Tolls in France

[Clarky]

Our experience last year in France was petrol was on a par with UK and the price per night for sites/aires we considered to be good value whether paid Aires or ASCI.
Its hard to compare food prices as we treat ourselves on holiday but we had some wonderful food and wine, which for us is a big part of our holiday.
The weather was better, scenery great, people friendly and roads good.
We took tolls down and meandered back. I’d be tempted to meander both ways next time but we’ll see ... we didn’t count the cost ... as we go away for a couple of weeks twice a year we just look for enjoyment,

Now there, IMHO, is the voice of reason and common sense.
Our moho costs a small fortune to buy and run and if it was all about cost we would sell it and fly off somewhere several times a year.
We chose the way of life and the places we go because we enjoy them.
If we pay a few quid extra............so what, we’re on holiday.

Richard.

 

[Emmit]

We have "dodged" the two northernmost Tolls south of Bordeaux.
For those in the bigger units, enjoy those dodged while you can.
We waited an age to get onto the route near Pissos (No, that is the name of the village) for a constant stream of Heavy Goods Vehicles, of all nationalities who were doing the same thing.
The locals will put a stop to that, especially those with +3.5 t vehicles.
The 'bottom' toll down to the border is the only road worth taking as it avoids miles of stop start traffic in a heavily built up area around Bayonne and Biarritz.

 

[maison]

We have been overcharged so many times at French supermarkets that when it doesn't happen we are delighted. Promos that aren't promos, putting unpriced articles on promo shelves and advertising them as promos but charging full prices, having the same items on different shelves with different prices (and always being charged the higher price), tills that have different prices to what is on the shelf or packaging. Not saying it is done on purpose but it has happened a lot to us. The worst we ever experienced was a small supermarket in a village where 9 out if 13 items we purchased were overcharged at the check-out, including everyday items such as butter and ham. Even when we were reimbursed the overcharges the manageress decided we should pay an extra euro! We went to the local Mairie about that shop as we felt that all the local people deserved better.
Prices in France have increased quite a lot and there are fewer offers around. That's not so important for holidaymakers but very important for residents, especially those on fixed incomes.
Autoroutes can be very useful, especially to now avoid the endless speed limit changes and chicanes. We used to use national and departmental routes but not so much now. Autoroute charges do vary, the A28 from Rouen to Alençon is very expensive. What is annoying is when the autoroutes are having works done and vast sections are low speeds and curtailed lanes yet the charge is the same.
We love France and keep going back, we were there four times last year but it is like everywhere, a mix of good and less good.

I can’t disagree with your comment that prices have increased in France.

Having lived there now for 16 years we consider that the combination of tax increases and, the main one, lower exchange rates for £/€ have increased prices by 25 - 30% over that time.

But, as to your comments re shopping in France! Where have you been shopping?

Not only have we not come across such widespread problems as you describe, on the one occasion that a local village supermarket overcharged us on one item, we were not only reimbursed but were given our loaf of bread free as an apology.

 

[Camdoon]

Don't you just hate driving around Lille? usually ends up with a big argument with the two of us! Now, Lyon I have cracked. I just sit behind the slowest truck for 30 kms with a smile on my face, wife shouting, faster, faster and I totally ignore her.

Never been and now probably never will I was just showing that France is not that great to get around unless you have a lot of time, never mind the speed traps, 20mph in towns and numerous roundabouts if there is a by-pass.
In a similar vein, I find getting round the M25 at 7 in the morning is far easier done at 50-60 in the inside lane as opposed 0-80 in the outside lane. Might take 5-10 min longer but nerves and brakes remain intact.
Just hope your lorry isn't heading towards Denmark

 

[PhilandMena]

Oh you mean me and another couple of posters,?

Thanks for the advice but I will go where i choose thanks,
And why you think it's an obsession is beyond me, why people can't make an observation about costs of touring without crass comments like yours is quite frankly ridiculous.

Have a great day...

Lets be honest! Costs are an important factor when motor-homing. Many Funsters, us included have a budget to work with. Some more than others and to discount costs as a key factor is for the birds. I agree it's not the be all and end all of motor-homing but definitely something that needs to be factored in and of value I.M.O. when costs information is shared on the forum so members are informed.

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[LesW]

France is not that great to get around unless you have a lot of time, never mind the speed traps, 20mph in towns and numerous roundabouts

Oh Dear..

 

[Camdoon]

Oh Dear..

