Driving through France??

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Hello. We are going to drive down to South of France (St Tropez) this Aug. and wondered if anyone had advice on stopovers? We have a 2 and a 5 year old. They've just done 11 hour flight so this should be small potatoes to them!

Which way are you planning to drive? We've done some stopovers in France, as have friends with children - I could find out where they've stayed that is child-friendly. We usually pick something out of the red Michelin book. This will also show whether the hotel has secure parking (worth considering because it means that you don't have to unload everything from the car). Just don't do what we did last year - get to the hotel and realise that in order to get into the secure parking we had to remove 2 bikes and our tandem from the roof.

As Azzie suggests, so much depends on your route, especially your port of arrival. We have driven quite a bit in Northern and Western France with our toddler and can recommend a hotel in St Omer (bit close to Calais for your purposes, I expect) and a lovely one in Fontevraud L'Abbaye, which is in the Loire chateaux area, and about 5 hours from Cherbourg (but that was on a horribly busy summer weekend).
We pick our hotels/stopovers out of the Routard Guides, which are increasingly being published in English, or from the Logis de France listings. We like the Logis because you can usually guarantee a good meal in-house and because in our experience they are child-friendly.

If you're going across and down the right hand side (Autoroute du Soleil) then we stayed in a nice, child-friendly but not too expensive old coaching inn in Dijon a couple of years ago (near enough to the centre to take an evening stroll with the kids after a long day in the car). Our friends who drive down to ski every year stay in a hotel in Lyons with their small children.If these are roughly in the right place I can look up the details for you.

We did that drive Easter last year 2001 and stopped twice, once in Reims which is in Champagne and a chateau in the country just outside Lyons. We don't like to drive too far on one day and these were still full days driving. Nice to stop for a lovely dinner etc when you have a then- four year old with you.

Look on www.gites-de-france.fr - we have used these french 'bed and breakfast' establishments many times - frequently staying in chateaux and the like for £40 a night! Highly recommended!