Definitive list for France please.

[qprdude]

Hypothetical question. If I were to decide to have a few days in central France, possibly by ferry from Newhaven, can anyone advise me on preparation for the trip. A definitive list of requirements for the car, from insurance to what must be carried in France and adapting lights for French roads. How difficult is it to adapt to driving there, use of UK debit cards for fuel/ tolls etc.
No, (it's easy) from you seasoned right hand drivers thank you!, remember, there must have been a time when it was your first trip!
I would be heading for a small town about an hour south of Tours.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. If anything, it will help decide whether to drive or fly.
Cheers.

[bobins]

Are you travelling on your own, or with a passenger ? HINT : it'd be much easier with a passenger

[qprdude]

Sorry bobins, SWiMBO will be navigating, if we decide to go! My sister has a place in Bossee and they are always asking us out for a visit.
By the way, the DS5 isn't half the car that the C5 is.

[elma]

Off the top of my head France requires you to have in the car,
Hi Viz (each), warning triangle, spare specs (if driver wears them), first aid kit, spare bulbs, insurance cert, v5, license, breathalyser.

On the car,
headlamp stickers, GB sticker (if number plate doesn't have one built in).
Headlamp stickers are easy, buy them and stick them on as per packet instructions.

Bank cards, ring your bank and ask as they all differ.

Thats all I remember there may be more.

[bobins]

Decide before you go whether you'll have absolute faith in your sat-nav (assuming you're taking / using a sat-nav), or whether you'll use conventional maps and/or printouts. If you rely on sat-nav then there'll inevitably be a junction where you wonder "Why the hell is it taking me that way ?" and, being in a foreign land, you'll have no idea if it's wrong or right. Michelin do an excellent online route planner that you can print out - it even gives pictures of what the junction signs look like so you can match them up as you take them - that sort of thing can be very reassuring.
https://www.viamichelin.co.uk/

Toll roads are quite painless, although I've known there to be horrendous queues at times due to the fact they seemed to want to put 32,000 cars through one and a half toll booths Cash and cards are accepted - this gives details of what cards can be used, but take a back-up one if you have one as I've known them be fussy. http://www.autoroutes.fr/en/payment-methods.htm Toll booths are automated and mostly also manned on the main routes.
Toll pricing can be checked via here : http://www.autoroutes.fr/index.htm?lang=en If you think our road fund licence is expensive - try driving down to the South of France and back on toll roads !! Yep - they're fast and good, but they're also expensive over long distances.

What insurance cover you've got depends on your insurer, but I think all insurers cover you to a bare minimum for short trips. You may need to let them know before you go, but - again - it depends on your cover. For peace of mind, I'd HIGHLY recommend you make sure you've got full comprehensive cover and you let your insurers know before you go. In the unfortunate event that you have an accident whilst over there, make sure you take down ALL relevant details that the insurers want. Having been hit whilst in France by a geriatric German, I know that it's reassuring to know you can sit back and let the insurers fight it out as you've done everything right ! There is such a thing as a 'European Accident Statement' form that should be filled in in the event of an accident. It's to provide you and the other driver with an agreed statement. Whilst your insurers may not be bothered about it, the other person's might. Undoubtedly there will be people who will say : "I've never seen that before / I never bother with that / Nah, you don't need that" etc, etc. That's all fine and dandy.... right up until the point you actually need it.......

Make sure you've got GOOD breakdown cover. You can buy this for short trips from the usual online sources.

An overview of French driving laws and regulations (as at 20/02/2017) can be found here https://www.theaa.com/european-breakdow ... -in-france with an option on the page to download a more comprehensive guide.

[dets]

Hi viz per every person in car
head light beam benders
Warning triangle
Gb sticker if not on plates already
First aid kit
Replacement bulb for every external light
2x breathalyser
Most insurers now give you 90 day built in European travel
Contact bank to inform of travel
Contact mobile phone company and tell them you will require roaming in Europe
As for cards and fuel if you use the pay at pump be aware that the pay at pump operator will call for an amount I think of 99€/£ that they take as a kind of deposit for fuel which they only take x amount of fuel payment out of that then refund

[Paul-R]

With cards there are good cards, bad cards and very bad cards.

Generally speaking credit cards are better than debit cards except if you need to withdraw cash.

I have what I consider to be the best I can. I have a Nationwide Flexclusive current account*. It costs £10 per month (going up to £13 soon) and for that I get European breakdown insurance, world-wide travel insurance and no surcharges of any kind on cash withdrawals using their Visa debit card. In fact I use only this for getting my Euros - I don't use any other exchange service. I don't, however, use it for buying anything though as there is a charge for doing that. Bizarre, I know.

For buying items (and paying for the tiny amount of toll motorway that I use) I have an Aqua Reward Credit Card. That has no surcharges for buying items but I wouldn't use it to withdraw cash as I would be charged a lot for that. It also uses the Mastercard payment clearing system and that tends to give a slightly better exchange rate compared to Visa. As a bonus I get 0.5% cashback on all purchases in the UK and abroad.

