Days driving through France - help!

[RacingSnake]

In the depths of winter we planned to drive around France. Am now getting terrified! Will be driving with rather tetchy DH and 3-year old DD. Any advice? SatNav? If so, which one is best? I was also looking at a 'play and snack tray' for DD's car seat (she is still in a stage 2 seat as small). Has anyone any recommendations for entertainment? DVD player?

where to?
french roads are great. dd will be no proba t all
take a ball for the large nice services, maybe basic sharp knife for cutting baguesst. picnic blanket.
lots of water, sick bucket jsut in case
dvd car player

blardy hell there are TWO of you and one kid

life get a

Oh. Am I being pathetic? I was just rather worried. I have never driven abroad. But I shall go off and worry alone, I think.

No you are not being pathetic. Children and adults can go stir crazy sitting in the car and there is only so much a dvd player can do. Plan for lots and lots of stops. a tray would be good then they can colour and play with toys on it. If you have a basket type of bag that will stay open and you can put their toys in it then put it beside their seat for easy access.

Stickers are always handy, music cds, we put photos on a cd for dd to watch as she likes looking at photos. Good luck .

The problem is really that I am scared of the driving (which I think will be mainly down to me), the rows and getting lost . DD is quite managable. I live down little country lanes and don't even take a motorway in the UK more than once every other year.

However, other people worrying can be very irritating.

It's hard to get lost in France, the roads are great and well-signposted.

How far are you planning to travel per day?
Are you moving around a lot?

Do you have a sat nav? Get a really good map of the internet and go here www.viamichelin.com/ for the routes you already have planned. You will be fine the roads are very good and they are used to tourists. We are just back from France and DF was scared shitless of driving but he ended up doing most of it.

Sat Nav is very helpful, lent us to a friend going to France. He sheepishly gave it back and said he owed me an apology, that when friend took it home he thought why on earth do we need that when we have a map. But by the end of holiday he didn't want to give it back.

Portable DVD is very handy. Take a potty in case you come up against the hole in the floor loos and your DD decides she only will go on something vaguely resembling a toilet.

Panic not, Racing snake. Driving in France is very different from driving in UK - it is much, much easier. I use TomTom for satnav but get good maps also (Michelin are great}. Plan your route and plan to take lots of breaks (we drive for 2 hours MAX between stops). When DCs were small we used story tapes. DVD is also useful.

I hope you have a great time.

As for SatNav - we have a TomTom and it was not great when we were in France 2 years ago. It did have everything programmed in, but there was no postcode facility and it did occasionally route us along farm tracks rather than roads.

I've just come back from driving through a bit of France. I used our TomTom because I can't read maps and nor can DD. I was rather cross because I'd put the address of our new house in Belgium in, programmed it to use motorways and ended up on the Alsace wine route, which while it was very pretty, took far longer than it should have done.
I'd also second the DVD player, it's a godsend on a long journey.

I think all satnavs have scenic tours as their default setting no matter what you tell them to do. The thing is to look at maps before hand so that you know roughly where you are headed then use the satnav for the detail and answering the 'how long 'til we get there?' question. Nothing is going to be perfect on its own.