France holiday - heatwave

Accidentally voted YANBU. YABU. Massively. Why book a holiday to Europe in the height of summer if you don’t want it to be hot?!

The carrière de lumières in les Baux de Provence is beautiful and nice and cool (buy tickets online before). I suggest going to Arles and Avignon if you're in St Remy, but you'd be limited by outdoor temperatures (you'd want to park in the town centre car parks which are expensive but the alternative would be a long walk or bus ride which I'd provably avoid at the moment). There are lots of things to do and see, the tourist offices in both towns are brilliant.

Apart from them when they attend their climate change conferences...

I live about an hour east of Provence, I've been here for ages so am used to the summer heat but this is not normal (we've had record breaking temperatures in several places over the past few days. If you've got a/c and a pool you'll be alright, if not open the windows from about 2 am until 8 am and make sure everyone has a fan in their room. Plan trips that don't involve being outdoors (grottes, museums, art galleries, shopping centers etc.). Most big cinema complexes show films in English (VOSTF).

The worst days forecast are Friday and Saturday this week.
Good luck 😅

Where in Provence are you staying? We are here at the moment and about 1.5 hours from the coast so you might be somewhere nearby. We have a pool a few minutes walk away but we don’t tend to sit by it very much. Our town also has two great public pools although we’re too lazy to use them. There’s also a river nearby you can swim in. No a/c in our place. Clearly, it’s hot, but it’s not too bad. We go into town in the morning and have a coffee and pastries from breakfast. We tend to go for a walk later in the day too (nothing strenuous but we’re surrounded by woods). The nights are glorious; I’ve been sitting outside until midnight reading. The weather generally changes around the 15th Aug (this Friday, also a public holiday FYI) and I can see from the weather forecast that it’s going to cool down a bit at the weekend.

Isn't this the point of "abroad" holidays?

I usually go to Scandinavia 😆

Currently 38 where we are, off to the pool shortly. We knew it was going to be warm, we didn’t plan to go anywhere likely to be cool and wet!
We’re more surprised by the huge increase in groceries and fuel to be honest. Never known petrol to be so much more expensive than in England!

This is indeed a great book though maybe too depressing for a holiday read! Highly recommend though

You sleep from 1300 to 16.00 and sit in a shady square with a cold drink the rest of the time.

There are only four Tube lines which have air conditioning (District, Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines) in addition to the Elizabeth Line. None of the deep level lines have air conditioning and some maintain horrendous temperatures throughout the year (especially the Central and Victoria Lines-good old London clay keeping things toasty!)

It's not exactly big news is it, nowadays, it's hot in Europe in August!

Just go

Shock , you book abroad in August and are surprised it's hot ;)
Do what the locals do. Do things early morning or in the evening, long leisurely lunches in air-conditioned restaurants in the afternoon

@Inshockandsomewhat utopia do you live in? Only had the fleet I use has a/c and it often doesn’t work. The Victoria line doesn’t have it, majority of the DLR doesn’t. HTH.

A good nighr sleeping trick is to take a large, thin musiln scarf, soak it in cold water and lay it over your naked body just before you want to sleep at night. It really helps to keep you cool. I use this at home in London on hot nights (we don't have air con and I always foret to buy a decent fan !)

We live in France (SW). It has been 38°+ for the last couple of days and mid 30s before that. Honestly? It's fine but you'll need to adjust your schedule. Get up early, go out and do stuff. Come back and laze in the afternoon. Out for dinner later.

During the day keep all your windows and shutters/curtains closed. Open them in the evenings and keep them open all night. Buy spray cans of water and keep misting yourselves (day and night), it'll really help. All the supermarkets sell them and you don't need anything branded, just get the cheap cans. If you really can't sleep because of the heat, wring a towel out in cool water and use that instead of covers, that will 100% keep you cool overnight.

Get in the water as much as you can. All the municipal pools are currently free in our department to enable people to keep cool, maybe it'll be the same where you are. Find some lakes/river lakes if you can, but don't drive too far without checking they're open, some of our local lakes are closed due to cyanobacteria.

Fortunately Provence is full of old stone buildings, they'll be gloriously cool in the heat of the day. Enjoy your holiday, it's a beautiful part of the world.

There’s some good advice, go out early/late, take siestas! If your house has shutters, close them as soon as the sun hits. Buy water misting spray bottles from the supermarket and spray regularly. Cinq Cinq is the best mosquito spray I’ve found and you can buy that from the chemists. If you go to the beach all day make sure you have a uv parasol. Decathlon sell them reasonably cheaply, they have attachable sides so you can make a tent with them.
The worst thing about the heat is not sleeping properly at night, but you’ve got air con so you’ll be fine. Enjoy your holiday.

It’s especially important if you have asthmatic children or anyone will health conditions, as the air quality is very poor too.

I have moved and lived all over Europe, and by far the UK has the best supermarkets! With an incredible array of choice and international food (something lacking in France) and can not be beaten. I came back home to live and spent three hours wondering around Waitrose!! 😂 Especially if you have intolerances, vegan or love organic food xx

Yeah it's quite normal. It was 37C when we arrived in Bergerac this time last year. We stayed in the shade and by/in the pool and took it easy, had some lovely relaxed dinners outside in the evening, went into town when it was early/late and cooler, then for the second part of the holiday we were further north, temperatures were high 20s and we did more sightseeing.

People are right about the evening temperatures though. It was really noticeable this year that evening temperatures don't drop like they used to. Ten years ago or so when we first started going to South West France I would take a wrap or light cardie and would need it a few evenings, even though temperatures during the day would be low to mid thirties.. This year some nights it barely dipped below 25 degrees.

France has good heatwave protocols so follow the local authority advice online - there will be things like maps of locations with air conditioning and misting stations etc..

We were in Narbonne early last month and it was high 30s at the beginning of tne week (it then settled down to high 20s/low 30s later on) and it was fine.

We had a air conditioned room but found it was fine to walk around sightseeing - we just made sure we started early in the morning and had a siesta early afternoon. On the two hottest days we focussed on things like shady older buildings and air conditioned museums and galleries.