After being kicked in the head by a horse, I agreed to drive from London to Pyrenees on the first day of Easter half term. I intend to go down the A28 instead of going past Paris. What can I do to make this less stressful/stupid?
So far I have:
- bought a Flexipass Le Shuttle ticket so I can drive onto the first train that's available
- bought a Bip & Go toll tag so breeze through the toll gates
- booked an overnight hotel near Le Mans
Anything else? Is there a Tebay Services unmissable aire? Any delightful villages just off the autoroute where I can pee/buy a baguette/drink coffee/break the journey/scream into the void?
Will I need snow chains and if so are the "standard" £20 ones okay...?
‘Paul’ aires are a tiny bit better.
Food & petrol aires are shit in France IME, even in comparison to average UK ones and they're often totally rammed too
Find any small town just off the autoroute and you'll beat them by miles (even if you just go to a supermarket) and likely find far cheaper fuel too
That late in the season you’ll probably not need chains. If you do, pretty much any big supermarket will have them. Do you have winter / all season tyres with the snowflake / mountain peak logo on them?
Be prepared for many of the away from motorway petrol stations to only take cards and be entirely automated - so no toilets and no coffee.
French speed cameras seem to be set for 131kph on a 130kph road. Haven’t received a ticket so I’m assuming they can’t actually get me, but twice now I’ve been through a camera, been flashed and checked my speed and not seen that I was obviously speeding. Limit is 110 in the rain, but it was bright and sunny when they went off.
When using Peage with a tag, the far left hand lanes are usually reserved for tags and allow you to pass through at up to 30kph. They are height limited though to 2.0m. So if you’ve s roof box they may not be suitable.
The motorway down to Bordeaux is ruinously boring. There’s simply nothing there of note - Le Mans, Tours, Poitiers, Chateleraux all passed by with dull mildly undulating countryside. Frequent driver changes would be advised.
Assuming you're going south on the A20 there is cheap fuel just off the motorway here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HQe5JPjdAnSpYL1e6
About 4 hours south of Le Mans just past Limoges.
I fill up here when dropping hire cars off at Limoges Airport.
French self service fuel pumps will automatically take 120 euros off your card and refund the difference once you have completed the transaction. Some card providers can be a PITA with this.
Depending on time of travel it's not always a good idea to bypass Paris, I find after 10pm the peripherique pretty much always flows freely. The time and distance you are adding on going past Le Mans is significant.
(any biggish super/hypermarket will very likely have a fuel station)
Many of the 30kmh toll booths will allow vehicles over 2m, we used several of them last week in a 2.8m tall van. At the cheap fuel place mentioned above, as you come off the motorway and approach the shopping centre up to your right....directly across the 2nd roundabout is a superb bakery (a national chain I believe) Marie Blachere.
If you don't have the correct tyres, you must have either chains or snowsocks. Snowsocks are available all over France at about 35eu...but probably better off buying some prior to leaving. It depends exactly where you're going in the Pyrenees but for most of it, there's a requirement to have winter/all season tyres or chains/socks.
https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/actualites/A14389?lang=en
You also need to be aware of the Barrier Free motorways.... may not affect chosen route and the Toll Tag OP has will (should?) handle the charging aspect.
@smokey_joe I found last week they were pre-authorising €200 a go. They seem to hold onto the full amount far longer than say shell do when using pay by app in the uk.
Oh, and “aires” with just a coffee symbol on them, yeah, you’ll find an outside vending machine dispensing a substance almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee and Jason Bourne lurking in the shadows.
Get the ferry to or back from Santander or Bilbao?
Oh, and if I was only coming from London (so with fairly certain travel time) I wouldn't buy a flexi for the way out - just give yourself a little bit of wiggle room when you make the booking (say expecting to be able to arrive @ terminal 90-120 min before you want to take the train instead of 60 min). When you get there they almost always will let you bump to an earlier train for zero cost (or maybe a little bit if you want to hop by 2 trains). You'll save money and spare yourself the "WTF have I paid for here?" moment in the flexilounge
TBH I wouldn't book a flexi at all but I can see the attraction if you're travelling a long way (say across France) and have minimal idea of when you'll get there
Have had flexi and std. Std they are pretty good at getting you on to the next available shuttle, so would never bother (the times we have had flexi it was included in the holiday).
Fuel seemed to get more expensive the closer you got to the alps.
ive only ever had std on le tunnel. Whenever we rocked up they put us on the next available - sometimes this was before our allotted booking. So we always aim to get there early and either drive straight on or grab a piss and a brew to stretch legs
I never buy Flexi. I just buy standard and aim to turn up +/- 4 Hours. Sometimes they offer you a fee to go on a different train, but at Christmas, after arriving early and being told I would have to wait 2 hours, I just drove to the departure lane (in the dark) and was waved onto the next train - which had only 6 cars in my section!
We live down near the Pyrenees and having tried various different routes over the past 10 years, we find the A28 and A10, or N10, the easiest route down, or up, to the Tunnel.
