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!! 🤨

The impact of covid and lockdown is going to be very far fetching. This sounds like a nightmare for you and your family. I'm holidaying in Tipperary this year because I'm traveling with a toddler and I want to stay quite close to home.
Maybe it's too early for us to be travelling and expecting the normal standards but if we're paying over the odds it's frustrating.

Excellent to hear this, as we have a villa booked in the Dordogne for the first week in August. Can't wait!

The Manager told us the hotel industry are struggling to recruit people. It’s not their fault really but I think we should have been warned at least in advance. I hope they get this right for the next guests.

@Provenceinthesummer Are you sure you’re in France? Because you just described Luxembourg!

I love France.

I think given the price of the tunnel for a whole family compared to flying (especially in the school hols), even with the tolls travel to France is a bargain. We have one of the Emovis-tag automatic toll payment things, so there’s no faffing with payment at each one, which at least makes them a bit less hassle.

French service stations are often like that - it's not new.

You can't blame France for the heat. The 12-hour drive was always going to be tiring.
And Covid levels are high there as well as here.

Shame about the hotels.

Hope you get home safely and feel better soon.

Yes maybe it’s too soon to expect normal or even close to normal and we clearly in the grip of another wave. It’s worth being prepared for any eventuality at the moment if you are travelling, my dc are older I wouldn’t attempt this with little kids.

If you are taking the tunnel the delays are significant

Not our experience, which would have been a couple of weeks before you if you are now heading home. Quickest we have ever got on tunnel.

Yes the queue through initial gates was slow, and there is a queue through customs, but we found that that moved quickly and had no more than a 5min wait after that (I tried to get takeaway coffees, but not enough time). It will be slower now schools are finishing, and anyone with a dog has to add in a trip to pet reception in U.K. now, but that was efficient.

We towed a caravan to Dordogne in 40deg heat, stopping near Paris, and didn’t experience any problems like you. We stopped and ate at a number of service stations, as usual much cleaner than similar in U.K with loads of food available.

It was quiet when we first got to our site (we have been before but in school hols) but given that it was just before French schools started, that was understandable. A couple of local shops we frequented were initially closed, but again, we assumed they were holidaying before the summer rush started.

We ate out a number of times, our only problem was forgetting that the French open for meals over lunch, then in evening, so hard getting a meal around 2pm, but we coped!

I don’t recognise your ‘struggling with Covid’. None of us (4 adults) picked it up, despite being in many restaurants, supermarkets, communal camp site facilities - oh and 3 of us in a hot air balloon basket with others! I know plenty in U.K. who have it though.

I don't think you'll be so dismissive of France when you're home and healthy, but, given how your holiday's gone, I think you're allowed a rant.

So, perhaps not reasonable, but certainly understandable.

My anecdotal observation would be that when France is good, it's wonderful. And when it's not good, it's bloody awful.

(This is not a scientifically supportable theorem. It's a throwaway line on an anonymous forum. Ne twistez pas votre culotte, MN.)

On Mumsnet, everyone loves to say oh no, that's not possibly true! Me/my neighbour/my dog went there last week/studied there/lived there for 365 years and never had any problems. Just the way it is on here 😅

Why aren't the kids in school?

We're driving through France at the moment (similar regions to you but behind you, we've only just started out, although I am a frequent traveller to France for work, was last over two weeks ago). I'm sorry you've had a horrible time.

Some tips:

• try to buy food for the journey from a supermarket and then stop in unmanned aires de repos rather than staffed service stations, save those for when you need a petrol top up. The aires are generally much quieter, even on a hot's summer's day, and I've always found them to be good enough. Sometimes the toilets can be a little bit muddy, for example, but they're always functional (I know, my standards are lower than yours!). They all have picnic tables, toilets, and drinking water available from taps. And space for everyone to stretch their legs. I really wish UK motorways had more rest stops like that and fewer flashy mini-malls.

• It's really common for restaurants to close on a particular day of the week, often Sunday evenings. There will always be less fancy places like pizzerias which are open every day. Or, since you have the car, supermarkets are mostly open 7 days a week. I love a French supermarket!

• A bit late now since you're on the way back, but lots of things will be closed on Mondays. Not so much restaurants, but museums and other cultural attractions. It's good to plan something like a beach/pool day on Mondays.

• While you're at the supermarket, pick up a pack of loo roll and a bottle of liquid soap. Then even if the service stations aren't up to your liking, you're fully equipped.

I am not sure your tales of perfect holidays are helpful.

Don't be daft. It isn't peak Mumsnet at all.

The OP called a whole country a nightmare and then went one to describe it as on its knees, which is demonstrably untrue.

Other posters pointed this out. OP clearly wanted everyone to agree with her.

Hardly peak Mn. 🙄

OP your thread will go a lot better if you avoid generalisations based on your narrow experience of one tiny speck of France @Provenceinthesummer

We're in Holland. Seems to be business as usual.

i’m sorry you had a shit time but you can’t blame the French for climate change not for high covid numbers.

OP with the greatest of respect, why post in AIBU (a forum which by the nature of its name, is designed as a forum of opinion, advice, judgement of a scenario etc) rather than Chat?

why?

the nature of this forum means people will pass judgement on something - your reasonableness or otherwise

Holidays forum, Chat forum, all get hundreds of replies a day. Use them in future. Mumsnet is not just AIBU.

It sounds hellish OP.

God help you.
Even worse that you are all unwell.

Safe journey home.

They could be from Scotland or Ireland, or a private school in England. Scotland breaks up at the end of June, ditto Ireland. English private schools mostly broke up around the 6th - 7th July.

Yes my comment wasn’t to deny your experience OP, just to counter it.

I feel declaring a country as “on its knees” because you’ve had a bad time whilst clearly suffering from Covid is a little unfair.

nor

yup was me last Sunday!

Beware! You'll get all the people who love to moan and wang on endlessly about how awful the UK is compared to other countries in Europe attacking you for this post! God forbid any other country might have its downsides - its only the UK thats shit didnt you know? 😂

You must be so disappointed. Having a shit holiday after all the planning and looking forward is awful. I hope you are all feeling better soon and you can laugh about it one day