Cheap overnight stop recommendations between Calais and Blanes for a family drive

[Mumbythesea1]

I need some help! This is the fist time of doing this and I’m not sure where to start. Can anyone recommend somewhere cheap to stop over to break up the car journey from Calais to Blanes in Spain? Roughly half way would be good although this can be flexible. DC get sea sick and so we have done the shortest ferry crossing which for us is the Dover Calais. Literally need somewhere cheap to rest before carrying on the drive. I don’t think we can manage 12 hours driving straight!

I can recommend ACE hôtel as a decent hotel chain to say in.
Cheap, clean and well air conditioned, we've stayed in a few and they've all been good. Perfect for a one nighter on route.
Claremont-Ferrand is about half way? I'd probably aim for something around there.

If you are looking for somewhere to potter a bit as well as sleep Montluçon is not far off half way. Random place. Beautiful, ancient buildings which tries very hard to market itself as a tourist destination but everywhere still closes in the summer because the business owners are on their holidays. They've not quite got the hang of tourism. It is delightful to meander round though and it has an absolutely brilliant music museum. As in seriously brilliant.

I think you need to choose your route first. The Autoroute des Anglais - the A26 would be the obvious route.

On that route, half way would be somewhere between Dijon and Lyons. Both of those cities have a HotelF1 on the outskirts. These are very cheap, very basic, but still clean and comfortable, perfect for a quick overnight stop.