Touring France by Motorhome

It’s hard to stress just what a wonderful range of places there are to visit in France, from majestic mountains to beautiful beaches to vibrant cities. France likes motorhomes (called camping cars) too, so you’ll frequently find you can park for the night withing striking distance of nearly every attraction.

Here are just a few of the places we’ve visited. Click on the links below to get the full blog post, with the GPS co-ordinates of where we stayed overnight.

1. Paris (blog post here)
2. Epernay in the Champagne region (blog post here)
3. The Loire chateaux – Chenonceau (blog post here)
4. Beynac on the Dordogne (blog post here)
5. Anglet, Biarritz (blog post here)
6. Carcassonne (blog post here)
7. The Camargue Wetlands (blog post here)
8. Chamonix Mont Blanc (blog post here)
9. A lavender farm in Provence (blog post here)

Being so close to the UK, France is relatively inexpensive to access by motorhome. Alongside a huge campsite network, there are also thousands of free and low cost official ‘aires’ to stay overnight, many of them with service points for taking on water and disposing of waste. Using these can drastically cut your tour costs.

As an example, we toured France for three months in 2018 spending £36 per night, for two people (see the cost breakdown here). This includes the cost of the ferry, and a couple of one off costs – a new wheel bearing for Zagan and having Charlie (our beloved pooch) put to sleep. They don’t include vehicle tax, MOT, vehicle insurance, breakdown cover, personal travel insurance or depreciation of the motorhome.

Some things aren’t particularly cheap in France: the numbeo.com cost of living website gives a good idea of costs for eating out, buying basic foodstuffs, clothes and so on (here’s the numbeo page for France). Here are some tips for keeping your costs down:

1. If you prefer using campsites some or all of the time, check out the ACSI Camping Card scheme, which offers lower-cost camping out of season.
2. Many of the motorways are toll, but there is always a free route nearby. Yep, it’ll be slower, more tiring and use more fuel, but it’ll also be more interesting.
3. Supermarket food costs are fairly similar to the UK. We mix up budget supermarkets (Lidl) with more varied local shops, street markets and French supermarkets (Carrefour, E. Leclerc, Auchan and Intermarche).
4. Eating out costs are comparable to the UK. Eating out during the day is often cheaper than in the evening: look out for menu du jour where you get a limited choice of starter, main and desert for maybe €15 to €20 a head in less touristy places.
5. Supermarket petrol stations usually sell fuel much more cheaply than other (even very nearby) petrol stations.

France is an all-year motorhome touring destination. Our personal preference is to travel in the spring and autumn, when the weather is pleasant across much of the country, and the aires and campsites are relatively quiet. That said, we’ve also enjoyed visiting the Alps in winter, and the busy coastal areas in the summer.

As a general rule we try to avoid being in the north during the winter, as the skies tend to be grey and the temperatures low. If you do plan to head up into the high altitudes of the Alps, Pyrenees or the Central Massif, having a well-winterised motorhome is helpful for staying warm and comfortable when it’s -10°C and a blizzard outside!

In July and August temperatures in the south can get rather warm indeed, with the inside of the van getting into the mid to high 30’s (degrees Celsius). We tend to seek out shade on campsites or cooler air in the mountains when the heat is too much for comfortable sleep at night.

It’s also well worth keeping the French school holidays in mind when planning where to go (here are the dates). Much of France is on holiday in July and August, which means very busy aires and campsites. We were caught out once when heading up into the Alps in winter, finding the ski aire we were heading for was almost completely full and all the electricity hook-up points were gone, when the aire had been almost empty the week before. If you do plan to use aires, we suggest arriving between 10am and 2pm to increase your chances of getting a space.

There are tons of ferry routes from England and Eire to France, and of course the Channel Tunnel for a faster, sea-free route. This interactive Department for Transport map shows the routes: click on any of the ports to see crossing times, which ferry companies service that route and any current disruption to travel.

Our personal preference is to use the north France ferry routes into Calais or Dunkirk, or to use the Eurotunnel (the Channel Tunnel). The reasons for this are:

• We live in Nottingham, so the Dover port is relatively easy for us to access.
• We’ve done most of our travelling with our pet dog, and preferred the shorter crossings so he could stay in the motorhome and sleep.
• Shorter crossings mean fewer worries keeping our bacon and sausage stash frozen.
• We’ve used the Channel Tunnel a few times, and really enjoy it. The crossing’s only 35 mins compared with at least 90 mins for a ferry, and we could stay in the motorhome with our dog. It also avoids any issues with rough seas or sea-sickness.

We also try to book our ferry or tunnel well in advance, as crossings can fill up or get more expensive closer to the date of travel. Unsociable hours crossings are also cheaper, but arriving in France on unfamiliar roads in the dark can be a tad stressful, so we tend to try and arrive during daylight.

A few hints and tips for ferries and the tunnel:

• Don’t forget your passports and pet passports!
• Your ferry or tunnel company will tell you when to arrive. If you get there an hour earlier, they may well pop you on an earlier departure for free, or if you’re too early, may ask you to leave the port and come back later.
• You’ll have to turn your gas off at the bottles for the crossing. Our fridge stays cool for several hours once it’s down to temperature, so we just switch it to 12V and sometimes shift frozen cool blocks from the freezer to the fridge.
• We switch our satnav to kilometers, and programme in the destination in France while waiting for the departure. We then switch it on before leaving the boat or train, so it gets a GPS lock quickly.

Finding places to overnight in your motorhome in France is easy. There are thousands upon thousands of aires, free (wild) camps and campsites. We’ve used all types of overnight stopover in France, but we avoid staying in motorway aires as these have a poor reputation for security.

