jpie

We have around three weeks from around October 20th, 2022 until November 12th on our trip to France and are starting to think about how we would like to spend that time. We will be starting our trip around Bordeaux and need to be in Amsterdam on November12th. Since we will be leasing a car through the Peugeot program, we probably prefer to return the car within France at an airport to save the drop off charge for returning the car outside of France. Plus we would prefer to go south towards warmer weather given that it will be late Oct. early November versus just doing a "slow road trip" ending in Amsterdam.

We are probably interested in spending at least 5 nights somewhere around Toulouse. After that we thought about heading down towards Girona/Roses, Spain for a bit, and/or Aix-en-Provence, and then dropping the car at the airport in either Toulouse or maybe even go as far as Lyon. Spending some days in Lyon also sounds appealing Other airport drop options in the south of France are Montpellier, Marseilles or Nice. We can pretty much fly to Amsterdam from any of those places. If we are willing to pay a drop off fee we could go somewhere like Seville and just spend the whole time there and fly out.

I would love to hear Ideas of where you guys would want to go that time of year without getting into mountain/snow and preferably warmer versus colder. We aren't expecting beach weather of course and the temps don't have to be super warm-just trying to avoid really cold temperatures. We have pretty much been to all the places mentioned above but could be happy spending more time in any of them. I think the thing throwing me a bit is the time of year. I am thinking a larger city might be more fun than an off season beach town for instance.

rhon

Our autumn trips usually run from September to mid November and we did consider venturing out again this year. In starting to research, we found out that there is a new rule in France which affects around fifty departments .. This rule is that cars in some municipalities of these departments are required to be fitted with winter tyres, or at least have chains. Some of the departments listed came as a surprise so it might be worthwhile looking up the list to see whether it will affect you. As I said, it is not everywhere in these departments, obviously those parts affected by snow, but finding out where is not easy and I imagine it would be easy to stray into these areas. I also have no idea how vigilant the authorities will be. We have leased cars several times and I know they do not provide winter tyres. That may change with this new legislation. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this new rule can offer advice.

rhon

I neglected to mention that this law applies from November1st to March 31st each year. We have now decided to wait and do our usual Spring trip from April to mid June.
Good luck.

jpie

Thanks for the info about tires. I will start to research it. When you have done your fall trips in the past, do you have any favorites places you liked to go?

rhon

Our last last few trips have each been for ten weeks and, as ' slow travellers', we stay at least a week, sometimes two in one place in self catering holiday rentals. We really like south west France and Burgundy but do not limit ourselves to those. If you click in my name, you can see the trip reports I have posted here, pre Covid of course , so go down past the ones at home. The first is from 2012 where I neglected to label areas, then 2014. These were in Spring. 2016 and 2018 trips were in Autumn. We really enjoy country France and do not stay in or visit large cities. We also do not tend to stay in popular tourist hotspots such as Sarlat or St Remy de Provence, preferring to stay near and visit on day trips. Some areas we visit do fall a bit under the radar of tourists from the US, Australia ( we are Australian ) etc who tend to gravitate to the same regions everyone visits.
There are so many lovely places to visit it is hard to decide what to see and what to leave out when planning.
Bon voyage.

jpie

Thanks for the reply-I will check out your trip reports. We tend to kind of "mix it up" a bit in terms of whether we stay in tourist places or not, Like you we are slow travelers especially since we are dual nationals so we often spend over 3 months at a time there. I stay in tourist places when I am with friends who haven't been before-I think Sarlat off season for example is a fairly ok base. The last time we stayed in St Remy (pre-covid) we had to book at the last minute due to a bug infestation at the rental we had booked for a month in Bordeaux. We kind of booked it on a whim and it was the peak summer season. It was terrible-I would never stay again, at least not during any of the spring/summer season.

MaineGG

There is a spectacular highway (D914) along the coast between Collioure/Port-Vendres and the Spanish border. If you're heading to Roses/Cadaqués/Girona and aren't in a hurry, this is a wonderfully scenic drive. We took this route southbound for a daytrip from Collioure then returned much more quickly on the autoroute. There were times I was glad not to be in the northbound lane only a couple of feet from the edge.

There's a good description here: https://www.dangerousroads.org/europ...7621-d914.html
(Contrary to this site's name, though, I would not really call this road dangerous for a careful driver.)

jpie

Thanks for the suggestion regarding the D914! That looks very interesting. We have been in that area a fair amount but don't know if we have ever take that road. We have taken a road that heads south from Barcelona that is their equivalent of a "D" road with lots of hairpin curves that was kind of white knuckle but ok if you take it slow.