If you've travelled to France in the summer in the past few years...

[frogs]

...do you think it is cheaper to drive down or to fly and then hire a car?

We are going to the south of France next year for a family event, and then plan to rent a gite for a week or so afterwards. There are five of us, so even cheap plane fares add up once you multiply by 5, and we need a reasonably big car (ours is). I would also strongly prefer an automatic (again, ours is but they tend to be more expensive to hire).

If you've driven down from the UK, how much of a nightmare was it? And did you spend a fortune on staying in places overnight? Or should we look at campsites?

All advice gratefully received, we're novices at this, and I'm finding it really hard to weigh up the pros and cons.

We have Motorailed and it was fine. I didn't sleep the whole night, but then I often don't when I am away.

After we dropped our car off, we walked into Calais to kill the time.

We've driven long distance through France several times, down both sides of the country. Even with just four of us it worked out £500 cheaper than flying and hiring a car this year, plus you have your car so packing up is much easier and you can bring back wine...

Two days is plenty of time to do it in a fairly relaxed way - we stopped over in Lyon this year which was good for where we were going - bit further than half way. There are plenty of decent cheapish hotels if you look around on the web and we have stayed in a couple of Sawday's recommended ones which have been pricier and as Marina says further from the autoroute, but universally fab too.

The only caveat is that if you're driving on the weekends when half of France is heading off on holiday or homewards it can be a nightmare. Only way to deal with that is to head off insanely early and get ahead of the traffic.

Hi madamy

We have used the Premiere Classe chain. You can book online here and there is the facility to request inter-connecting rooms though they can't guarantee it. I always follow up my bookings with a very friendly email asking if they would do their very best to provide inter-connecting rooms and they always have done.

They are nothing special - but they are clean and functional and ultimately, we just want somewhere to get a few hours sleep. They always have a secure carpark and they offer breakfast facilities.

We have also used Campanile and have again requested inter-connecting rooms - we have booked with them online too here. They have never failed on the inter-connecting room front either. They are a bit more expensive and the rooms are much of a muchness. The main difference is they have a restaurant on site (instead of at Premiere Class where they have a breakfast room) so if eating at the hotel in the evening is important to you, then Premiere Classe wouldn't suit you as well. However, in our experience the Premiere Classe hotels are always in a hotel area where there are plenty of restaurants next door!

We have driven down as far as the Dordogne for a couple of years - tended to stop off in the Loire on route. But it does eat into your holiday and it rather depends how good your kids are at travelling in the car. The French roads are much quieter/faster than our motorways usually but even so if you are going a long way south it will be a heck of a drive for a sole driver.

When are you planning to go - if you can get in quick when the airfares first come out, or you can travel on a weekday rather than weekend or Friday then it may well not work out too bad if you fly.

You should be able to get some reasonable B&B's, with only one driver you will need to stop, I would prebook one - have a look at the Logis de France website - we've never stayed in a bad one. Unless you are going to stop for a couple of nights I wouldn't bother with camping - if you are driving all that way the last thing you also want to be doing is putting up and taking down a tent!

We drive and it's a LOT cheaper than flying but as has been mentioned, it is a hell of a drive, we drove from Le Harve to the Auvergne and it took just about a whole night. We spent about 500 quid for last holiday there, that included ferries, petrol, spending money, eating out, the whole lot minus accomodation, we stayed at my parents.

We always fly to the south of France. It takes us ages just to get down to Folkestone for the crossing, let alone the France bit. And the fuel costs are high too.

Instead we fly to somewhere like Nice on a budget airline, and have a train to the airport from home. We then hire a car when there. But there is only 3 of us, so flights aren't too bad.

We drive if going to Northern France.

French car hire is pretty expensive (compared with eg Spain anyway) - esp if you want a nice big automatic car.

A friend of mine has a house near Poitiers & she & I went down there for a short break in a few years ago. We left Lancs early afternoon, didn't rush, got down to Portsmouth about 9.30 & got the overnight ferry to Caen; very early start next morning & reached her house about lunchtime (IIRC - which I may not )

If you're going a long way down France then Portsmouth-Caen is the best crossing to use, but it is a lot more expensive than Dover-Calais (esp on the overnight as you have to pay for aircraft-type seats at a minimum) but you have to weigh the cash cost of the ferry against the hours and hours in the car driving from Calais.

