Hi. After a week in Paris, we%26#39;ll be driving down to a gite which is close to Villefranche de Rouergue. It looks like it is about a 6 HR drive. Can anyone suggest where along the route it would be nicest to stop for lunch and a break?
Thanks for your help
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It depends on when you leave and which road you take. obviously 6 hrs means taking autoroutes. Depending on which one and where there are actually stops right on the autoroute (with a bridge across) that have decent, if not gourmet, food.
I guess that your best bet is the autoroute by Orleans and Limoges. Try to leave early and eat by or before Chateauroux. A must stop is Limoges, where there is an interesting old town.
I assume that, while in Villefranche, you will visit Cahors and Rocamadour?. If not definitely leave the autoroute after Brive and go to Villefranche by Rocamadour and Figeac. Rocamadour has been touristy since the Middle Ages but is worth it. We once at a meal just outside, in a restaurant on a hillside with an amazing view of the town clinging up the rock. We chose it just for the view but the food was amazing. Simple but so delicious! all the customers were looking at one another with smiles of happiness!
We once drove to Villefranche de Rouergue from Paris via Clermont-Ferrand (we HAD to see both Clermont, where I lived for a short while as a student, and a tiny village near Rodez) and it took us one day 1/2 as the terrain between autoroutes, cutting across the Western Massif central, is very picturesque but the roads zig and zag along river valleys, up and down a plateau etc. We also wished we could have stopped in so many lovely places..
On the other hand we easily drove from Bordeaux to Paris in less than 6hrs, not including a long stop in Tours to visit the old town and had a great meal. Mind you our car was big and we drove at 150-170 km/hr for stretches, not recommended now.
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You could also stop at a shopping centre (look for Centre Commerciale) and pick up some picnic supplies, and just stop and have lunch at one of the many aires (rest stops or oasis, for the North Americans) -- some have full-service restaurants, some have just snack bars, but most have picnic tables and open places to stop and have a bite to eat. Lots of them also have running water and restrooms, as well as some place to walk a little and stretch your legs while getting some fresh air.
Unfortunately, there just isn%26#39;t much that%26#39;s all that interesting along the autoroute south -- there%26#39;s some nice things, but nothing is close enough to the autoroute to justify the faffing about that you have to do to pay your toll, get off the highway, find something, then make your way back.
As 3Conil mentioned, the driving gets really interesting once you get off the motorway, and you don%26#39;t want to be picking your way through the Lot in the dark -- it can be tricky driving, and you%26#39;d miss the gorgeous landscape. Get there as quickly as you can and start your hols.
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I guess that one problem of internet sites that estimate driving time is that they likely go by distance %26quot;as the crow fly%26quot; and do not take in account the actual terrain.
How would a GPS work in a rugged terrain? I know that it would find the road from A to B, and would even be aware of all the twists and turns of a road but would it warn about interesting geographical and historical features??
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3Conils, the two best (as far as I%26#39;ve found so far) websites for driving in Europe are www.viamichelin.com, and www.mappy.com. Their estimated driving times are generally pretty close -- it isn%26#39;t ever going to be completely accurate, but you can use it to plan drive times, hotel stops, etc., and you won%26#39;t be very far off. They%26#39;re far more accurate than Mapquest.
The GPS will point out some geography (hills, bridges, tunnels) and some historical bits -- the biggest question is whether or not the historical site is within the view of the screen at the scale you%26#39;ve selected.
In the city, a GPS will point out gas stations, banks, hotels, and Metro stops -- because those things are close enough to be seen within the screen at the selected scale -- and because they%26#39;re not usually going by at 100kph.
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Thanks you Sunshine817 for a very detailed explanation. I asked more for others than for myself, as more and more people rely on GPS.
I still prefer Maps to anything else. My parents took us kids around well over 1/2 of France. Unfortunately they both had no sense of direction so I became the designated navigator at 12, plotting the trips in advance on the Michelin maps. When we rented a car a few year ago, as noted in a previous post, I was quite pleased that I still remembered the whole area between Clermont-Ferrand and the Atlantic Ocean, Limoges and Montpellier, rather well and didn%26#39;t have to look at a map.
I understand that a GPS can show service stations, bank machines etc. etc. but so far, most of our driving the past 20 years as been around B.C. and around the states of Washington and Oregon, and the AAA and CAA maps have worked just fine.
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Between cities, we prefer paper maps, too -- you get the bigger picture, and can better see where you%26#39;re headed. I also use them to see what facilities are coming up at the next aire -- the Michelin maps have symbols for picnic areas, coffee shops, etc.
But IN cities, I would never give up my GPS. In the old towns of Europe, with their winding one-way streets, a GPS is an invaluable way to find your hotel, friends%26#39; houses.
We used ours in Italy to find the train station of towns we were visiting -- because there is almost always plenty of parking available near train stations, and because in smaller villages, they%26#39;re usually a good base from which to explore a smaller town.
We would then switch it to pedestrian mode, and call up the sights we wanted to see (if we hadn%26#39;t picked up a map by this point) -- it worked every time.
We%26#39;ve had it leave us wandering only twice -- in cities with very tall buildings (Verona and one of the small hill towns, but I can%26#39;t remember which one), it had trouble finding the signal, because it bounced around between the buildings. Not a disaster, only a heads-up.
One other time, we were headed to visit some friends, and we ended up going in circles in a housing estate -- our friend said that they had just put barricades on the road the week prior -- so the GPS didn%26#39;t %26quot;know%26quot; that the road it had picked was impassable.
But on the whole, we wouldn%26#39;t give up our GPS -- used in combination with a paper map, it%26#39;s a fabulous solution to finding your way.
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Thank you all for the great tips. Your right, I had used googlemap to estimate the driving time. I will check to see which routes it was suggesting and I will check out the better map sites you suggested Sunshine 817. I%26#39;d really like to see Limoges. We%26#39;ll leave Paris quite early - at least for holiday time -- about 8am. We have 2 weeks at the gites and plan on using it as our base for short trips around the area so will definately be visiting Cahors and Rocamadour. We%26#39;ll then drive to San Sebastian, Spain and hope to stop at Lourdes on our way there.
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