driving in france

[Luke]

Going on from this as a few of you are experienced in this, can anyone advise on a hotel for me, (the mrs and our little boy) to stay in. We will want to stop about half way for 1 night. We are travelling from Hertfordshire down to Calais and our final destination is St Jean de Monts on the west coast of France. Would be nice to find a hotel off the main road with a bit of counrtyside. Dont mind paying a bit more for a nicer stay. Thanks in advance

[pontyslapper]

Luke,

Don't be tempted to stop around Rouen - its a bit of a dive - seems like one giant truck stop to me, going on the experience we had once.

You'd be better off stopping somewhere a goodly dap south of Caen if you are planning on keeping that far north early on. Maybe around Vermoutiers or a bit closer to Paris, maybe.

It one of those piece of string things - it depends on your route and how far off it you want to go. With regard to nicer hotels and things, on the gites de france website, anything thats 3 ears of corn is very very nice.

Its one place to start looking I suppose.

You'd do a lot worse than check out

www.gites-de-france.com

and put in various biggish towns along your route, although these tend to be for gites rather than hotels, its worth checking the chambre d'hote section out.

[Lussac]

If you did want to stay near Rouen then LE RELAIS DE MONTIGNY at Montigny is quite good and has a very good restaurant, I've used the hotel and restaurant a few time.

[GCab]

Check that you have Europe-wide breakdown cover as well as insurance. I fell foul of this - naively assuming Audi would cover me, esp. as I went into an Audi dealer and asked what I needed to travel, and was sold plenty of spare bulbs etc. but nobody mentioned Audi recovery is UK only...