View From Across La Manche

Drive South

The first thing that came to mind, when we got in the car, was John Hiatt’s fine song ‘Drive South’, then I couldn’t get it out of my head for most of the trip!

A couple of weeks back we were off to the south of France, the Côte D’Azure, to help a good friend celebrate a major birthday. It was our first big trip since moving here and an opportunity to remember just how vast France is. We live in the northern Dordogne, the Perigord Vert, which is already a fair way down the country (we’re about a 50 minute drive south of Limoges). From us to Nice, which was where we were headed, is circa another 800 km, depending on the route taken. Originally we wanted to do the trip by train, but you have to go up to Paris to go down to Nice and you have to change train stations in Paris. Too much hassle and a lot of time spent on trains or hanging around in stations. We looked at flying but, with the Cannes Film Festival happening at the same time, the airlines had widely adopted the Dick Turpin approach to ticket pricing. So we drove, splitting the trip over a couple of days and staying with friends halfway down.

The pretty village of Capdenac-Gare.

This has been our first major trip inside France since moving here in December 2020. We ‘opted’ to move with both the UK and France in lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. The reality was that we had little choice, since we needed to get out of the UK under the terms of the EU Withdrawal Agreement to make a full-time life in France viable. On that occasion, I drove from our village, just outside Tunbridge Wells, all the way to our rental property, near Ruffec in the Charentes region of France. Our original plan had been to spread the trip over a couple of days, but the lockdowns made that impossible, since all hotels were closed, as were all the restaurants. So we did it in one hit, leaving home in the UK at 5am and arriving at our rental place some 13 hours later, with our cat in his travel basket having complained for the full duration of the trip, apart from the half-hour when we were in the Channel Tunnel! That put me off long-distance drives for a while, but the thought of a few days in the south of France and seeing good friends made this trip an attractive prospect.

There were two aspects of French life that this trip highlighted for us. The first was the pleasures of the Logis hotels that you find throughout France. if you don’t know about them I would urge you to check them out. Logis Hotels were the first chain of independent restaurant-hoteliers in Europe and have been running for some 70 years now. It’s a great concept. It’s a grouping of what are usually privately owned, family-run hotels. They typically have a small restaurant on the premises that prides itself on using local products from local producers. I have never had a bad meal in a Logis hotel and I have had many excellent ones. They also provide very good accommodation at very reasonable prices, especially if you go for the half-board option. The great thing about them is that their restaurants are often open when other local restaurants are closed and, while we didn’t need accommodation on this trip, we did decide to book ahead for lunch on our way down the country on the Thursday (a public holiday, as it happens). We chose a hotel/restaurant, Auberge la Diege, in the pretty village of Capdenac-Gare, close to Figeac and, as ever, it didn’t disappoint. Friendly, welcoming staff, and a terrific, well-priced lunch that set us up perfectly for the rest of our drive.

The other interesting aspect of long-distance drives in France is the roads and the routes you choose to take. Much of this comes down to how much time and money you have. It’s the old adage that you can have any two of three services - fast, good and cheap. You can have fast and good, but it won’t be cheap. Similarly, you can have good and cheap, but it won’t be fast etc and that’s a good principle for choosing a driving route in France. Now, I should say that the roads, in my experience, are always good, in that they’re not covered in potholes. By and large, roads are well maintained here and any surface deterioration is swiftly dealt with. Part of the reason why the roads are generally good is that the French authorities put a lot of money into keeping them that way, but then, they earn quite a lot of money from the country’s toll roads, the routes à péage. These can be very pricey indeed and it’s not uncommon for a lengthy car journey to get into triple figures if you spend most of it on the péage. However, you cannot have a péage on a route unless there is a free alternative and it’s well worth planning in advance, when driving in France, to ensure you get the right combination of journey time and cost. The péages will cut your travel time significantly; driving from Béziers to Nice, a distance of around 400 kilometres, will take you just 4 hours if you use the péage. If you choose to avoid the tolls, your trip will be closer to 7 hours for the same journey. It’s a choice between driving along local roads, where some of the scenery can be spectacular, but you will be dealing with speed limits that can be as low as 30kph and will never be higher than 110kph (70 or 80kph are the common speed limits on most general roads and 30 or 50kph in towns and villages). On the péages, your speed limit will, for the most part, be 130kph, occasionally dropping to 110kph.

View across the countryside from the steps of the Renoir Museum.

When possible, we always use the local roads because there is so much to see when travelling through France. Going south the landscape slowly changes from the woodland and small farms we have in the Perigord Vert to the scrubland and vineyards of southern France and it’s a beautiful transition. The countryside around Nice is quite stunning and we took the time to visit the Renoir Museum, housed in the old family villa at Cagnes-sur-Mer, which is well worth the visit. That said, we did take the motorway route along the south coast simply because we didn’t have the time to meander, but if/when we do it again we’ll almost certainly build in more time and take the road less travelled - or at least less travelled by all the trucks moving between Spain and Italy!

We had a great time in the south of the country and it is a very special and beautiful part of the world, especially where we stayed, just outside the stunning village in the hills, St Paul de Vence, a wonderfully arty village and the final resting place of the great modernist artist, Marc Chagall - but the region is also expensive and often crowded and the best part of any trip is getting back to your own home and sleeping in your own bed.

Art installation, St Paul de Vence

We used the motorway again to get from Nice back to Béziers because of timing, but once we came off the motorway we pointed the car north and took our time, on a slightly different route to the one we used going south, to amble back up through the countryside to our home in the northern Dordogne. Home is where the heart is.

There you go - a ‘View From’ episode devoid of politics and not much music. I thought it would be nice to ring the changes and just talk about the country itself a little. Now, with a General Election in the UK announced for 4th July and European elections coming up on the 9th June, I’m sure my next post won’t be quite so lacking in political content!