Road trippage

Make sure you do Le Mans - you can drive a large part of the track, have lunch in Arnage village and visit the museum - and Reims. Never been to Reims myself, but really need to do it soon.

I'd say try to keep it below 400 miles in any day if you have a booking for the next place on your itinerary. If you find the road is closed and it's a mountain pass you may find a sizable diversion is on the books (when I crosses the Sierra Nevada it was supposed to be the shortest day but an unusually cool spring left the main pass closed and a 3 hour drive became over 6, if you have 1000 miles already in your plan for a day an extra 200 to go round will make for a very late arrival. Not good for setting up a tent.

snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk (SteveH) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

There's not a lot of the old circuit left, but the straight past the pits is there, with pit and timing buildings on one side, and grandstand on the other. Restored to the stage where they're "safe", empty, and atmospheric as all hell. Real "hairs-standing-on-back-of-neck" stuff.

You're looking west of the city, on the N31, just after Thillois village, there's a roundabout with a road heading towards Gueux. There's a restaurant on the roundabout in an old building (visible in most of the old pics of the racing in the restaurant) - doesn't look like much from outside, and quite expensive, but excellent.

For B&B round that area, especially if you're taking the missus, I can _heartily_ recommend - only four rooms, gorgeous place - and their Champagne is _fantastic_ (and only about ?12/bottle)

Keep it to France then? Big country, plenty to see and eat, plenty of beaches?

is wot I sez. Book yourselves into aCampanile on Sunday nights though as their restaurants are open, whichisn't the case for pretty much all other restaurants.

Dunno. I'd like to do 3 weeks and at least a couple of countries. Maybe better to do a couple of countries a year than 7 in one and see f*ck all of any of them.

Those frenchist bastards haven't written it in English!

HTH.

They have, if you look closely. Specsavers is over there -->.

We managed France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium in 3 weeks, 3000 miles, and we weren't even trying for a road trip. Ok, all but France and Italy were pretty much passing through, but we still got a stunning mountain pass in Switzerland, obligatory autobahn-playing, and a pleasant breakfast in Luxembourg.

(France, potter down N roads to the alps, wander round doing cycling and walking on big hills for a couple of weeks, down to Italy for more conventional tourism, cousin's wedding just south of Rome, then head back home again at a slightly less pottering pace).

cheers, clive

If you try to do seven countries in three weeks you'll see f*ck all and spend most of your time driving which will not impress the gf.

Personally I'd do France down the west coast and take three weeks doing it, possibly Plymouth to Roscoff to start because the landfall is one of the most spectacular along the coast.

Then the coast road to Le Conquet

Carnac:

Vannes

and the gulf of Morbihan

South crossing the Loire on the bridge at St Nazaire

Down to Beauvoir sur Mer and take the very scary Le Gois crossing to Noirmoutier.

Coast hop down to La Rochelle

Then Bordeaux, St Emilion, Arcachon, the Dordogne

Pop over to Marseilles

Recreate Ronin on the way through St Tropez, Cannes and Nice and drive down the Grand Canyon du Verdon.

And then make it up yourself.

Everyone else has covered it with better info than me, I'd just say, avoid Monaco/Cannes - they're absolute shit holes. And book places, don't just drive and hope - it make it crap and worrying :-)

If you're camping in France outside peak times, drive and hope is fine. Means if you like a place you can stay around and vice versa too.

cheers, clive

"DanB" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

God, no.

We've always found fantastic places by just "drive and hope", and always been disappointed by places we've booked.

Well we didn't really know where we were going, none of us had any experience doing a trip like that, and also couldn't really camp cos of my back so were relying on finding cheap hotels - which is a worry in Monaco heh. And to be honest, with the 'bed' in Monaco - we'd have been better off camping...

On another note, me related - I was in searing agony on Saturday evening/night and my legs had felt like dead weights all day Friday and Saturday, and I woke up on Sunday morning (having being seriously doped up by a Doc on Saturday night) and wasn't really able to move my legs. Which was somewhat un-nerving. It became apparent I was able to move my lefe leg a bit and only really my right foot a bit. As the day progressed, and up until now, movement has got better and now I can move the left leg pretty much ok, although it's still very weak, and I can move my right leg a bit (which is about 10,000% as much as I could yesterday AM). So here's hoping they keep getting better and I am able to stand on them again :-)

Why? I was there a week ago and it was... unremarkable.

Having seen the pictures, it's just somewhere I want to go.

Although I'm kicking myself for not going before they repainted it :-(

Yes on that last point. Excellent roads. Castellane is an awesome little town from where you can go whitewater rafting on that amazing river. Great camp site there too, a few minutes out of town with spectacular views.

AOL - been there earlier this year and the scenery is even more spectacular than I remembered. Sometimes it helps if you decide to take your wife to all those places you used to go to twenty-odd years ago.

Mind ewe, it was bloody cold there thanks to the weather.

I loved Monaco - great vibe to it. I was expecting it to be pretentious and poncy but it seems to have transcended that and it is actually very chilled out. If you don't pre book, tourist information is always guaranteed to find you a decent room/campsite somewhere to suit your budget. Unless you arrive when there is some large event going on. In which case you do the road trip thing and find a nearby town with a nice place to stay or WILD CAMP!

I've just been looking at a possible trip for next spring, as the 'budget' airlines have stuck little charges on everything in order to bump up their headline prices to those which match the proper airlines.[1]

So, the plan in late March or early April would be:

Home to Portsmouth for the ferry to Caen Caen, via Le Mans to the 'Ring. the 'Ring to Reims then onto Clermont-Ferrand before heading back to another port, possibly Santander or Roscoff, to come home.