Well that moves the conversation on.

 

[tuscancouple]

I find getting round the M25 at 7 in the morning is far easier done at 50-60 in the inside lane

Having used the M25 since it was built, was your quote for a Sunday as you'd really struggle to do those speeds on a weekday

Mick

 

[Camdoon]

Having used the M25 since it was built, was your quote for a Sunday as you'd really struggle to do those speeds on a weekday

Mick

Perhaps a tad optimistic and perhaps exclusively from the M1 anti to M40 but it is certainly far less stressful in the inside lane with the trucks than the 0-80 of the outside lane.

 

[MichaelT]

Is it?

Fuel is more expensive.

It seems nearly all of our aires that ive been using for my many years of motorhoming now appear online or in a book and subsequently get a barrier and a 10€ price tag minimum, yet i can spend 10 £ on a decent CL in the UK.

Toll roads as said are a joke, especially in a 6 wheel van like ours.
The UK provides free roads by comparison.

Having Just come back from skiing in France, something we previously done for many years, but the last few years done Austria and Italy I'm astounded at how its changing...

Prices are rocketing,
Its getting full of rubbish, (not disimilar to the UK)
Dog shit everywhere,
The thieving continues,
A denise in what ive always liked about France that of the family unit..
A country in chaos if you ask me and one losing its precious socialist values and have it replaced by a more extreme level of capitalism.

Not me saying the above but conversations with French people when i was there. Them telling me how it's changing and my witness of it.

I now prefer to go east, Germany, ,Austria, Poland, To name a few.

That's before you look at the beauty of what the UK has to offer.

Pembrokeshire
West coast of Scotland
North Yorkshire
The Peak district
Grimsby,
Devon and Dorset..

To name just a few you can do without having to spend what's now a fortune on a ferry crossing...

I think there's a lack of respect for this great country of ours.

Britain is still a great place to live.

The UK provides free roads by comparison.
No they do not they are paid for out of taxes!

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[haganap]

The UK provides free roads by comparison.
No they do not they are paid for out of taxes!

Not if you are visiting from abroad you dont.
The French pay taxes for the upkeep of their own roads too...
Toll roads are a friend of the rich

 

[MichaelT]

Not if you are visiting from abroad you dont.
The French pay taxes for the upkeep of their own roads too...
Toll roads are a friend of the rich

Tosh, you have the choice in France use the toll road or the free N road (that french taxpayers pay for) that runs beside it/along same route. If there is no N road the auto route is free. As with everything in life you have a choice!

 

[Allanm]

Think we are going to have to disagree on this one but here's some facts for you based on my recent trip.

Before leaving On Christmas day I paid £1.27 pl In the UK.
The moment I arrived in France having paid over £260 for my ferry crossing, I never paid that little (other than Luxembourg) and that's not France. And yes we use supermarkets for as cheap as we can find. The best we could find was "equivalent" not once cheaper.
£100 + on Toll roads to relieve the boredom of being stuck at every roundabout and adding monstrous time to my journey because I actually wanted to have some time skiing.
Add this to the cost of the aire we used at Dole, basically a free car park with no facilities, (nice town) and then the aire we used to ski at £18 per night for another scrubby car park full of dog shit, where someone was trying to have a shit outside my van before I caught them. (used to be free) but it had water and somewhere to empty the waste.

Total mileage covered 2200 No tolls on the way home, you do the maths.

Touring UK.
any of the places i mention can be got to within 1000 mile return, this year we toured Devon and Dorset in September, Never paid more than £20 for a full on campsite, normal cost about £10-15 on a very nice CL some gorgeous places to visit. A walk down to Woolacombe bay for a bit of surf fun. Didn't spend a penny on Toll roads, Fuel was still as cheap as France, with no ferry crossing to take in to account, Drove on to Pembroke shire for a night at a fun meet and back home.

As for your Cambridgeshire campsites, I have just checked my C&MH book there are absolutely loads in Cambridgeshire, many open all year round on hard standing ranging from a price of £10 to £18. Even if you joined the club at £50 for the year and you come across as often as you do it would still work out cheaper than what you pay at a site.

In fact having looked again and taken out my Ski Passes a 10 day holiday in France cost me double what a 14 night break cost me in the UK this year... that's a fact...

