Motoring in France

Anyone travelled due South through France?

Looking to leave the confines of God's own county of Yorkshire and doing 2500 miles or so abroad.

Any advice re: breakdown insurance, friendly French MG locations etc. would be much appreciated.

Done the trip to Provence before (but in new, dare I say, more reliable), motors.

Loads of useful stuff here.

Just don't let a French rural garage near the car!

1) Fill up with fuel at Dover (or where ever you cross) - it is cheaper than in France.
2) Use super unleaded in France, standard unleaded is 10% ethonol and may damage seals etc on an older car, it should be okay on an F but why take the risk?
3) Directline seem to offer the best european breakdown cover, I've only had occation to use my breakdown cover once, that was with the RAC and their service was very poor, durring and after the inccident which was in the newest vehicle I've every taken overseas.
4) Take a good atlas with you, plan to use some of the route nationals rather than just the motorway, it is more interesting as well as avoiding tolls.
5) Do not travel on the 1st, 3rd or last weekend of August, most of France is on the motorway - 1 year we did and a journey that I've done in 16 hours door to door from Bilbao to Sussex took 32 hours!
6) Listen to the autoroute traffic radio (107.7 IIRC) the info is very good.
7) Get and use a credit card that offers "no handling fees", Halifax and Sandanter do them, so do others. Credit cars are safer than debit cards, just rember to clear it when you get home.

That's interesting about the fuel. I thought ours was dearer than most.:shrug:

Don't forget you can adjust the TFs headlights to suit continental driving.

I would also take a spare expansion tank cap and an alternator belt (from experience).

david aiketgate wrote: That's interesting about the fuel. I thought ours was dearer than most.:shrug:

It was but in the last couple of years France has got more expensive.

Thanks for all the useful advice guys.
No, I didn't know about the adjustable headlights - will try that out. Used to sticking bits of plastic on the lenses!

Just wondering should the unthinkable happen where you might be rescued to?
It's happened to me before (Citroen Xantia). The mechanics I've come across in France seem to have no signs of oil on their hands at any time and in the countryside have days to make any necessary repairs.

When the mount for the intermidiate drive shaft on my ZS180 went I was met by the local agent at 5am and followed him to his garage as the car was still drivable. He went home and returned at 10. He then took 3 hours to look at the car, I had told him what was wrong but he was convinced it was the whole gearbox, I wasn't going to leave the car and come back to a bill for a new gearbox.

It took him until the following Friday to angle grind one of the broken bolts and try to weld the other one! On top of that it took another 3 hours to deliver the micra diesel, a fitting replacment for a ZS apparently, because it had aircon!

We collected my car on the Sunday morning after waiting for the owner to turn up over an hour after the agreed time.

2 month later we had a £160 charge on the credit card, apparently for returning the car to the garage where we collected it and not the base of the hire company 25 miles away despite no one saying anything and there being nothing in any of the paperwork. To top it off the RAC said we had arranged the hire car so it was down to us, they refused to accept that they were acting as our agent, they put us in touch with the garage.

It may be worth taking some contact details, there are MG clubs in Europe.