained unchanged for several years and this is the first time we have run a special month long reduced rate membership offer. So, if you have been thinking of joining, now is an excellent time to do it.

To check the current rate of exchange between pounds sterling and another currency, use the Quick Converter at the top of the use the Quick Converter site.

Newsletter Contributions: We are always pleased to hear from members and subscribers and to receive contributions for the newsletter and weblog - short reports on your exchange experiences, tips you feel would be useful to those new to the idea of home swapping and any questions you have on home exchange. Please include 'home exchange' in the subject line when contacting us as messages with no subjects (or dubious sounding subject lines!) or unexpected attachments may end up in our spam folder and deleted unread.

Reading this on the Website? Use the newsletter subscribe link to add your email address and receive the newsletter regularly. If already on the list but not receiving your copy by email, there can be a number of causes:

• Incorrect email address - send us your name and correct address
• Add our email address, homeexchange@btinternet.com, to your address book or 'white list' of accepted messages
• Check your spam/bulk folder before deleting - some 'real' messages can be put there by mistake

Be Alert: If you are a current member, and should ever receive unsolicited (spam) message(s) from an unknown agency which you think could only have got your name and email address from your Home Base Holidays listing, please forward it to us. The private member area on our website is for one-to-one exchange offers between members only, not for any other purpose. It is important to be alert to potential scams on the internet (reputable businesses prominently display phone numbers and postal addresses on websites - and

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