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Planning your trip
When planning a family holiday in France, it’s worth seriously considering whether you are going to fly to your destination and hire a car or drive all the way. The decision is partly financial and also practical. Are your children good travellers? Will they enjoy driving through France (for seven or eight hours at a time) or do you really want to get to your destination as quickly as possible? Don’t forget that driving to the South of France will take two days so you will be using up an extra two days of your precious vacation. If you are heading for a Cottage or Villa Holiday on the Mediterranean coast then you will need to be on the road early on the Friday morning in order to arrive at a reasonable time on Saturday (arrival time for most Villas/Gites is a Saturday usually after 4:00pm).
Cost breakdown
You might reasonably expect to pay about £120:00 return per head to fly down to Nice, although it could be lot more than this in the high season. Book flights early for the best deals. That’s £480:00 for a family of four, and then you will need to rent a car, typically £400 for two weeks (that’s for a Renault Scenic). So total cost will be around £880 to get the family to Nice with transport for your holiday.
Making the same journey by car you will have quite a few variables. Do you drive a gas guzzling 4x4 and are you planning to stay in a 5 star hotel on the way? For a “typical” family of four in a standard family car staying at a reasonably priced B&B en route your travel costs could be:
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Return channel crossing
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£175:00
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European Breakdown Cover
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£75:00 (2 weeks cover)
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Fuel
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£180:00 – Nice return in typical family car
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Bed & Breakfast stopover en route
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£100:00
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Meals en route
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£100:00
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GRAND TOTAL:
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£630:00
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So the cost of flying and renting is quite a bit more. Of course you might be lucky and get a super cheap flight from
Ryanair or Easyjet and then flying will be a better choice.
We always drive and enjoy the opportunity to see different parts of France and staying in different places along the way. It’s your choice!
If you decide to drive then a further decision will be how to cross the channel. Your choices are the ferries from Calais to Dover or from Portsmouth (good if you are heading for Brittany or South West France) or the Shuttle (Eurotunnel), which departs from Folkstone. You can book each of these alternatives from this site.
The next important consideration is the type of accommodation you would like to stay in on holiday. Some of the alternatives are:
You can book accommodation in each of these alternatives from this site.
Having decided where you are going to stay, you now need to plan your journey. We suggest you use the on-line route planner www.mappy.com. This is an excellent and straightforward tool that provides an accurate and easy to use route planner and also calculates the cost of road tolls (if driving on the French Motorways) and even calculates your likely fuel costs. Having planned your journey you can then decide if it is feasible to travel to your destination in one day or if you need to stop en route. As a rough guide the journey by car to the South of France takes about 12-14 hours from Calais to Nice.
If, like us, you will be travelling with young children then anything over about 6-7 hours driving in one day is more than enough. This means that for trips to the South of France, Provence, Dordogne, Lot et Garonne,Languedoc and the Pyrenees you will need to book accommodation on the way. We have suggestions on this site for places to stay en route. Please go to our Accommodation page
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