I can’t comment on how your holiday went or the cost so I’ll just stick to my own findings as a resident of France and visitor to the UK.
I didn’t mention I was looking for Cambridgeshire campsites, we needed to stop in Cambridge, where one campsite was open over Christmas at a cost of £43 a night.
We are members of the Caravan and Camping club and their site was closed over Christmas ( Cabbage Moor)

If I had had such a bad experience in France as you, I’d go somewhere else. Have you thought about skiing in Scotland? If you worry so much about the cost that might be a cheaper alternative for you.

 

[Allanm]

Having used the M25 since it was built, was your quote for a Sunday as you'd really struggle to do those speeds on a weekday

Mick

It’s a nightmare on a Sunday too, best avoided any day of the week.

 

[Brains]

Tolls are optional.

Re the cost of living in France;
Euro for Euro it has gone up a bit in the last decade due to French taxes, but the big difference is the fall in the value of the Pound vs the Euro.
It's dropped 30% in the last decade, and due to brexit will drop considerably further over the next decade.

Back when I were a lad (early 1970's), the Frence Franc was a weak currency, from memory about FF12 to £1
To put that in perspective, I remember my Dad had an upper price for a bottle of French wine of FF 8, which = about 70p. Wine may have been cheaper in the UK in the 1970's but it was not less than £3 !

My dad, along with serveral of my friends Dads, used to take the entire family camping in France on the first week of the school holidays, after a week all the dads went back in a couple of the cars, leaving the mummy's and the kids for the month, and then all the dads came back for the last week of the school holidays and we went home.

The reason was simple, back then it was far cheaper to leave the family on a French campsite for 6 weeks than it was to live at home in the UK.

Give it a few years and you will find UK camp sites full of French kids there for the entire summer holidays .....

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[LesW]

and due to brexit will drop considerably further over the next decade.

How do you know that?

 

[Brains]

How do you know that?

Really ?

 

[busby]

I can’t comment on how your holiday went or the cost so I’ll just stick to my own findings as a resident of France and visitor to the UK.
I didn’t mention I was looking for Cambridgeshire campsites, we needed to stop in Cambridge, where one campsite was open over Christmas at a cost of £43 a night.
We are members of the Caravan and Camping club and their site was closed over Christmas ( Cabbage Moor)

If I had had such a bad experience in France as you, I’d go somewhere else. Have you thought about skiing in Scotland? If you worry so much about the cost that might be a cheaper alternative for you.

Other than at a ski resort you would be lucky to find a site open in France at xmas..BUSBY.??

 

[tuscancouple]

Really ?

It's really not worth the effort, we've demonstrated so many times in the past that the pound has plumeted against other major currencies since the R vote, time will tell if it will ever recover anywhere close to the €1.4 to £1 pre R vote.

Mick

 

[busby]

Never been and now probably never will I was just showing that France is not that great to get around unless you have a lot of time, never mind the speed traps, 20mph in towns and numerous roundabouts if there is a by-pass.
In a similar vein, I find getting round the M25 at 7 in the morning is far easier done at 50-60 in the inside lane as opposed 0-80 in the outside lane. Might take 5-10 min longer but nerves and brakes remain intact.
Just hope your lorry isn't heading towards Denmark

What about at other times of the day..In 20 years of travelling through France I can hardly remember ever being in a traffic jam,,BUSBY.

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[violet]

As per usual so many of you who live in the U.K. are obsessed with price. If you really dislike France so much stay away, please!!

This reads as a very emotive and defensive post, which I'm sure was not the intent. Why 'so many of you who live in the Uk'? A few people have posted that France is becoming more expensive, which it is. I made a point of saying we love France, but love should not make one blind to
reality!

 

[Allanm]

Other than at a ski resort you would be lucky to find a site open in France at xmas..BUSBY.??

I wouldn’t need to ( or want to) stay on a campsite in France, there are hundreds of free aires everywhere you want to go. ?

 

[teddybear]

But,at this time of year finding water on can be problematic,on any aire

 

[violet]

I can’t disagree with your comment that prices have increased in France.

Having lived there now for 16 years we consider that the combination of tax increases and, the main one, lower exchange rates for £/€ have increased prices by 25 - 30% over that time.

But, as to your comments re shopping in France! Where have you been shopping?

Not only have we not come across such widespread problems as you describe, on the one occasion that a local village supermarket overcharged us on one item, we were not only reimbursed but were given our loaf of bread free as an apology.

