When we hire a car in France does a road map come with the car (they do in Australia) or can we even hire one from them? I dont really want to carry one on our holiday prior to getting the car as the ones Ive looked at are heavy books.
Thanks

We've never been offered one anywhere..though in the UK Avis does sell them. Get yourself a little Michelin France auto routier..it's aboout 4x6inches weighs nothing and has a very good index.

Thanks Jody, we checked out the Michelin ones yesterday (in Australia) and they are the size of an A4 thick book - is it easy to pick up the one you refer to in France? thanks

I've often been offered a map, but never a decent one, at least for my purposes. Just wait until you get there and pick up whichever Michelin ones apply to your trip - they're widely available in bookstores and supermarkets.

I would vote for buying a spiral-bound map book from a petrol station when you are there. We found we wanted maps with fairly high level of detail, so that we didn't get confused in the roundabouts and other turnings by roads that weren't on our map (since we might not recognize the towns on the signs). The books make it easy to have good detail without being really clumsy to fold.

On each of my previous two trips to France, I bought the Blay-Foldex Atlas Routier France. It cost less than 10 euros, has over 250 pages of maps and information re France, is at the 1cm=2.5k scale (which is what you need), and is about half the price of the Michelin atlas. I located one at a bookshop, the other at a newsagent. I can recommend these as being great value, and excellent to use.

The other Michelin maps (not the A4 book) are very thin and lightweight, and are available from petrol stations in France. Depending on where you are going, you can buy one for the area, or one for the whole of France, which will obviously have less detail. The maps that are supplied by the hire firm are usually not very good.

Thanks for the advice everyone, great help as always

Also take with you printed out maps - very detailed - of each of the cities you will be visiting, If you go to mappy.com or viamichelin.com you can get detailed maps from the highway to your hotel - including one-way streets etc. Very valuable in the center of towns that are 1,000 years old plus. (I have never found printed maps that are good enough for this.)

I've never gotten a map from Europcar in France, and I even asked for one, thinking they'd have at least a diagram on how to get out of the city. They had nothing. I did have my own maps, I would never go that unprepared that you have no map at all when you pick up a car.

I just bought the appropriate Michelin map for the area I was in ahead of time. These are just folding paper maps (yellow or green), not a book. YOu can probably get one at the airport upon landing at some type of newsstand or bookshop.

Cosmo

When we rented from Auto Europe in Avignon there was a small map in the car. However this most organized traveller had already purchased maps for each area that we were visiting!!
Maps are a must, for me and the more detail the better. I found Michelin maps for each region available at a store called Maptown.

Don't forget to ask for a town (city) map and directions at the car rental agency so that you can find your way out of the city or you could end up driving around needlessly.

We also tended to find le Bureau de Tourisme in each smaller place if we were spending more than a single day there. In St. Remy and Carpentras we received excellent info. Happy highways!