OK so you can’t come to France right now but you can still plan your next trip

May 13, 2020

This week France has started the process of getting back to normal with a staged easing of restrictions. We are not sure how long it will be before our overseas clients can travel to France as it very much depends when the Schengen Zone borders reopen and foreign visitors are permitted to leave their countries of residence.

We know many of you are very frustrated not to be here, exploring Europe in your motorhomes and campervans but rather than sit at home, counting the weeks before you can return, why not do some planning and preparation for your trip?

The online tourism information for France and most of Europe is excellent so why not make sure your next trip is the best ever by putting in some serious research and preparation now.

You can plan your trip around a specific theme and invest some time in figuring out where to head to. Good themes could be wine, cheese, churches, cathedrals, castles, mountains, rivers, lakes or whatever else takes your fancy. There is even a website if you just want to head for the prettiest villages in France, here it is: www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/fr/nos-villages/

If you don’t have any passion for a particular theme, you could just pick a region to explore in detail and find out about the history, identify the highlights, figure out where you might like to stay and create a route to follow. The tourism websites for each region are really helpful and our neighbouring regions of Burgundy, Champagne and The Loire valley are good examples:

Burgundy Tourism Website: www.burgundy-tourism.com/

Champagne Tourism Websites: www.champagne.fr/en/discovering-champagne-region/tourism/champagne-wine-tours & www.champagne-ardenne-tourism.co.uk/

The Loire Valley Tourism Website: www.loirevalley-france.co.uk/

Any trip planning effort you put in now will allow you to spend more time seeing and doing interesting things when you get here and the research is fun as you’ll be taking an inspirational, virtual RV tour of somewhere beautiful.

If you decide on a theme, why not take it a little further and prepare with the help of some online tutorials. If you are going on a wine discovery tour, learn about the wines you will be tasting or learn how to taste like a pro. If you are new to motorhoming in France, learn how to use the toll roads, motorhome servicing points or how to fill up refillable gas tanks as demonstrated in our video here: www.eurocampingcars.com/blog/why-refillable-gas-tanks-are-ideal-for-a-european-motorhome-tour/ It’s all out there on the internet and might help you to prepare for your next trip.

If you are going hiking in the mountains, look for videos that will help identify exercises to get you hiking fit (and then actually do them for a change!), if you are buying new hiking shoes, get them now and break them in around the house rather than wait until you are halfway up Mont Blanc before you find the spots that rub.

How about ordering some guides and maps to take on your next trip? Why not create yourself a checklist of things to buy when you collect your van (it’s definitely easier to do this at home than it is when hungry and standing in a French hypermarket with jetlag). You could research and buy a few good books to bring with you on your next trip (book-buying once here is always tricky as there are very few English books available and you can end up reading rubbish if you don’t plan ahead), organise your iTunes or Spotify account so you can find the music you love or download some movies to watch.

You get the message, whether your curtailed trip is your first ever or your fifteenth, there are always things you can do to prepare and improve the chances of it being a great success. Stop wallowing in self-pity and give yourselves something to look forward to!

France’s stunning sights, cultural heritage, gourmet foods and historical treasures have evolved over thousands of years and they will be here to explore for many more to come. France will still be wonderful and here for you to tour in your motorhome long after this nasty virus has been overcome.