First-time driver in France

BJV

Enjoy the journey. My OH is french and we sent a lot of time traveling France. Motorway service stations are amazing. Cheap good food and clean.

Only piece of advice is that French drivers tend to not know what indicators are for. Still shudder about driving in Paris. Ohhh !!!. Make sure that you leave enough time for your journey and take your medical card and notes with you. (Think it is called an N11 card.) But I am sure that some one will be able to point you in the right direction.

French hospitals are good but if they have your notes ( think they still give them to you I know they gave them to me when I was expecting ) it could be really helpful.

Have an amazing time and enjoy it x

Chances are you will not need it and will have an amazing time but for the sake of the space your notes and

hollydays

macman wrote: »

Satnav is hardly essential on that jouirney. Straight out of the port towards Caen (about 10km), north round the ring road and then it's autoroute and finally high quality expressway all the way to St Malo, all clearly signed. A very easy run, even for inexperienced travellers in France.

It can be reassuring to have the satnav pointing out the correct way to go round the roundabouts etc.
sat navs with speed camera detectors are illegal .

Diesel-gazole

andygb

We NEVER use a satnav, and always use AA downloaded maps.
We have never got lost, and have enjoyed hundreds of thousands of miles driving in France.
If you are not guided by a satnav, then you can just explore.

hollydays

If the op is going for a wedding then I suspect her itinerary may not include exploring

missbiggles1

Hope this isn't too late to mention this but you can't travel with Britanny Ferries if you're over 32 weeks pregnant.

sunshinetours

At 37 weeks I would be considering using Dover Calais or even better Eurotunnel and driving from there (not stuck on a ferry for 6+ hours). Its about 300 miles or so and mainly on autoroute roads so probably around 5 hours or so

benjus

In France a full term pregnancy is considered as 41 weeks, so you'll get an extra week before the birth... or something like that...

knightstyle

If you book St Malo or any other port with Brittany Ferries PM me first and I will send you a discount code.
Plus make sure you have all the car docs, V5, insurance etc. with you in the car and a hi-vis waistcoat with a CE mark within reach of the driver, the gendarmes love fining Brits for not having this.
Driving is very easy but observe the speed limits, 50kph in towns and villages with white name signs with white letters, 70kph for smaller villages with black signs and white letters, plus STOP at stop signs with a solid white line don't crawl over or you may be fined as I was!

dangers

We've been to St Malo a lot of times and I was just wondering where exactly the wedding is - I certainly wouldn't want to drive 'Intra-Muros' as the roads inside the walls are one way IIRC. There is plenty of parking outside the walls.