Whichever crossing you use though it's still going to be way cheaper (in cash) than fly-drive for 5 people. What time of year are you planning to go, frogs? And for how long?

in February, sorry, dunno where the Feb went (I mention the month because traffic was probably lighter than in the summer)

You're up north though Hula, aren't you?

We're darn saarf, so not so far to Dover etc. Plus there are 5 of us -- I have yet to see even a bargain basement airfare that doesn't add up to a scary number when multiplied by 5.

Hmm, this is all really helpful, thanks. It's looking as if driving might be more realistic, and tbh I'd a great deal rather drive around in my large comfy automatic estate car than in some crappy hire car. Plus the kids can bring all their gear.

The extra couple of days each way isn't really a problem tbh -- the first week we're staying with family, the 2nd in a gite somewhere, probably Languedoc rather than Provence. I'm self-employed and dh has quite a lot of stored leave to use up.

Is Motorail eyewateringly expensive? The website doesn't open for summer bookings till Nov, so no prices on there atm.

It will be the third week in July, prob, some time after the end of term. Will try to get there before 1st August, obviously.

We did Motorail 12 years ago, and felt it was expensive. We did it only one way as a result. That whole year was extortionate because there was a terrible £:FF exchange rate - I think it was 1:7, instead to the 1:10 that we were used to thinking in.

My friends have just Motorailed to Northern Spain and they didn't think it was too bad pricewise, although they didn't enjoy it because of the lack of sleep and general claustrophobia (although they did like arriving in their destination next morning).

Do you have a final destination in the SoF?

We did Motorail 12 years ago, and felt it was expensive. We did it only one way as a result. That whole year was extortionate because there was a terrible £:FF exchange rate - I think it was 1:7, instead to the 1:10 that we were used to thinking in.

My friends have just Motorailed to Northern Spain and they didn't think it was too bad pricewise, although they didn't enjoy it because of the lack of sleep and general claustrophobia (although they did like arriving in their destination next morning).

Do you have a final destination in the SoF?

Our initial destination is near Nimes, though driveable from Avignon, where the Motorail stops.

Will have to hope the £ vs Euro exchange rate improves by then, otherwise will all be megabucks.

I'm sure last time I looked at it (not recently) Motorail was about £750 each way

If you fly Easyjet to Nice on midweek and early morning flights, provided you book the flights as soon as they are released, you can get some really good deals. Will you need a car for the whole holiday? We tend to have one for a few days and cope on buses and trains the rest of the time - the train service is excellent on the Cote D'Azur. Avis do reasonable car rental rates from Nice airport and if you join their preferred customer scheme you don't have to queue for the car on arrival.

Blimey, that would cover a lot of petrol and a couple of really ritzy overnight stops.

Don't really want to fly to Nice though, was thinking more Nimes (Ryanair, apparently) or Avignon. But I guess the same applies. Hmm.

Still liking the flexibility of driving. Plus somewhere to put all the small froglets' clutter.

Nimes isn't such a long drive compared with going all the way to the coast.

As I said, we would use Avignon as our second stopping point, and that was with a fairly leisurely drive south.

I would suggest looking at your potential arrival time in Calais, and then working out the distance to Nimes - cut the drive in half to see where you spend the night and importantly, the hour.

If you can stop somewhere around 6pm, and it is an interesting place, then you can really add to your holiday. If there is nowhere intersting, you might as well push on till 9 or 10 (with rervations).

CAr - think about all the cheap wine/stinky cheese/saucisson/fois gras you can bring back .

Oh please don't just go by my vague recollection, frogs - it may well be wrong (this is not unknown)

But fwiw I would def drive. Driving in France, even on a long journey, is a much more pleasant experience than driving in the UK (not to mention the capacity for tadpole luggage & all that )

I had an aupair from Avignon, and she used to fly to Marseilles from Gatwick.

If you flew Ryanair () would that mean getting you all to Stansted? Those 2 things alone would make driving the better option

If only they were still tadpoles, WW.

Years ago dh and I went (train, no cars involved) all the way to SoFrance with dd1 and ds when they were littlies, with one, yup one, rucksack between us.

Mind you, the dc wore nothing but a layer of dirt for the whole two weeks we were there, which saved hugely on the packing.

Thanks you guys, this is really really helpful.

Although WW we're relatively near Stansted, so actually not a difficult option for us.