Haha bilboburgler!! That really wasn't what I meant by "easy"!! Just wondered whether there is border control or anything like they have USA/Canada

rhiana, since the introduction of the Schengen area, there are virtually no border controls between France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany etc....you just drive straight through. Sometimes you don't even know when you've crossed the border.

annhig and everyone else, thank you very much for all your help with this. We have more of less decided now that we are doing Rouen, Dinan, Bayeaux but still unsure of time scales. Just wondering which out of the 3 places would you recommend us spending the 3 nights (the other two places will only have 2 nights each). Thank you

Dinan.

It gives you a lot more choice of driving south and west into Brittany.

See also the trip report, link was posted up above.

Which link is that please Julia?

i vote Dinan too, rhiana, for your 3 night stay.

It's half way up this thread. Posted by gardyloo at 1.14am on June 26th.

And here's the link for you...

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-movements.cfm

But you'll have to scroll well down to find the Brittany part.

You can also look at my photo report about spending 5 days exploring Dinan and its environs. At the very end of the report are links to every major tourist office website in Brittany:

http://tinyurl.com/86s4v8f

The highlight towns in this area are Dinan, Dinard and Saint-Malo but other smaller places to visit would be (towns/villages/château) Léhon, Lamballe, Jugon-les-Lacs, Quintin, Château de la Hunaudaye, Château de Bienassis, Combourg, Moncontour, Bécherel, Saint-Alban, Saint-Suliac, Saint-Méloir-des-Bois, Saint-Juviat, Tréfumel, Guenroc, Saint-Christophe de Valains, Bazouges-la-Pérouges, Coglès and Dol-de-Bretagne.

Well thank you very much for all your help. This is my first time using this site and can't believe how helpful and mind you have all been! The trip is now booked, we are leaving in the 1st August! I'll let you know how it goes!!

glad you've found us helpful Rhiana. i think that it helped that you were so open to suggestions and hadn't got fixed ideas before you posted.

hope you have a great trip, and come back to tell us how you got on.

Well hello there everyone. We're back off our hols and thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much for all your help. Next time I think we'll go for longer but the places you all suggested and all the info you gave really helped me organise my holiday!

hello, rhiana,

thanks for coming back and telling us that you had a good time.

any chance of a slightly longer trip report?

Hi an hog, I've never written a trip report before. How do I go about it? Are there any guidlines?

Writing trip reports is easy and there are no guidelines. If you need inspiration you might try looking at other people's trip reports. When you're on the Fodors home page scroll down to the bottom and you'll see the section for trip reports so just click on a few and see how most people write them. I write mine differently because I do photo reports using a different format that's not possible to do on Fodors. When I'm done I just create a thread and give a link to my photo report. Some people might give a link to their blog site if they want to incorporate photos. Other people might write their reports here on Fodors but provide links to a photo album within the report. Pick the format that you like best.

When you create a thread here on Fodors there is a little box to check if your post is a trip report so just check that box and then your post will be marked as a trip report when it appears on the forum. I'll be looking forward to seeing how your trip turned out.

So I write down where I went, hotel I stayed in, things I saw... That kind of thing?

Yes but you focus on whatever you like, some people love to talk about the flight over, others the food they ate and yet more want to talk about the problems they had. We seldom have poetry, often jokes and sometimes useful information.

It's all up to you ;-)

rhiana - the great thing about trip reports is that they are all different. it's the individual styles that makes them so interesting.

so by all means read a few to get the general idea, but we want to read YOUR thoughts about YOUR experiences.