Has anyone got any good routes to the Montpellier area from Calais, preferably avoiding Toll roads where possible. Also an indication of the driving time from Calais to Montpellier, and mileage, I think its around the 650 mile mark, but someone might have somthing more exact.
Just out of interest what is the toll cost in France, I have always avoided them so don't really know the cost of them, if it became necessary to budget for them. Has anyone ever driven to the south of france, primarily using toll roads, in a normal estate car, (no caravan, etc).
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You have two main choices. Calais/Lyon/Monpellier or Calsis/Clermont Ferrand/Montpellier. The latter route is quieter and from Clermont south is toll free except for the impressive Millau Bridge where the toll is 7.70 euros if you are towing a van. The Clermont route is a bit more demanding as it reaches over 1100 metres above sea level.
You can do it all toll free, and you can get all the information from viamichelin website where you can ask for a toll-free route. We used to do Calais, St Omer, Douai, Cambrai, St. Quentin, Soissons, head towards Paris, take the N104 Francilienne around the East of Paris, then Evry, Nemours, Nevers, Moulins, Clermont Ferrance, then the free A75 down through to Montpellier and if you want to avoid any tolls at all you just drive down through the town of Millau and avoid the toll for the viaduct. However, in recent years, we've hopped on and off the autoroute, and paid small amounts of tolls. We never do the whole route on toll roads, because they can be boring. The above route is not boring at all, but at the wrong times of day you can get caught up in traffic in Northern France,
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there seems to be a small mileage difference, the only advantage to route 2 is that I have been as far as the geneva turn-off quite a few times so know that route pretty well, and know that even on the non-motorway roads you can still make good progress. What's is the progress like on your route Val ? What is the travel time approximately ?
One question I have for you, I was checking out MAPPY (found out about it from another thread), and put in route and asked for NON-TOLL, yet it still came up with almost 1/2 of the route on motorways. Let me just check are all BLUE motorways toll roads, or is it like in southern Italy where beyond the Salerno area the autostradas are free of charge.
We don't usually worry about the travel time - because often we'll find a lovely place to stay - or stop at a market, and have been known to spend the whole two weeks wherever we've stopped because we liked it so much. However, this time because we had a deadline to get to Spain we did:
Overnight in Aire near Calais, early morning start: 1st overnight stop - La Grange Fort, just south of Clermont Ferrand, and 2nd overnight stop at Le Boucanet near La Grande Motte on the mediterranean. The first day was a very long day, shared driving, but the second we were on site mid-afternoon. Hope this gives you some idea.
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Just an addition to my comment, above, this time we did autoroute to Senlis, then a couple of short autoroute hops around Nevers, Moulins, etc where we were very near a junction. The Calais to Senlis section was 23 euros, but the remainder of the journey only added up to about half that, in total. We only do the above, completely toll-free route, if we are not heading to a particular destination, just 'south'!
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Topic: Routes to Montpellier area
