Road Trip to South France

[Alastair]

Hi All.

Im taking my Evora from the Midlands to Cannes at the beginning of August.  Planning to do Route Napoleon but struggling to work out rest of route - dont want to spend more than half the trip on boring autoroutes.

Planning at leaving some point on the Thursday and need to be there by mid afternoon on the Saturday.

Anyone got any experience of doing this sort of drive and if so which routes would you recommend?

[gghc87]

We’re doing something similar with a group of friends for the Historic gp at monaco this year. We’ve taking it casual (4 nights down) so we’re only driving couple of hours am and the same pm the route avoiding motorways  is roughly Calais, Laon (Champagne region) , Dole , Chamonix (mont blanc) , Turin (motor museum), Monaco. 

[Alastair]

Can understand the 4 nights.  I’m slightly concerned how the car will enjoy doing 6 or 7 hours of driving in a day.  However will test this out on a long weekend blast round Scotland in May ?

Starting to wonder if doing the bulk on motorways and coming off for a little bit of fun may be way to do it?  Even thinking of going through Germany to get some unrestricted autobahn to liven things up.  Get down to the Alps, then do a a trip back across into France.  2 nights is the max which is the problem.

[Steve V8]

Hi Alistair, We did a European road trip last Summer, set the Sat-nav to avoid motorways and ended up in some beautiful places.

We didn't book anywhere in advance, just decided roughly where we wanted to go, and worried about accommodation when we got there,  we'd use Sat-nav or stop at a bar or restaurant with Wi-Fi and use Trivago. 

I'd recommend the Alpine passes through Grenoble if you heading straight to South of France, however if you're thinking of doing some Autobahns in Germany the Swiss Alps and Toledos of Northern Italy then Monaco and through to Cannes.

[Alastair]

Cheers Steve.  Not booking accommodation would certainly give feeedom especially if traffic issues on routes.  Only worry is wanting to know the cars are safe overnight.  Likely to be a Ferrari or Lamborghini with the Evora.

 

Starting to think it needs to be three nights and not two if I want to go “rural”

[Steve V8]

The parking can be an issue, city centre hotels often advertise secure private parking, then give you a pass and send you to a public multi storey. Seems like some have 200 rooms and 5 parking spaces. Some are excellent, it's a bit of a lottery. 

Driving wise, avoid the city's between 4&6pm it's just as congested as it is here.

Is your Lambo or Ferrari driver aware how close they will be to Modena/Bologna about 380 miles east of Monaco I belive. I did the Lambo Museum/factory tour for my 50th birthday, incredible, requires pre booking.

[Alastair]

?thanks for the advice

[Geoffers]

Did this trip in my Evora back in 2016 when we drove down to the Monaco Historique GP. Like you we didn't want to spend loads of time (& money) on the Autoroutes so planned a route which was almost entirely on National roads, the only Autoroutes we used were the free section from Dunkirk (where we sailed to) to Lille & a short section to get around Lyon. We had 3 overnight stops at Reims, Beaune & Grenoble using Booking.com to find places to stay. The route we took was:

Day 1: Dunkirk - Lille - Douai - Cambrai - Saint Quentin - Soissons - Reims. (We went via Soissons to approach Reims past the old GP circuit, via Laon is shorter)

Day 2: Reims - Chalons - St Dizier - Chaumont - Dijon - Beaune.

Day 3: Beaune - Macon - Lyon - Bourgoin Jallieu - Grenoble.

Day 4: Grenoble - Serres - Sisteron - Digne - Castellane - Grasse - Nice (where we stayed, caught train to Monaco for the racing).

Hope this helps.

[Alastair]

Brilliant. Thanks Geoffers will check this route out

[dave excell]

Ann and I drive down over 3 days, sometimes on the east and sometimes west If going down the west then don't miss out on driving over the Millau bridge and visiting the exhibition just off the auto route. Some nice hotels in Millau town with secure parking. If going east then Geoffers route is good but after Lyon we would keep in France and head to Orange and take in the Roman theater before heading to Nice and Monaco. A warning about Monaco traffic on Friday as well as the weekend, its horrendous as roads are closed. Train from Nice for us pensioners is 3 euros return

 

[Alastair]

Cheers Dave.  Planning Route Napoleon from Grenoble as we are staying in Mougins to the North of Cannes.  Keep reading things saying this is meant to be a great drive and anticipating that part will take at least 5 hours.

[Jacques]

If possible, I'd like to make a trip along Route Napoleon this year. We'll see. But I heard that it's a nice trip with great scenery?

Kind regards,

jacques

[Geoffers]

12 hours ago, Jacques said:

If possible, I'd like to make a trip along Route Napoleon this year. We'll see. But I heard that it's a nice trip with great scenery?

I would say its a 'great trip with nice scenery'. It certainly is a great drive, excellent roads & not too busy, but there are better scenic routes in the area, although the views down to the Mediterranean coast on the run down Grasse are spectacular.

On our return trip from Nice we took the D6202 following the River Var, after Entrevaux turned right onto the D2202 through the Gorge de Daluis, fantastic road & scenery. Then took the D78/D2 over the Col du Champs to Colmar then the D908 over the Col d'Allos. I can thoroughly recommend this route for a great drive & some truly wonderful scenery & views. One word of warning though, the road on the decent of the Col du Champs to Colmar contains some quite severe drainage channels which run across the road & can be quite tricky for low sports cars, on a couple of them I scraped the nose of the Evora on the ground, even taking them at an angle to only have one wheel in the dip at a time.

[Jacques]

Duly noted. Thanks for the heads up Geoff. I've been driving around the Eastern part of France before, amongst it, Colmar, Epinal, Géradmer where I had a house. Roche Diable is also a nice view. But the trip was only me on my Laverda motorcycle, although I was chased for many miles out of Colmar by the police in the middle of the night - nor worries though, they just wanted to take a look at my motorcycle ;) This time, I'd like to bring my wife as well, and get more South and around inside the Massif Central and use the Route Napoleon et al, and test out the Esprit.

Thanks for the description.

Cheers,

Jacques

ps: shouldn't be a problem, as my Esprit is standard height, and it's actually a bit of a Landrover. Unless I manage to lower it before, of course

Not me in the pic, but road looking good and what I am searching for.