That's good to hear. I said how often we had been overcharged to a friend who lives in France and she was convinced we must be wrong. Then the next time we saw her she said she had carefully checked her shopping in the supermarket and was aghast that she had been overcharged by over €5. We have been overcharged in village bakeries, bar tabacs, village supermarkets and large supermarkets and hypermarkets. I think a lot of people don't bother, they just put items into the chariots but I just happen to have the sort of memory that remembers silly details like prices of multiple items. If it is a small overcharge we don't fuss but otherwise we go to the acceuil and have always been reimbursed. Our French is quite good which makes it easier.

 

[maison]

That's good to hear. I said how often we had been overcharged to a friend who lives in France and she was convinced we must be wrong. Then the next time we saw her she said she had carefully checked her shopping in the supermarket and was aghast that she had been overcharged by over €5. We have been overcharged in village bakeries, bar tabacs, village supermarkets and large supermarkets and hypermarkets. I think a lot of people don't bother, they just put items into the chariots but I just happen to have the sort of memory that remembers silly details like prices of multiple items. If it is a small overcharge we don't fuss but otherwise we go to the acceuil and have always been reimbursed. Our French is quite good which makes it easier.

As a born Northerner I always check my change and keep an eye on prices actually charged.

You have obviously had some rotten luck with the shops you have chosen. Were they all in the same region of France?

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[klaatu]

According to the ACSI app, there are 81 campsites all over France open on christmas day, and those are just the ones which offer a discount. I don’t think many of those are at ski resorts, unless they’ve moved the mountains when I wasn’t looking

 

[Allanm]

But,at this time of year finding water on can be problematic,on any aire

Not really. We spent the 6 weeks up to Christmas Eve travelling all over France and only found one Aire where the water was turned off. This was in Moix en Morvan in Burgundy.
I think winter travelling has been getting more popular over the last couple of years. Aires we used to go to and find ourselves alone now have vans in them and that may be the reason fewer Aires turn their water off.

 

[violet]

As a born Northerner I always check my change and keep an eye on prices actually charged.

You have obviously had some rotten luck with the shops you have chosen. Were they all in the same region of France?

Good for you. I'm a born Northener too! They weren't all in the same region but a lot in the North of France. I remember one time we bought something in the Brico section of a supermarket and it had a sticker on it saying €5 off at the cash desk. The assistant tried to take the sticker off but tore it, so proceeded to throw it in the wastebin while giving us a Gallic shrug and refusing to take the €5 off. We called for the Director, who took one look at the crumpled sticker and gave us the €5.
Time consuming though.

 

[Allanm]

The UK provides free roads by comparison.
No they do not they are paid for out of taxes!

Pretty sure there are Toll Roads in the UK. Last count was about 23 of them, around18 being river crossings
Of course, just like in France, you don’t have to use them.

 

[haganap]

Typical of this forum nowadays, You get a question about toll roads in France,
Someone asks about the cost of living/touring in France,
One or Two give an honest assumption, which of course is based on experience,
Said contributors receive lectures like, Don't go there then, Ski Scotland ,
Your'e talking Tosh because you don't have to use the Toll roads.

As said, I've toured France for over 30 years and I am only 50. I have seen dramatic changes in the cost of touring France compared to the UK over that time. But I must be wrong, Despite the pound plummeting against the Euro from nearly 140 at one point to a pittance now, I must be wrong.
Despite the fact that Fuel increases in France has outstripped inflation, and certainly outstripped rises in the UK, I must be wrong.

I used to love France, as I said. But IMO,,, let me spell that out IN MY OPINION. it's not the wonderful country I used to take my kids too in the motorhome, there's some nice areas, some nice place's and even some nice people. It's not rose tinted specticals.

Or maybe, just maybe, I have found other places to represent better value than France either abroad and the UK. But as no-one is interested in my opinion on France, I will bow out and leave you lovely French lovers to carry on.

However, don't tell me to not go there, that's plain rude, don't describe a post as "Utter Tosh" and tell me something that I already know and never quoted. Don't dictate to me where I can and can't get out my Snowboard, I am fully aware of where I can and can't do that.

I am fortunate, I have enough money to spend the additional cost increases because on the whole, as some have said, it's a holiday and the price of fuel will probably translate to about £150 over a 2 week break, it ain't going to break the bank.
so you go off and enjoy wherever you choose to be, it's your choice, advice from me is look further afield. France is a dying country. IN MY OPINION and I am of course entitled to that view.

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