Unless time is very important, use the N10, rather than the A10, turning off near Poitiers, it is a 2 lane road, 110kmh most of the way and lorries have to stay in the slow lane. The difference in time, getting to Bordeaux, is about 10 minutes and the N road is toll free. We always use it as the rest of the trip to the Tunnel is expensive enough!
We stop at LeMans on the way up and fill up at the Auchan Hypermarket, on the return trip down we fill up at Cite Europe near to the Tunnel, which gets us down to Poiters. Don't use the fuel station as you come out of the Tunnel, it's usually more expensive and slower than the Cite Europe one. There is a shopping centre near the junction of the A10 and N10 with another supermarket fuel station. It's in the wrong direction (by a couple of kms) but there's plenty of shops and a huge supermarket. There is also cheap supermarket fuel at Bordeaux junction 4 on the A630.
We have a slightly longer but easier route through Rouen, as Waze and Google have some very strange and time wasting routes through. We go through the tunnel heading into Rouen then turn off and use the D18E, then the A13, before getting onto the A28. The D18E can be busy with lorries but it moves much faster than going through the centre of Rouen.
You may need a Crit'Air vignette for Rouen and Bordeaux.
We try to use a services that has a Paul outlet, as the takeaway food is pretty good. Heading south there's one at Aire de la Dentelle d-Alencon. There's others on the A10 past Poitiers but nothing on the N10. If you pull off the autoroutes then search out an Ange Boulangerie which are also pretty good. There's one just off the N10 at Angouleme that we use and another close to the fuel at Bordeaux.
There is very little that is stressful about using the route you're going. You might hit traffic at Rouen and Bordeaux, maybe Tours, but that's only during rush hours or at national holiday times. I have no idea what the roads are like Easter weekend however. The rest of the time, I doubt you'll see a traffic jam going or coming back. Depending on what day you're traveling you may find times on the motorway where you'll not have a car ahead or behind you!
I doubt you'll need snow chains, depending where you're going, also the requirement for all season/winter tyres ends on 31st March.
It's a long drive but shouldn't be stressful, speed camera detectors are banned in France so we use Waze to spot them.
It was 10 years ago so no idea if it's still the same but we found Aire Jardin des Causses du lot very agreeable. My wife was 7 months pregnant so we stopped a lot and this was the best. Not sure if it's on your route or not
I know the A28 as far as Rouen, my wife is from there. We usually stop for refreshments at the Arie de Bosc Mensil. They have fuel, a descent café and a shop.
We don't fill up there, we wait until we get to Rouen, there's a Super U in Bihorel about a mile off the A28 (N28 at that point) which is the cheapest I've found.
As someone mentioned above, be careful of the speed cameras there's one just as you are about at Rouen on a down hill section of the road. It's had my father in law a few times.
As others have mentioned the Crit'air thing costs so little it's easier to buy it than work out if it's absolutely necessary.
When we head down that way we get a post evening rush hour train over to calais then stop in Rouen, if you plan to be crossing 12 hours earlier in the day then I would expect you to get further than Le Mans before needing to stop for the night, you could be there by 11am. I'm not sure if that's what you mean when you mention the first available train.
When we've gone earlier in the day we find a little town that's near the main route and stop there so we can see a little bit of the countryside, let's the kids run round. Get a pizza etc. Last time we stopped near a stately home type place near Tours that was a nice break. Late night stops then just use an ibis on the main road.
The Michelin app will route plan for you and give you all the different time x petrol cost x toll cost options, so use that to make informed decisions depending on if you value time or money.
We got a toll pass which sticks to the windscreen, added benefit to this if needed is that if you travel in April you won't actually get a bill for the tolls till maybe May.
Automated petrol machines and the lre charging of €120 is one to watch, In an effort to avoid being too badly stung on the crazy motorway prices for petrol I ended up with €360 locked away for the bank holiday weekend in exchange for 3 lots of €10 of fuel.
The motorway petrol pricing varies wildly, if there are any other petrol stops nearby then the price plummets.
Static speed cameras won't send tickets to the UK as a brexit benefit, but reportedly if you are caught by the police then they will take you to a cash point to pay on the spot, allegedly, I've never had that happen.
Blind spot mirror for the passenger wingmirror to save looking over your left shoulder just in case 4 million times, and then we pack a sponge and soapy water to clean the bugs off the windscreen every 100 miles or so.
Here’s a link to the best routes south avoiding the more pointless tolls;
Thank you all very much for the advice. There's some gems in here. Some of you apparently not just know the route but live on it!
I hadn't appreciated there would be such a premium on fuel - it looks like the aires are charging eur 2.00 per litre of e10 while the "street price" is eur 1.78!
I completely forgot about the Crit'Air sticker. I need to order it today.
Hoping for boring and quiet all the way down...let's see...
I was very glad of my snow chains in Les Arcs at Christmas, for the last 100 meters into the apartment car park! Practise using them before you set off, I got mine off eBay.
