French tolls - south of France. Help
Hi, Can anybody help me on Tolls to the South of France. How much, do you pay for the caravan and the car. Have they got a toll card and is it cheaper then not having one
Many thanks
Jed
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Use ViaMichelin, put in your start and finish, tick the box to say you are towing, choose from the routes on offer. Tolls will be listed for each route. But it's no cheaper with a tollcard or tag. Sorry.
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If you go onto www.autoroutes.fr/en/routes you can find the toll charges for any journey in France. Enter your start place, eg Calais and then your destination. There is a box to the right that gives vehicle options. If you click on car it will then give an option for car with caravan which will then calculate the tolls as a class 2 vehicle. The result will give you the distance, journey time and cost which is broken down into tolls and fuel cost. If there is no toll motorway involved it will show this as zero.
I haven't got an autoroute card, a tag, although I might get one this year. It doesn't give cheaper tolls but allows you through the toll booths much quicker without the use of cash or credit/debit card. Depending on the tag that you get there could be a deposit for it and then a charge for each calendar month that it is used in. This is somewhere between €1.60 to, I think, about €3 depending on the tag operator. All tags cover all the French autoroute system. There is a thread running under Sanef Tag in the Overseas section which has various comments including one from Eurotraveller about a tag offer that is running until 21st March.
Hope all this helps.
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Which part of the South of France? It's a big country and there are many routes which will take you south. Some are more expensive than others, but any of the route planning sites will calculate the tolls for you, depending on where you start from and your destination. Don't forget to select 'with caravan' in any options because having a caravan on the back means the tolls are about a third as much again.
Some sections of toll road appear cheaper than others because there isn't a standard 'per kilometre' cost - and the charges are set by the toll route operators. Depending on your bank, it's possible that one payment taken directly from your account for payment of tag charges may work out cheaper than lots of small toll charges with add-on fees for each one, but we have a fee-free card which we use for the small amount of times we use a toll road, and it costs us no more than the charge itself.
It is possible to do the 'South of France' with no tolls at all - particularly if, like us, you have lots of time, but not lots of money.
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Go to http://www.autoroutes.fr/en/routes.htm - on route page change car to "car with caravan" enter your from and to points click on search and route with costs will be displayed e.g. Calais to Nice on autoroutes will cost 163 euro`s around £140 one way. By experimenting with different routes and road types (including ferry crossings) you can substantially reduce tolls, it depends on how long you wish to take to reach your destination. The route from Caen to Nice we use costs around 80 euro`s return and is spread over three days in France, personally I find a lot of autoroute driving not only pricey but boring as well.
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Where are you heading for? As I said, we've done 'South of France' with no tolls for many years now, and it is possible to minimise tolls by using some alternative routes and hopping on and off an autoroute to avoid busy towns or cities. If you don't mind one extra overnight stop then you could still go south and not pay a penny more than you need to in tolls and have a much more interesting journey, too.
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It also depends where you are starting from.
We go from Roscoff to the Mediterranean around Montpellier ( via Nantes, Poitiers, Montlucon and Clermont) for a Class 2 toll of just 26 euros .And 587 out of 710 miles are on motorway standard roads.
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In that case the tolls going via Rouen will be 84 euros each way.
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It's worth pointing out that in using the Peage, you're not paying money for nothing. In return you get first-class dual carriageways (as a minimum); excellent and frequent rest areas, some with full services, all with dog walks and picnic areas; constant police surveillance; no roundabouts; no traffic lights; no local traffic clogging up the system, and you can safely maintain distance-consuming cruising speeds. The downside is that you'll not get to meet ValDa en route
When you're on a D road with traffic impatiently tail-gating you, and oncoming camions hurtling towards you in the rain as they watch videos/ use their phones, you'll wish you'd paid the tolls!
Top tip for pay stations: Don't pick the queue with a line of motorcyclists. It may look the shortest, but they've all got to pay one by one and they all have to struggle to get their money out.
By the way, Barcares is in south-west France: 'The South of France' has, in the past, referred to the coast from Marseilles to Menton.
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Hi,
Sorry if its a repeat option.
As an alternative have a trawl through this alternative low tolls route options web site :-
http://about-france.com/tourism/med-avoiding-tolls.htm
Quite like this site myself for options.
They have different routes to Pyrenees & Med on there and as it says if a toll option section saves substantial time then its chosen. There is often a simple cheap route - free motorway adjoining a toll road can be common, or mix and match it yourself.
