I was looking at a Gite for September 2015 that I liked but the calendar only went through the end of 2014. Is this a case where the best course of action would be to contact the proprietor directly for information for next year?

Yep - we rented 4 gites for 2015 this week!! Three of them were "managed" by the gite proprietor, so we signed contracts & returned them. One was "managed" by the Gite office for the Dept, and they said that the Gite was available, and they would send us contracts in October. For the 3 where we contacted the proprietor, we clicked the "Contacter le proprietoir" and on the following screen we put in the 2015 dates we wanted. For the 1 managed by the Gite Dept, we clicked "Reservrer en Ligne" and put the 2015 dates on the subsequent screen.

Of the 59 gites we've rented, only one said that they would not keep our "early" request for a reservation, and that we had to contact them in October to reserve the gite.

Stu Dudley