There's a steep downhill and tunnel on the A28 as it enters Rouen which has a very low speed limit that is enforced with relish by cameras even at 3am, don't ask. Take it steady it's easy to miss as momentum can catch you out.
There’s a steep downhill and tunnel on the A28 as it enters Rouen
They have fuel, a descent café and a shop.
It's literally downhill all the way
fuel is cheaper in the UK than france so fill up at the last petrol station you can hit before the tunnel - be that in Lonon before you set iff, or one just off a junction near the tunnel
I hadn’t appreciated there would be such a premium on fuel – it looks like the aires are charging eur 2.00 per litre of e10 while the “street price” is eur 1.78!
Have you not seen the difference in the UK between motorway and 'street'?
We did Brugges to Bordeaux then back via Paris in 2023, used the Autoroutes and just stopped for a quality lunches in the cathedral towns/cities. Worked on the theory that they'd have an 'old town' where we could park & walk to find a nice restaurant - worked well,
I'm a regular driver to Northern Spain through France.
The only thing I can add to the above is get yourself some audio books for the trip. The right one can make the drive a pleasure.
Don't underestimate how crushingly dull the northern half of France is to drive through (on autoroute's at least) and just how big France is. Hot swoping drivers (who can sleep in the passenger/back seats whilst the other person drives) is key to getting to the south of France in one hit safely.
On the way down set your satnav for the Tesco petrol station in Ashford, TN24 0YE. That's where I brim the tank and collect the clubcard points.
Don’t underestimate how crushingly dull the northern half of France is to drive through (on autoroute’s at least)
I quite enjoy it for some reason in the middle of the night. We usually cross at around midnight then do 3 or 4 hours of crushingly dull autoroute. It's actually quite enjoyable after 5 hours of UK motorway chaos.
It’s actually quite enjoyable after 5 hours of UK motorway chaos.
It's fast and efficient and lane discipline is a marvel......but there's only the occasional non descript brown and concrete coloured graffiti covered industrial roadside buildings to break the monotony........and French Europop/techno on the radio.
Good tip above - take a good spoken/audio book.
Echo comments on the tunnel, book standard and just head for departure and you’ll get put on one.
re French service stations, had a mixed bag. Some been fairly grotty but most relatively solid. Wouldn’t assume all awful.
Good to have the crit’air sticker just to dot all the i’s. Don’t forget you and yours high vis etc in the boot
Don’t forget you and yours high vis etc in the boot
NOT in the boot. Has to be reachable by every occupant without leaving the vehicle. Halfroads for breathalyser and take spare glasses for anyone who needs them too. I’ve never actually heard of anyone being done for any of this, but I wouldn’t want to be the first one to find out.
Fuel seemed to get more expensive the closer you got to the alps.
The price is getting higher. What do you expect? 😉
There is no need for breathalyser kits, that went out years ago and I've never heard of the need for spare glasses. Rumour is that the brother of the then transport minister made breathalyser kits.... When this was discovered the requirement got dropped.
Diesel is around 1,68 euro here in the rural SW, so I'd expect it to be about 1,62 in the cheaper northern supermarkets. We never use autoroute services to fuel up, we know our fill ups points now but otherwise we just look for a large town, small city, on route, there'll be a supermarket with a fuel station.
Excellent call on the audio books or even podcasts, really help the kms pass if it's a good one.
Yep as said, Tescos in Ashford for the tunnel on the way out or Tesco Dover if taking the ferry. Then I usually stop at Limoges for fuel and Maccy D's or nip into the supermarket for lunch. I usually stop at the one on the North side though https://maps.app.goo.gl/8zwcewEkcsqVmbjh6
I always go Orlean, Vierzon, Limoges, Toulouse route as Its cheaper than Clerment/Millau or Bordeaux as a big section of it isn't toll road. Depends on which side of the pyrenees you're going though. I don't mind the drive and have done Pyreness to Leeds in one hit before, last stretch was not nice though, the A1 can be very dark....
Doubt you'd need snowchains in April, I think it's only law until the end of March any way. Don't think I've ever needed snowchains in the Pyrenees actually and I've driven to a few ski resorts.
Halfroads for breathalyser and take spare glasses for anyone who needs them too
Is this still a thing? I haven’t had them in the car for years now.
On the way down set your satnav for the Tesco petrol station in Ashford, TN24 0YE. That’s where I brim the tank and collect the clubcard points.
I'm headed down there in June, and it'll take me the best part of a tank from the grim North to get there, so thanks for that
We use the petrol station at Ashford (only a tiny bit of a detour). Also we buy food in small French villages where possible, it's so much nicer.
Friends drove to Les Arcs (Alps) in April a couple of years ago and needed snow chains, but this was a rare occurrence.
The little wooded aires are nice if you need to stretch your legs (which we do every 3 or so hours when swapping driver duties), but the loos aren't always nice.
If travelling during school holidays, it may not be possible to get an earlier slot for Euro tunnel, but usually it's possible (we did this Sunday morning).