France holiday 2024 ideas please

[timefornewme2023]

We are looking at eurotunnel then driving to a gite for two weeks next summer, August.

So far we have done this twice before - near Royan area the first time and then the Dordogne last year.
We have loved both trips but would like to go somewhere different - ideally nearer to a beach and less need to get in the car to get about.

DC will be 13 and 11 so a little less easy to please than when smaller.

Has anyone got any amazing recommendations please ?

If we can't find somewhere new I may be tempted back to the Dordogne it was heavenly!

Antibes is lovely and has good public transport links to some great family day trips. It has a large sandy beach too. It is, however, a long drive!

We love Brittany but the weather's not guaranteed so if you want to be more sure of hot sunny weather you'll need to go further south.

Would you consider travelling by Eurostar and TGV? If you stayed somewhere with beach, restaurants etc nearby you'd be fine without a car.

Otherwise if driving I think I'd go to La Rochelle area with an overnight stop somewhere nice on the way.

Arcachon is nice.
We've driven to Côte d'Azur several times too. It's a long drive but ok if you share the driving.

Ile de Ré?
You can be on bikes a lot and beaches are all around. Or Ile d'Oleron.

Actually you could get an overnight ferry to St Malo and then it's not too far to drive to La Rochelle. The ferry isn't cheap but it's a good way to reduce the driving time.

Thanks so much for the ideas I am going to do a little bit of research!
I would absolutely love to do Ile de Re - we visited for a day on our Royan ish.
Also would love to do Cote D'azur but the drive is more of a concern.
At the moment we are pretty set on Eurotunnel and driving - we did the ferry the first time and although i know it was bad luck we had such an awful crossing it would be a
Hard sell to the DC especially.

Fair enough! My kids are younger and quite liked sleeping on the ferry, but I'm not a fan I must say, and we had to take travel sickness tablets.

La Rochelle / Île de Ré / Île d'Oleron is a lovely part of France - very long drive from Calais but doable.

Another option is to fly of course but that's more stressful, less luggage, and then you won't have a car at the other end.

Just drive to the south!! Split it up over 2 days. Stop for a night halfway down .

So many gorgeous places to see.
If you stopped for a night going there and back , youd still have 12 nights down south and get to see other places along the way.

As above, was going to say that the drive to the south is very doable - plenty of fantastic places to stay on the way down but would avoid a Saturday on the A6/7 as the volume of traffic means it can be really slow. Get a toll tag from the Eurotunnel website, so you can go through the fast lane without having to stop and find your credit card here. Would suggest getting a Crit'Air sticker as well - cost about 4 euros and there's a link from the tunnel website as well.

We always used Novotel for overnight stops - they have family rooms and under 16s get free breakfast, a lot of the hotels have a pool which our kids loved when younger, especially after several hours in the car.

@Notimeforaname @stringbean this really appeals to me !
This would be reliving some of my favourite childhood family holidays.
Will see how DH reacts !!
And yes Novotel family rooms would be the plan we had a great stopover in Chartres last year - we definitely made it part of the holiday on the way there but I must say we all started to crave home part way through the return journey !
I am excited about researching now