France is a nightmare

[Provenceinthesummer]

And you think it is bad in the U.K. come to France and see what a country on it’s knees really looks like.

We arrived hoping for a relaxing road trip and holiday. Every service station is littered with rubbish, most of them they have run out of food, loo paper and filthy tables and chairs so there is nowhere to even sit.

We finally arrive at a five star hotel to find out the restaurant is closed every day for three days - apparently the French F&B crisis is worse than ours! No chef, no waiting staff. They couldn’t even provide a basic room service menu. Every restaurant in the area also closes on the same days which was helpful.

Fawlty towers ensues as we try to meet basic needs of water and resort to the mini bar nuts for dinner. The gardens and pool are a mass of wasps and flies and the baking heat makes it an unbearable experience. I have never been to a hotel with no food anywhere in the world !!

Parched, starving and exhausted we check out the following day and find a hotel with food - all good apart from the fact there is no air conditioning and it’s 36c minimum here. It’s also rated five star apparently. Sleepless, exhausted and dizzy from the heat we drive in the car to ‘cool down’ and after a few miserable sweltering nights we decide to check out to next hotel - which promises great things like air conditioning and actual food only to find out the housekeepers are now non existent, all have covid. The number of people coughing and ill around the pool and in the hotel is alarming. The food is so bad it’s made me sick every night, kids are now refusing to eat anything else apart from crisps!

I haven’t slept for over a week - now facing a 12 hour grumpy drive home, I developed a severe sore throat and shakes overnight and it’s 39c! We have paid a fortune for this ‘ holiday’ and I can not wait to get home!! 🤨

So are you now driving from Dover to Scotland?

Having come up from the Alps....

In a heatwave

Have fun....

Currently in car on way back from Provence.

We had an amazing villa with a gorgeous pool and a brilliant 2 weeks.

it was hot but so was the uk- just without the pool and local rosé we enjoyed!
We cooked some and ate out some-we like a villa as it’s more relaxing and as DC are older now and coming with GFs everyone can come and go as they please and meet for meals or outings.
I really didn’t want to come home!
I don’t think you can blame France for this one @Provenceinthesummer !!!

I don't think this was quite as specific as you were expecting, but La Cambuse du Saunier restaurant in Gruissan, in the Languedoc region right down South has absolutely amazing seafood. Most places here has great seafood other than beach resorts. Always ask the french where to go and they'll show you the best place in the area!

Oh OP that sounds very properly shit.

I hope so much you all feel better soon.

We are in the U.K.!!!! 🥳🥳
Apart from one stranded car on the M20 roads look okay! It looks a lot like France with the scotched yellow long grass and it is hotter than northern France! Figuring out if we can just keep going or should stop. We are discussing now. Ten hours away. Dh wants to go for it, I think we need to stop. Kids aren’t well and I want a stiff drink 🍹

No it’s not expecting too much to have food and a bed to sleep in.
Some people can’t see the bigger picture. If it hasn’t happened to them, we’ll it never happened. I love France and have nothing but good experiences there but the world is a different place since Covid.

@Grenouilledesjardins

La Cambuse du Saunier restaurant in Gruissan, in the Languedoc region right down South has absolutely amazing seafood.

Noted for our next day out to that part of the world.. merci....

stop. drink.
drive tomorrow.

You must have been on the road for ages.

A 10 hour drive on UK motorways is not the same as French autoroutes.

Stop, book onto a Travel lodge. You’re all exhausted, hot and hungry, thirsty . X

Thank you 14 just read that out to dh and he thinks it’s out of order as dd has tested positive. I said we can keep her away from everyone and be really careful. Ds has the shits and has been dry heaving on the side of the road and he thinks another 10 hrs is doable 😡 In the name of god.

I am sorry you had a miserable time and became ill but I think you are being unreasonable to write off all of France! Maybe July isn't the best time to be travelling there?

DH and I had 3 weeks in late April / early May and had a great time. We travelled through the Champagne are, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Loire and Normandy. Some of the time in Ibis budget hotels, some independent hotels and one week in a gîte. Apart from breakfast we never expected to eat in the hotel, we were always in places where there were plenty of restaurants.

Oh and we even got mustard! We had a day in Dijon and visited one of the famous mustard shops where there was still plenty of choice and a mustard vending machine.

