Screw the satnav. Go to a newsagents and get a Michelin map. Best is a collection of the yellow ones. Avoid all motorways and RNs (Routes Nationales in red). They will be straight and boring with lots of traffic and radars (unless the Gilets Jaunes have bolloxed them, which they may have done). Seek out the D roads in yellow (Départementales) - far more scenic. Seek out roads that look like intestines- twisty. Get into the habit of stopping in cafés for a coffee to consult the map and memorise the next bit. This is then combined with stopping for coffee, map consultation and the inevitable piss. You’ll have much more fun. Use the satnav just to find the hotel.
nice idea ^ would have picked this when brain functioning but there are "scenic satnav" apps etc available now.
+1 for Michelin maps, especially the Local (Yellow) and Green (Zoom) series. Michelin mark "scenic" roads with green highlighting on one side, it's well worth stringing these roads together if they head in roughly the right direction.
Or use MyRouteApp on your phone to plot routes using the Michelin Maps option which shows these green edged roads. Save as a GPX or ITN file and then save to your sat nav SD card via a suitable on-the-go cable. Best of both worlds, works great with my Samsung S9 and Garmin Zumo 590. NB. This using the paid for version of the app, not the free one. Worth the annual sub IMHO. I'm with @GordonH and his cross country route to Le Havre, far better, from where you are in so much as the time you'd be sitting on the boat you'd be riding instead. You've already done the Pyrenees on this trip anyway. I'd be doing Rte. Napoleon, Mt Ventoux, Cevennes and then North to Le Havre across any National Parks enroute.
I was in Paris over the Easter Weekend. I was at the Pompidou Centre and needed to leave it to go to the Gare de Lyon to get my TGV home. I foolishly thought that one of the many apps on my iPhone would give me directions straight into my AirPods. I ended up walking in completely the wrong direction, looking for useless Metros and only caught my train by the skin of my teeth after flagging down a rare taxi. What I should have done was use my 1978 map of Paris that I had on me and forgotten about technology. I'd have sorted it out with ease - I had plenty of time to begin with. Maps are the biz and help you learn your way around. A satnav just gives you orders and takes you from A to B. In theory.
I will always prefer the hard-copy version due to my age but also related to age, now try and face up to reality and practicality, as too does Chizel I believe. you're not Michael Portillo are you?
The worst hotels we’ve had are The so-called Spa hotels and they’ve been the most expensive. €125 for 2. The best one without any shadow of doubt was the cheapest at €45. Work that out.
Definitely not! The thing about small screens is that you don't get the big picture. Only a map does this. Maps are fab. Screens are useful but they aren't the panacea they are made out to be. A map doesn't run out of electricity either, but you need an iPhone torch to read it at night... (or the headlight) There's a bloke at work (we are an Apple shop) who amazingly seems to know huge amounts of customer phone numbers. I don't know more than about a dozen phone numbers now. The iPhone knows all of them. It's the same with calculators. No one can now add up, let alone do long division. So finally, after delegating your life to a device, you can't find your way around, don't know how to get hold of anyone and can't add up. I avoid change in shops by adding up my purchases in my head at the checkout queue and handing the amount of cash that will minimise coins coming back to me. Tends to bamboozle whoever is at the checkout, but it makes for a light wallet. Yes of course I still do the contactless swipe thing and use the bank card frequently. But for a sandwich, yoghurt and an apple at lunch?
Hotels: Get bored of riding for the day. Rock up at a country 2 or 3 star you like the look of and take it from there. Organisation? What organisation?
So I went to Cannes for coffee.. Looks lovely there.. I like the idea of a beach so I'm heading to Marseille .. I hope there is a beach there... I want to be in perpignan tomorrow (was to be today but 290 miles of motorway ain't 4 me) so I took them and tolls off nav and have had a great mornings ride. . Followed the waterfront around for 30 mins, could have done that for a few hours!!! Then picked up the dn7 which took me up into some fantastic hills and twisty smooth roads for 40 mins.. Absolutely stunning.. Couldn't take enough pics!!! It then leads through some small industrial bits but roads still not bad and very pretty backdrop. I'm now stopped for lunch in a lil village that I have no idea the name of...