Money Saving Expert has some wise words on this.

http://travelmoney.moneysavingexpert.co ... 1470236785
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel ... edit-cards

*There are other benefits, such as paying interest on the current account up to £2500, but they are not really applicable to using the card abroad.

[Paul-R]

My own personal travelling kit consists of:

Spare bulbs
Warning triangle
Breathalyser (even though that's ignored by the French themselves)
Spare fuses
Hi-viz jackets (I believe only driver is compulsory but better to have more)

I don't bother with beam converters as I use the headlamp adjuster (for heavy loads) to turn the beam downwards a touch.

Cards - see above.

Phone roaming - as said above check with your phone company if it needs to be turned on. The rules on roaming in the EU changed last month to supposedly make this unnecessary and also incur no extra charges.

Advise your bank and credit card companies of when and where you'll be visiting.

Diesel is considerably cheaper in France so, if your car uses this, try to arrive with as little as possible before filling up. Fill to the brim before you leave France. Petrol, I'm not sure of, probably similarly priced.

I always buy my fuel in supermarkets, it's cheaper than roadside stations and considerably so compared to the motorway service stations.

I drive further than you're planning and book my hotel from England so that I can arrive at stupid-o'-clock without worrying about reception because they use an automated booking in system. I use the Hotel-BB chain but there are many others and I think they all are automated.

I'm not sure what route you'll be taking but I have an aversion to paying tolls. I have my route pretty much sorted out but you might find the booklet I've attached useful. It's by the late Richard Binns and shows its age as things are priced in Francs! To give you an idea, coming from Calais, I pay for the first little bit of the A16 to get past Boulogne, take the old N1 to Abbeville. From there using the Binns route to past Clermont Ferrans where we diverge to across the Auvergne on the N102. etc. To my mind you could take the toll A28 from Rouen or take the Binns route to Chartres and then the N10. I know what I would do!

[Peter.N.]

If your car is worth as much as mine is they won't recover it to the UK, yours is probably worth a lot more but they won't recover a car if the cost is more than the value of the car unless you pay the extra - well that was the case last time we went but that was getting on 10 years ago and my car was worth about £500, the ones I have now are worth even less!

Peter

[Paul-R]

Regarding what I was saying about toll paying. Google Maps reckons on 3h 50m from Dieppe port to Bossée using toll roads and (if you click OPTIONS and then tick Avoid Tolls) 4h 41m avoiding all tolls.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/DFDS/ ... 111883!3e0

There are some bits where it's just plain easier to pay-up and shut-up such as staying on the A13 south of Rouen before turning on to the A154. It costs a couple of Euros and saves 6 minutes but mostly it saves hassle. If I'm staying overnight in Rouen I choose to do this.

There's one final reason to not pay tolls. You'll see much more of France that way and, anyway, what's an extra three quarters of an hour?

[Paul-R]

ViaMichelin was mentioned earlier and is certainly useful. They tend to estimate longer times than Google and my experience is that they are too pessimistic. But they are very useful as they give several different options for the type of journey.

https://www.viamichelin.co.uk/web/Route ... rivalDate=

Click on Options and there's Michelin Recommended, Quickest, Shortest, Discovery and Economical to choose from. Michelin Recommended is the default. There's also a tick box option to Avoid Tolls.

It's also useful as it gives an estimated cost for the journey. Disregard the fuel cost as it's usually the same for with and without tolls but it does know the cost of the tolls. For this journey it's €37.70 - which is about the same as for the fuel only. Worth thinking about.

[Bob L'eponge]

Breathalyser (even though that's ignored by the French themselves)

That's because the law requiring them to be carried was scrapped a couple of years ago.

[qprdude]

Thank you for all the information. You guys know your stuff.
Unfortunately, a quick Google for replacement exterior bulbs for my car , throw up a price that is actually more than two return tickets on Ryan-air from Stansted to Tours!
DRL alone is about the cost of one ticket. Xenon Hid headlamps (Projectors?),would buy the other ticket!
Is there a trick to carrying a spare bulb kit? Don't know about my current motor, but I wouldn't have fancied changing some of my C5 X7 bulbs by the side of a dark French road.
Please tell me I'm imagining the cost of these bulbs.

[xantia_v6]

No-one carries spare xenon bulbs with them. Only buy bulbs which have replacement instructions in the owners handbook, or find out what a dealer-supplied bulb kit contains.

Also be aware that the fine for such offences is only €100 euros or so, and you have less than 1 in 1000 chance of being picked up.

Gendarmes actually hate fining foreign drivers and cars because of the extra paperwork involved.

[qprdude]

So something like this.?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Spare-Bulb-Fu ... 2229159006

That's more suitable to my budget. I can dispense with the defibrillator now then.

I'm assuming that Daytime running lights, being LED are not required?