France Road Trip

The road trip is due to happen in the first half of 2026.

The idea

Leashia mooted the idea to me about a four week road trip around France a couple of years ago. I started my research and it soon became clear that:- 1. France is very big 2. four weeks would not be enough time and 3. there are so many amazing places to see ! So I decided to split France in half and focus on the west of the country, a sort of imaginary line west of Paris. If this trip went well we could always return to explore the east of France. Depite this, our planned four weeks still ended up being five weeks, 36 nights in total to be exact.

Research and resources

We have previously researched and successfully completed two road trips [our Roadtrip to Greece and the Iceland Ring Road] and this meant we found it easier to plan for this one. I started reading and reading, looking at maps and then reading some more.

The Rough Guide to France was an excellent resource and I discovered a copy of Back Roads France in a charity shop which was great! The interweb was always there as a back up if I neded to find out more.

Our planned route

We don’t live far from Newhaven so our plan was to get the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe and go clockwise through Normandy and Brittany before meandering south along the west coast of France towards the Pyranees. After skirting along the Pyranees we would head east towards Carcassonne before heading north back towards the English Channel.

Accomodation

I booked accomodation around six months in advance using Booking.com and airbnb.

It took a long time to decide where to book to stay overnight and for how long and this was based on what was in the area that we wanted to see and the distance involved. In general, but with some exceptions [like Bordeaux] we wanted to avoid the major cities as and focus on smaller towns and rural areas. We knew that we could always fly direct on a budget airline to a city if we felt the urge.

Budgeting

We did not set an actual budget for the trip. We rarely book 4* or 5* accomodation or eat at plush restaurants which keeps costs down. We do have part time jobs and we are both lucky that we can work away from home on our travels which is most helpful.

What to bring

There’s plenty of room in our Ford Focus to take lots of stuff. The trick is to stay organised and be able to find what we need during our travels.

Insurances and documents

We knew from our previous road trip to Greece that we needed to have our car registration and insurance documents to hand. We printed out other docs such as travel insurance just in case. We also had everything stored on the cloud that we could easily locate.

The completed agenda !

This is our planned route and overnight stops:

Day 1 Overnight ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe.

Day 2-3 Drive to Liseux, stay 2 nights.

Day 4-5 Bayeux, stay 2 nights.

Day 6-8 Dinan, stay 3 nights

Day 9-10 Angers, 2 nights.

Day 11-12 Amboise, 2 nights

Day 13 Poitiers, 1 night

Day 13-15 Angouleme, 2 nights

Day 16-18 Bordeaux, 3 nights

Day 19 Espelette, 1 night

Day 20-21 Cauterets, 2 nights

Day 22 Foix, 1 night

Day 23-25 Carcassonne, 3 nights

Day 26-28 Cahors, 3 nights

Day 29-30 Figeac, 2 nights

Day 31 Le Puy en Velay, 1 night

Day 32-33 Bourges, 2 nights

Day 34-35 Chartres, 2 nights

Day 36 Les Andelys, 1 night

Day 37 Ferry from Dieppe to Newhaven.

A reflection of our trip

3000 miles later we were home. The 37 days flew by! Our research paid off and our destinations and accomodation were well chosen. The roads were great- no potholes! We only used toll roads a few times when we were in a rush to get to our destination.

We loved the food and ate loads of cheese. The supermarkets were superb and made ours in England look absolutely shite! Fresh local food and real fish, meat and cheese counters with real humans helping you. Many of our picnics consisted of local cheese, saucisson, baguette and salad. Most towns had a weekly local market with local delicacies at reasonable prices and we loved it when we had to time to explore them and stock up. We found that the food and restaurants were generally a fair bit cheaper than at home. Petrol was more expensive.

A few tips for anyone planning to do a similar trip:

  • Consider researching and booking restaurants in advance, especially if it’s a Sunday or Monday when many are closed and options may be limited.
  • Mobile data coverage in France is pretty terrible so screenshot any important information that you need, [such as check in information]. Wifi in bars, cafes and restaurants is also not common.

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