Here are some of our favourite resources for finding places to stay:

• Other blogger’s maps (see more info)
• The Camperstop book of aires (see more info)
• The campercontact.com database and app of motorhome aires (see more info)
• The park4night.com database and app listing aires, campsites, free camps and French businesses who allow overnight stays (see more info)
• The ACSI CampingCard out-of-season camping discount books (see more info)
• The France Passion book which lists French businesses allowing free overnight stays (see more info)
• All the Aires France books (see more info)

We tend to wing it a little when travelling France these days, so we never book ahead nor do we tend to do much research. In the past we’ve carried a Lonely Planet France and Rough Guide to France to help us find interesting places to stay.

Right – some stuff to know about driving in France before you arrive! Here we go…

• You’ll need some mandatory bits and bobs like headlamp deflectors – check out the AA PDF of equipment.
• Speed limits and and distance signs are in km, not miles. We switch the units on our satnav to kilometers when we’re waiting for the ferry. France is peppered with speed cameras, and it’s easy to creep over the limit, so pay special attention to your speed.
• If you break down anywhere on a motorway (including service stations and slip roads), you have to use the orange phones to get help (this is usually free) or call 112 from your own phone. Your breakdown company can’t recover you from a motorway (a road number starting with an ‘A’) or a few sections of fast N road in France.
• You have to stop at STOP signs. This means coming to a complete halt, which can feel really difficult especially where a STOP sign’s been placed right across the main road in a village just to get you to slow down.
• Flashing amber lights mean ‘proceed with caution’ or ‘you can proceed but give way to the right’ so you can pass them, but slow down and check for anyone popping out from any side road to the right.
• France has a weird ‘priority to the right‘ rule. More about this below.
• Motorway signs are in blue, like the UK. If a sign says ‘peage’ on it, it means it’s a toll road so you’ll have to pay to use it.
• France is trialing a lower national speed limit for rural roads. Most roads which were 90kph are now 80kph. Ignore your satnav and look out for road signs.
• When you get to a town or village, slow down to 50kph, or slower if there’s a lower limit posted. The sign showing the start of the 50kph limit looks like this (there’s a similar one with a diagonal red line at the end of the village):

A handful of French cities have ‘clean air’ restrictions over which vehicles can enter their centres, referred to as the ‘Crit’Air’ scheme. There are also a similar number of larger areas which can enforce restrictions in the event of abnormally high air pollution.

You could very, very easily drive right across France several times without getting anywhere near any of these zones, we have. Have a look at the RAC website here, which explains the scheme and lists the areas it applies to.

If you do plan to head into the zones which Crit’Air applies to, you’ll need a windscreen sticker for your van. France issues 6 classifications of sticker, depending on how old/clean your van is. Each zone can then determine which classes of van can enter them. The sticker cost about a fiver and you can order one here.

Service points, sometimes called ‘bornes’ in France, are areas where you can take on fresh water, and empty your grey water tank and toilet cassette (black water). Some have electrical hook-up which enables you to recharge your leisure batteries for an hour or two, although this is often hard to do as it means occupying the service point and preventing others accessing it.

They’re normally a drive-over drain, with an installation off to one side with two taps: one for taking on fresh water and one for rinsing your cassette out. A few tips for finding and using service points:

1. Almost all campsites have them. If you pay to stay on a site, the services are included. If you don’t stay, some sites will still let you pop in and use the services for a few Euros.
2. There are thousands of service points outside of campsites in France, sometimes at supermarkets and petrol stations, but normally at aires.
3. You can find service points using apps like campercontact.com and park4night.com.
4. Service points are usually located on aires, but can be stand-alone (with no associated parking) too.
5. In winter water supplies are often turned off at times when the supply might freeze: hors gel. Use the apps to try and find ones which are still turned on (check the comments), or plan to visit a few service points.
6. Most service points charge a few euros, between €2 and €5. Some take cash, others cards (carte bleue means a bank card), and some older ones require you to visit a local business and buy a token called a jeton.
7. Some service points let you charge your leisure batteries for an hour or two, typically for about €2 an hour.
8. Some folks unwittingly use the fresh water tap for rinsing their toilet cassette: we use anti-bacterial wipes to clean the tap before attaching a hose pipe or using a collapsible water carrier.
9. The design of some drains makes it difficult to get positioned correctly when disposing of grey water. Having a flexible extendable hose helps get the water into the right place.
10. If the water to the service point is turned off, we sometimes use our grey water to rinse out our cassette.

As long as you have a valid Pet Passport (details of the PETS scheme here), you can travel to France with your pet dog, and return into the UK without your pooch having to go into quarantine (important: the requirements for this may change when the UK leaves the EU).

We’ve done this many times, and have had no issues. A few hints and tips if you want to tour France with your dog or dogs:

1. If you don’t have a pet passport, contact your vet early as it can take some weeks/months to get them arranged.
2. To return into the UK you’ll need a vet on the continent to administer a worming treatment and complete a section in your Pet Passport, then allow between 24 hours and 5 days before re-entering the UK. There’s a useful Google Map of vets which can carry out this procedure, but our experience has been most vets are well aware of it and can do the job for you.
3. You’ll need to declare your pets when booking the ferry or Channel Tunnel, and pay an additional fee for them.
4. Although French supermarkets have wide ranges of pet food available, don’t assume your specific brand will be on the shelves. Either take enough for your trip, research ahead to see if it can be bought in France, or plan to transition your dog to locally-available food.
5. Leishmaniasis is endemic in Mediterranean Europe, so plan to get either a Scalibor collar or Advantix treatment which protects against sand flies, as well as ticks and fleas.

That’s the end of this guide, thanks for reading!

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