I've no gripes about paying for some of the tolls which save substantial time or hassle though.
Our friends needed the smart Peage service area to recover from the e58 toll charge for a fairly short section they'd just been on.
Enjoy the journey planning in the meantime, part of the pleasure.
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Hi JT, are you saying that as you have booked you CANT take any extra sites meaning that you have to use the Autoroutes?
Had a look and seem to be using same resources as ET as came up with same figures.
Spookily we are also travelling the same route as he is, we are going to Beziers in May, and will meet up with friends at Issoire who are travelling from Calais in a MH using the route via Rouen.
If you can give a bit more info on ferry timings etc I am sure that there will be more help available. I see you have posted another question re average speeds and I have responded to that as well but without more info it's limited.
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Jed
Am I right in thinking you meant can't take any extra nights? If that is the case how many overnight stops had you planned? From Calais to La Barcares via Rouen and Chartres via the N154 and the A75 is around 700 miles with a lot of good quality toll free roads. I would see little advantage in going via the Lyon route which is the expensive option. The Rouen route could be done with two overnight stops en route. Have a look here for illustrations of the main route options from Calais.
David
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Quite agree, we tried non toll routes a few times but got fed up sitting behind lorries, roundabouts, town centres, traffic lights, layby's not rest areas, speed humps/chicanes and after a few villages they all seem to look the same so the charm wears off.
Contrary to what many say the average speed via the non toll routes are very slow due to the above so if on a limited time then toll is the way to go, of course if you are in no hurry and away for 3 months an extra week to do 700 miles is fine.
Top tip for us regards toll booths is get a tag and use the 30kph lane, no need to stop, barring that looks for lorries, long vans as they only pay once but take up a lot of space
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Maybe I'm strange but I MUCH prefer to use the French Autoroutes to get me to the region I am aiming for.
When I first started this lark it was on a Motorcycle to the Bol 'D Or at Paul Ricard every year. Finish work Thursday PM them the hero run down to the race then back home early for work Monday morning. No other option than to use the Autoroutes. Then it was the Car and Caravan but with just 2 weeks holiday we wanted to get to where we were going. Same when we had the Motorhomes and its still the same with the caravan today. Maybe when we have both retired we will go the slow way but with all the changes in France (roundabouts, speed humps and speed cameras) I bet we still use the AutoRoute.
But hey, it's your choice.
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On our first French trip - no caravan but a tiny Citroen Dyane stuffed with instruments and two children, plus trailer for the camping gear, we used exclusively free roads, and you're completely right: it took longer but we hugely enjoyed the trip. Autoroutes are quicker, but a bit like flying - you get on, do the journey, and appear at the far end of the tube with no real sense of the progress of your journey through the countryside.
But on our most recent French trip, using an A-route to get back quicker, we were overtaken by an ambulance with all blue lights flashing just before the automated peage toll. Then we sat behind it for literally 5 minutes while they fiddled around evidently looking for the right change for the barrier, before driving off in a leisurely manner, lights still flashing!
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Get a Toll Tag, on free offer until 21st March, and drive through the Toll Booths with a smile on your face and queuing a thing of the past - -
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Hi All, JedTracy posted asking for advice on tolls to Italy at 1222 yesterday so seems France is no longer the destination.
Still,at least we get to see K&Ms avatar!
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For me, spending hours planning routes is part of the holiday excitement. I try to minimise the use of toll roads, but I avoid D roads completely. In France, every town, village and row of country houses seems to have grown steep and high speed bumps. New motor movers would cost me a lot more than tolls so if I can't find an RN route, I pay.
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Hi there, it does depend on which region(s) you go to. As an example, we holiday in the South West of France (Gastes) every summer and rarely use the tolls for our journey - only for scooting around the big towns. (we have even made it down without any toll roads..!) We don't use a toll card or anything. There roads are excellent for towing and many in the South are dual carriageways. We also do our main travelling on Sunday/Monday which has reduced traffic on the roads too. Hope this helps
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Hi regarding tolls for caravan, I’ve been going to France for last few years with just the car using the Tag , but now going to tow caravan , does anybody know how the toll knows your towing a caravan do you have to change your tag account or does the sensor at the barrier detect the size of car and caravan to charge correct amount.
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I don't know how it works - by magic I suppose - but somehow it does know, and you will automatically be billed for class 2 when you are towing your caravan.
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I think you will find there are height sensors. Anything over 2 metre is class 2. Likewise any motorhome over 3 metres will go up a class.
David
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