South of France

We looked previously at the cheap flights to the south of France. Unless you are staying in the heart of a large town or city, you are also going to need arrange car hire. Car hire comes in a bewildering range of prices and options, according to the size of your group and the level of luxury that you are looking for.

Typically prices will be higher in the summer. For a basic car you might expect to pay as little as 100-150 euros for a week out of season, but this can easily rise to 500 euros a week if you want a luxury vehicle in the middle of August.

If you really want to look the part there are also companies specialising in luxury car hire - fancy driving through Saint-Tropez in a flashy Porsche? Anything is possible if you have deep pockets!

For a search facility that scans almost all of the major suppliers see cheap French car rentals or simply use the search box below. It looks deceptively simple, but simply enter your arrival airport and it will show you an extensive range of available vehicles…and all to be booked directly with the major car-hire companies.

Nowadays there are a myriad of cheap flights on budget airlines between the UK and France - and new routes seem to open every year.

For example, Bergerac airport, almost unknown three or four years ago, now has direct connections with nine different UK airports. And still Angouleme airport has just opened, not far to the north!

It is difficult to keep track of which airlines fly to which destinations, and there is no single effective site for buying tickets from these discount airlines - hence you need to check them all!

I have done a bit of research into the airlines that offer cheap flights to the south of France and the following seems to be the current situation:

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We have a couple of travel websites, and one of the challenges of operating a tourist site is deciding whether something is a tourist attraction or not, and how ‘honestly’ to paint a picture of a town or attraction.

Of course, everyone tries to be honest, but it’s not always to give a balanced picture. If we visit somewhere on a cloudy November afternoon when it’s raining we are unlikely to come away with the same impression as someone visiting in May, when the sun is shining and you can sit outside your cafe having a drink.

Many places are very pleasant to visit, and we recommend them heartily, but don’t really have any great attractons or monuments - so it’s hard to say very much! So while we try and identify what was nice about a town it is often hard to explain.

On the other hand, some towns are positively littered with historical monuments and places of interest - but also have a lot of unattractive parts in between, or nowhere to sit down etc. These places we end up writing lots of information about…and it’s not very convincing to then seem unenthusiastic!

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OK you’ve decided on a location in France for your trip, now you need to choose somewhere where you can stay. We’ll leave the possibility of a holiday-rental for another day and just look at hotels.

As with hotels everywhere, the price varies considerably according to the location, the season, and the quality of the hotel. It is usually possible to find a hotel room for less than 50 euros a night, but it might be a bit rough around the edges. Pay 100 euros per night and it should be quite nice, pay more than that and the standard should continue improving.

How to choose your hotel in the south of France?

Of course, there are a lot of agencies that list hotels, and travel agents can also find you somewhere suitable to stay, but you will often get a better deal if you can do your own researches on the internet. Hotel listing sites never include all possible hotels (neither do travel agents) so a bit of ingenuity is needed.

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Imagine you have a week in the south of France and want to see everything. Not easy - you could spend three months travelling across the region and there would still be lots of things you missed. However, we will imagine you are landing at Bordeaux airport and plan to travel from west to east in a suitably fast car and go home with great memories of your visit. Where to start?

Day 1 Saint Emilion

Head east from Bordeaux towards Bergerac and after about one hour you will reach St Emilion. Best known for producing some of the greatest French wines, Saint Emilion is also a very lovely town and now a UNESCO listed world heritage site.

Park at the bottom of the town and head up the narrow streets until you reach the main square, with a church on one edge carved into the rock. Continue upwards through the streets of attractive stone buildings, in the style traditional for the region and you reach a broad pathway with great views back across the town and surrounding vineyards.

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Vacations in the south of France mean different things to different people.

Coastal vacations in the south of France

Some people think first of the coast of France when planning their visit. And for good reason - the coast and beaches in the south of France offer a wide range of possibilities!

For some the perfect visit will include a week surfing in the fine waves of the Atlantic Coast around Biarritz, the capital of surfing in Europe. Others will prefer the Mediterranean coast - the French Riviera offers some of the finest scenery to be found, and more or less guaranteed sunshine during the summer months. This section of the coast can be very crowded in high season, and you need to pay to use many of the beaches.

Then there is the Languedoc coast south of Perpignan - much less crowded than the Cote d’Azur further east, the beaches are family friendly, sandy, and also less crowded. The region is also popular with those seeking naturist beaches. Read more