It's a long shot... from West Yorkshire

[Looneymum]

Has anyone ever been holiday from France and flown from Leeds/Bradford Airport? Our kids are 4 yrs and 17 months and we have been to Spain quite a few times but would like a change. We really fancy France but my kids aren't great in the car so the idea of a six hour trip to the ferry and then a zillion hours once we get over there is grim. I have surfed the net for hours but cannot come up with a child friendly/ pool/kids play stuff sort of thing that we can fly to without the horrendous journey. Any recommendations?

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We've flown to Paris from Leeds/Bradford a couple of times but that's all - can you fly to La Rochelle from LBI? then it's only a short drive to the Vendee

We flew Jet2 to Nice from LBA & hired a car the other end. Was Sept 04 and was DD 2.4yo at the time. Flight was no problem, but the queue for the car (Hertz) the other end was enormous (2hrs??) They eventually fast tracked all those with small children. Don't know if this is common, or whether a number of flights had landed all at the same time. Car hire was more than the cost of the flight for 2 weeks! If you are going to do this I would head in land as the coast road tends to be a carpark in high summer...

ooooh, really want to go to the Vendee

What about Ryanair.com they fly from East Midlans airport to a few in france spain and even Rome. We are flying to Reus near Barcelona and staying in a caravan with Siblu (haven). We might hire a car for some of the time but as it is only 14 miles from the airport we don't have to, I would never contemplate drving all the way there. We are in Scotland so even going to france is a bit of a drive. PIL take their little caravan over on the ferry, but I couldn't be ars#%d it is costing us less to fly and we gewt a luxury 2 bed caravan.

Hiya

Haven't ever done it, but know that Jet2 go from Leeds/Bradford to Nice. And don't rule out East Midlands and Manchester, which wouldn't be much more than 1-2 hours' drive (depending where exactly in W.Yorks you are). We live near Leeds and my dh commutes to Manchester Airport every day.

Are you keen to go to the South of France? We have done the ferry crossing from Hull to Zeebrugge with a 2-y-o and a 4-y-o and it was fine. You're then in Belgium, not France, admittedly, but it wouldn't be too bad a drive to get to some nice places in the northern part of France. Depends what you're after really.