Driving to the South of France - Recommendations

Steedie

Steedie

Steedie

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Hey guys,

Going to the Geneva Motorshow in March, and decided to turn it in to a little adventure. Going with my dad and I plan on driving down to the south of France, take the Route Napoleon roads down in to Nice, along to just before Genoa, then up to Geneva for the show.

I want to break it up in to a few stops and stop at a couple of nice little French towns for some sleep and some French cuisine :D. Was thinking for the first day to drive to Grenoble and stay there the night. It's 7 hours from Calais so not too bad.

Second day drive down to Nice and stay there. It's 6 hours from Grenoble but I'll be enjoying the roads and stopping off in places along the way.

Third day I was just going to drive all the way up to Geneva for the night before the show the next day, going along the south of France then heading north before Genoa. That's 7 hours.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have done similar who can maybe recommend better places to stay close to those places. I'll post a picture of the route below, I don't want to deviate too much from that, but any towns or places worth staying/visiting along the way, more than happy to take a little detour.

I'd love to visit some of the amazing roads in Switzerland, but I'm thinking early March will probably mean the weather makes it hit and miss whether they are even sensible to drive on then.

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Thanks guys
 
NathWraith said:
I'll be at the show too, unsure of which dates though.

Route looks great. I'm keen to do a Euro driving trip this year.
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Ah awesome, yeah I'm undecided whether to do Thursday or Friday. Thinking Friday so it means we'd be driving back on the Saturday and avoiding Friday traffic
 
I found Nice to be a bit of a turdhole. Like a really hot Blackpool. But that was in 2007 when I did my cross-Europe road trip.

You're missing the sight of the Millau viaduct - but the roads if you went that way are nothing special (apart from being great motorways), and the Route Napoleon is certainly supposed to be a lovely drive.

It's probably too much of a detour for you to do Lake Como or the Stelvio pass, isn't it? (I was actually going to Austria myself, so the south of France added 1000 miles to my journey! :D )
 
bazzabear said:
I found Nice to be a bit of a turdhole. Like a really hot Blackpool.
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lol ...mid-summer if you are driving at peak period and jammed ... but otherwise ... not sure where you'd live in uk to compete.

Steedie said:
take the Route Napoleon roads down in to Nice
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check it has no cold weather problems too (I guess apps include european road situations ?) ,dusk, on damp roads, its more intimidating.
 
Nice is a dive, ok to drive through but thats it.

Avoid driving near Lyon between the hours of 6am and 8pm weekdays (I wish I was joking, I'm not)
 
If you can hook around to the D952, a stay in Moustiers-Saint-Mare is worth the visit before heading onto the Gorge
 
We did this in 2017, its a long drive down and we stopped off on the swiss border then the SLOW Napoleon road and based ourselves around le Verdon, the gorge is fantastic btw, take your swimming gear :) Monaco was not such a pain as i thought drive around, we went back up via all the lavender fields as i wanted to see the amazing bridge which has slipped my memory now.

Lots and lots of driving budget more for the tolls than you think, and sound advice avoid any city in rush hr..... its bad really really bad.
 
SPG said:
We did this in 2017, its a long drive down and we stopped off on the swiss border then the SLOW Napoleon road and based ourselves around le Verdon, the gorge is fantastic btw, take your swimming gear :) Monaco was not such a pain as i thought drive around, we went back up via all the lavender fields as i wanted to see the amazing bridge which has slipped my memory now.

Lots and lots of driving budget more for the tolls than you think, and sound advice avoid any city in rush hr..... its bad really really bad.
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Just used via michelin and put the route in:

Costs: *€973.37 including
Toll €248.10
Consumption €689.52
Road tax €35.75

Bang on what I thought for fuel costs, wasn't expecting the tolls to be so high :D
 
Steedie said:
Bang on what I thought for fuel costs, wasn't expecting the tolls to be so high :D
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This is pretty much the only reason I'm avoiding France. The tolls are crazy, I know the roads are great though, but crazy.
I'm driving to Spain in April and not driving through France.
 
Only minor issue you may face is the french passed some laws on having to have winter tyres in "the mountains"
Are you in france when getting close to geneva, looks like you are?
I know that area as we fly to Geneva but ski in France, however i am not sure if that rule applies to the region or how its interpreted. Its seems a little unknown currently as they were not that specific.
Its actually quite high and partly exposed up there. The french way is to turn back cars in those scenarios, you can however pick up some snow chains in plenty of places.
I only say as there is often quite a lot of snow in March in the alps.

Grenoble makes me shudder, but thats the airport, the town may be ok (its a medical Uni town iirc) but I have a horrible memories of the airport ;)
 
snips86x said:
This is pretty much the only reason I'm avoiding France. The tolls are crazy, I know the roads are great though, but crazy.
I'm driving to Spain in April and not driving through France.
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toll roads in france can usually be avoided with pretty decent equivalents, a lot of the time running more or less parallel to the toll road.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Only minor issue you may face is the french passed some laws on having to have winter tyres in "the mountains"
Are you in france when getting close to geneva, looks like you are?
I know that area as we fly to Geneva but ski in France, however i am not sure if that rule applies to the region or how its interpreted. Its seems a little unknown currently as they were not that specific.
Its actually quite high and partly exposed up there. The french way is to turn back cars in those scenarios, you can however pick up some snow chains in plenty of places.
I only say as there is often quite a lot of snow in March in the alps.
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Ah that could be an issue. I certainly wouldn’t buy a set of winter tyres just for this trip. Will research that a bit more and see if I can either adjust the route or see if i get away with it on my route

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Oh one thing, you can avoid a lot of tolls by using local roads. They are often fairly quiet and you see more anyway.

If time pressure isn't that high you can use them (or some of them) and save the tolls.
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Yeah I did toy with that earlier but when I did the full route it said it was impossible to calculate :p so will break it down a lot more. I’m not that fussed spending that much as it’s a one off though
 
If you decide to use the French autoroutes, get one of the tolls tags and enjoy the 30 KPH lanes at the peages while everyone else has deal with tickets.
 
Steedie said:
Ah that could be an issue. I certainly wouldn’t buy a set of winter tyres just for this trip. Will research that a bit more and see if I can either adjust the route or see if i get away with it on my route



Yeah I did toy with that earlier but when I did the full route it said it was impossible to calculate :p so will break it down a lot more. I’m not that fussed spending that much as it’s a one off though
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Yeah sorry cant help any more, they mentioned it on one of the ski sites, but said they couldnt clarify exactly how it would work as it was unclear
It could just be the local roads, or could be all roads. They had some big issues when a lot of snow fell last few years and people without winter tyres or chains got stuck.

It is very easy to buy chains though, supermarkets etc stock them, and very reasonable price unless you have a silly size wheel.

It will be hard to avoid because to get to geneva from france your practically forced to use that road unless you approach from the north.
Your best off just planning to go that way, checking the weather (you can get really detailed reports for the ski resorts nearby) when your there and adapting as you need to.

They do cope generally really well with the snow so i wouldn't be too worried just bear it in mind.
 
I've driven to Geneva for the motor show and I wouldn't again.

1. It isn't that interesting a drive, though you are putting some extra effort in there so fine
2. The conditions on the more interesting mountain routes can be very bad, see photo below. Was a bit hairy in places with an M5 on max performance summer tyres.
3. The traffic on the day was *horrendous* - it took more than three hours to drive from the hotel just across the border in France to the show and sit in a jam trying to find a parking space.
4. The airport is literally on top of the show, you can have a nice business class flight and walk right in, there are also nice hotels very close

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