Travelling out with Eurotunnel no queues at that time and we even got put on an earlier crossing. Came back on the overnight Brittany ferry Ouistreham to Portsmouth.

Not my experience in fact the reverse have found it excellent and in a very busy resort over bastille day. Staff lovely, food has been excellent better in fact than usual, everything clean. Has been lovely.

I just don't understand why people are still killing themselves to go abroad for holiday. We're making a real drive to budget as my husband is convinced we are heading for a real downturn, so foreign holidays are out for the next few years for us. I wouldn't go abroad now if I won the lottery.

Covid is everywhere, airports are on their knees, Europe is frying under extreme climate change sun, hospitality staff are threadbare.

I know holidaying in the UK is expensive, but it's so first world entitlement - When people richer than the vast majority of the planet think they have some sort of fucking right to go abroad. The world is falling apart, but I still want to go on my holiday.

I honestly can't see myself going abroad again other than some life or death situation or if I was leaving the UK to start a new life somewhere.

Oh dear you have had a rough time. I can't imagine even contemplating driving from Scotland. I'm not a fan of holidaying in France but obviously many posters are very loyal!
I have done long driving holidays through France, Austria and Germany but only in May / June and it rained.
Covid is still haunting us however much we pretend it's gone. I dread catching it en route or on holiday because I was very ill last time I had it.

Are you able to do shifts at driving? Just to get everyone home as soon as possible?

You do what you do… everyone else will do what they feel is right for their families.

Been abroad twice this year.
Absolute bliss from start to finish.
Booked two for next year and a third for October this year.. within 48 hours of returning from last holiday.

i had forgotten how much my children and I absolutely LOVE our holidays (5 star, AI, on beautiful resorts on the beach so zero culture but so much fun and relaxing, and then a superb city break)

Sorry that was to @southbanklounger

God, that looks awful @OhMerde thoughts and prayers.

I love France, we have done many driving holidays there and had wonderful times. Due to DH not being so well these days I am not sure whether we will be able to do that again, which makes me so very sad.

Oh that does sound grim OP, hope you make it home with your sanity intact. We're off to stay with relatives in France soon, and I'm now wondering whether I can smuggle a crate of mustard in and set up a stall at the village market...

Wow! Please stay away from France in future. This country does not need the likes of you!

south We booked the hotel and flights and our flights were cancelled, and the hotel refused to refund us or change the date as it was so last minute. The only replacement flights available were so expensive and that’s when dh suggested driving.
He thought it would be a good way to see the country and sunflowers. Didn’t factor in the terrible staffing issues, supply problems, lack of air con, no food being available for days on end and catching covid in a sweltering record breaking heatwave!
I am relieved we are in the car and not flying home and infecting hundreds of people. Even though I am testing negative I think I may have caught covid too. We are desperate to be home, before anyone feels any worse. I don’t know what’s wrong with poor ds but I am at the end of May tether.

How can anyone sleep in all of these caravans at night in 40-45c?

At those temperatures you don't sleep much but that's a heatwave, luck of the draw but it doesn't last forever.

I’m currently in Morzine and have been here in July for the last 8 years (except 2021). I’ve never experienced what you are describing.
Most of your grumbles are about the hotel so Trip Advisor might have been a more appropriate posting place?

I thought it was now some sort of planet saving directive and was getting worried I hadn’t seen the news and had been in the outside lane doing 70mph and was going to get speeding tickets,

Funnily enough I have found over the past few days the speed restrictions haven’t been on.
Apart from one anti clockwise M25 just before the Dartford crossing tunnels Queue Ahead 40 mph speed limit then finding there is no queue

Provenceinthesummer

I don’t mind doing the journey. I have done North London to Marbella and back a few times

Going out I get a later night ferry so everyone goes to sleep in the car whilst I drive. (It is bliss driving in the dark and everyone is quiet) I get as far into France as I can then pull off at a Service Station for a few hours sleep. Coffee and croissants in the morning. (I bring our own croissants to save money) Then floor it doing 85mph through most of France and end up just before the Pyrenees and get a hotel for the night then in the morning straight into Spain and stop almost at our destination for hotel and dinner

We always now book villas with private pools as having adult children we want our
own space and don’t want to share a pool