Welcome to the 8th France
For Families newsletter - we hope it finds you all
fully refreshed from the summer holidays. While they may seem like a
distant memory, especially for those of you who have children settled
back at school (hopefully!), your thoughts may already be turning to the
next holiday, whether that be later this year or sometime in 2006. Early
planning can be really helpful, especially if you are after something
specific - we have already come across gites that are fully booked for
next summer.
Tips on planning your next
holiday
Well there's no better place to start looking for a gite than France For
Families. We've just added two new gite sections covering the
Lot-et-Garonne (and Tarn/Gers) and
Provence. This bring the total number of links to gite owners'
websites on France For Families to more than 200.
Don't forget to book your
channel crossing early - if you book now you can secure a
non-cancellable return ticket for a car plus passengers with
Eurotunnel for
just £98, even travelling out/back on peak Saturdays next August.
Interestingly, if you have more than 5 members in your family, the
current Eurotunnel price is cheaper than the corresponding
Speed Ferries
price!
Skiing
If you love
skiing but haven't booked yet you are likely to find the peak
Christmas, New Year and half term weeks already sold out. But there is
still plenty of availability outside the peak times, often at
substantially reduced prices. Again there are links on our
Alpine Accommodation page to websites offering chalets and
apartments in the main skiing areas.
Day Trips
If that all just seems too far away then why not consider a day trip or
weekend break to blow away the winter blues. France For Families has a
small section on
day trips to France. If you have any suggestions for day trips then
we would love to hear from you. Recent suggestions made to us include:
- Take Speed Ferries direct to
Boulogne. And spend a day in this pleasant town browsing the shops
in the old quarter, visiting the aquarium, shopping at the Auchan on the
main road to St Omer...and why not round it off with dinner at the
Buffalo Grill! Not very French we realise, but our children adore
it.
- Travel as foot passengers on a ferry to Calais. Then take the shuttle
bus into town and walk back one bus stop to the area with lots of
cafes/restaurants, where you can feed hungry children and chat about how
you want to spend the day. Try the Café de Paris for lunch. It's a 25
mins walk to the beach which is a great place for the kids to unwind,
although it obviously gets very cold and breezy in the Autumn months.
We recommend that you check carefully on the return bus timetable and
allow plenty of time to get back to the ferry.
Vive La France
Further ahead, remember to save some holiday to visit the
Vive La France
exhibition at Olympia in London on 20th - 22nd January 2006. This is
the UK's biggest French life and holiday property exhibition and is well
worth a trip.
New regional content
The France For Families team has spent this summer in
Normandy and
Provence. We've already made some minor additions/adjustments to
the website content. But we are planning to extend those areas
significantly in the coming weeks.
E111 and Reciprocal Health
Arrangements
We already reported on this earlier in the year
but there have been further developments and so we thought it was worth
giving you an update. Historically travellers to France have been able
to get healthcare under a reciprocal European agreement. All that was
needed was a document called the E111 which you could get from your
local post office.
There have already been changes to the rules which means that every
member of your party needs their own E111. But from the end of this
year the E111 will cease to be used and will be replaced by a European
Health Insurance card. We have already received these. If you have any
queries on this we recommend that you check the
Department of Health website.
Please note that you are still recommended to take out travel
insurance. The reciprocal arrangements cover basic healthcare costs.
But not everything!
Travel Advice
Travelling through France en route to your holiday destination can be a
joy, and most of the time journeying is hassle free. However during
those peak weekends in the summer when the French are setting out or are
returning from their annual 'congé' it can be an entirely different
story. By checking beforehand on the excellent French web-site
www.bison-fute.equipement.gouv.fr/ you can find out which weekends
and more importantly which motorways (autoroutes/péages) will experience
traffic delays.
This year we decided to try and find a way round the problem as once
again we were heading south through the notoriously bad Rhône corridor.
No-one in the family relished the thought of sitting in traffic jams.
Our solution may help some of you in your future travels. Normally we
would take 2 days to travel south, making a
stopover on the way around Dijon/Beaune. This year we left England
on a Thursday night and stayed in a
hotel in Calais, leaving everyone refreshed for an early departure
on Friday morning. The roads were empty and we had an easy journey
south on the A26 to Troyes, A5/A31 and finally the A6 on down through
Lyon. We arrived in our holiday area and decamped for a further night
not far from where we were holidaying. Not only had we saved ourselves
long delays and time spent in the car but we also gained an extra days
holiday.
Advice for travelling on the main motorway
through Lyon.
There are 2 options for travelling on the autoroute through Lyon. Our
preferred route has always been to stick on the A6, driving through the
long tunnel that takes you on to the A7 (literally following the Rhône
River through the middle of Lyon). This is an excellent route providing
traffic is free-flowing. However this year a momentary loss in
concentration of the car map reader resulted in us following signs for
Marseille at Junction 32 just south of Villefranche-sur-Saône (which was
the direction that we were heading!).
The A46 is an excellent autoroute which goes round the eastern side of
Lyon and comes highly recommended. It may be a few kilometres longer but
we reckon that outweighs the risks of taking the main route through Lyon
itself.
Opening of the A28
It looks as if the long awaited new 125 km stretch of the A28 from
Rouen-Alençon will open at the end of October. Unfortunately no exact
date is given, so whether or not this will help people travelling at
Half Term is not yet known. This will be a great help for journeys to
the western regions of France. The new autoroute will have 5 junctions,
2 viaducts and 6 rest areas and should cut the journey time by as much
as 50%.
Avoiding Paris on journeys to the South
If you are heading south towards Orleans and beyond, then
circumnavigating the Paris Périphérique can be avoided. Although
navigating your way around Paris is not impossible, other routes can
save you a lot of hassle in the long run. One such route is to drive
south from the channel ports via Rouen (A16 and then A28). Rouen is
straightforward to drive through and rarely has delays. Once through
Rouen follow signs for Evreux and Dreux, by taking the A13 east for a
couple of exits in the direction of Paris and then exiting at Junction
19 for the A154 to Evreux/Chartres, joining the A10 north of Orleans.
Just before Junction 19 and the turn-off to Evreux there is a rest area
that makes an ideal stopping point for lunch if you have been on an
early morning crossing. Otherwise it is a useful toilet stop as there
are no more 'conveniences' until reaching either the A10 or the A11 at
Chartres.
Changing money in banks
This year we became aware that fewer and fewer banks seem to offer over
the counter services for changing money - whether that be travellers
cheques or changing large Euro notes. This is worth bearing in mind
before your holiday as you decide in what form you will take your
currency. The trend definitely seems to be for using cash dispensing
machines.