Public Transportation in Rural France

To some extent, yes. Some areas are better than others. For example, a lot of the hill towns above the Riviera are accessible by bus (usually from Nice), but there are some tiny villages in Provence and in the Dordogne that have no bus service. Some places can be reached by bus, but primarily on out-and-back trips from a nearby town, with little if any opportunity to string together multiple small places on a given day. The latter is the biggest limitation I've found. The tiniest villages are cute but don't usually have enough to keep you busy for more than a couple of hours, so it is a bit frustrating to be able to see only one per day.

The Rome2Rio website can assist you in figuring the situation out. It's generally accurate in showing what types of transportation are available between any two points. You must not trust the travel times, frequencies or fares Rome2Rio displays, but you can click through the website to find the name of the company operating the buses on the route you're interested in. Usually Rome2Rio will also provide a clickable link. Go to the website of the bus company to find a schedule. Be sure you're checking the route in the correct direction, and watch for footnotes indicating which departures run on each day of the week, etc. Some bus schedules are seasonal, and some departures run only when schools are in session. The occasional bus (shown on the schedule) only takes school children.

I've done quite a bit of traveling around France without a car and have been able to see a lot of smallish places. In order to do that in the Dordogne without having to spend a lot of time on long out-and-back bus rides, I stayed in multiple bus-hub towns chosen because they seemed to have the best connections for the smaller places I wanted to see. Those bases were all attractive towns, so it wasn't really a disadvantage to stay in each of them, but I would not normally change hotels so often within such a limited area. I also sometimes had to walk quite a distance from the nearest bus stop to the village I wanted to visit. Rocamadour was a long walk along the edge of highway with scary shoulders; St-Cirq-Lapopie wasn't too bad. If I have an opportunity to make another trip to that area, I will take a one-day bus tour to some small places (like Roussillon) that are difficult or impossible to reach by public transportation.

I haven't visited enough small towns in the UK to compare the availability of bus service there to what I've found in France. As a heavy user of European buses, I've learned not to expect to cover a lot of small places quickly and to be prepared to make a lunch of peanuts or yogurt. Often you have a choice between a real lunch or taking the best bus to get back to your base or (if you're really lucky) on to your next stop.

If you have particular places you especially want to see, let us know what they are. Someone here may be able to provide information based on personal experience.

Thanks for the information. I appreciate your help. I am just in the planning stages for a possible trip to France for the fall, October perhaps. I am not sure what the rental car situation is there but the US rental car market is very expensive this summer so I was thinking about alternative ways to travel besides using a car. Thanks.

Some areas are easy without a car than others. We did a 5 day side trip to St. Malo (4 nights) and Carnac (one night). We took the train to St. Malo and from there could easily get to Dinan, Dinard and could have gone to Cancale by frequent bus. There were instructions in our rental on how to get to Mont St. Michel by bus -- it was one bus each way for the day -- but since we had done it earlier we didn't try it from there. I hired a private guide for the Neolithic sites near Carnac.

In the Dordogne or Burgundy it is much harder to get around by public transport. Generally rural areas are not tourist friendly without a car.

We also did a 5 day side trip to Angers and Nantes from Paris and a day trip from Nantes to a village nearby. We could have gone on to a seaside town if we had chosen.

So it is possible to do some things without a car but it is tricky.

Jerry, I've taken the bus from Lourdes to Bareges in the Pyrenees. The line is the 965 that runs from the gare SNCF in Lourdes into the mountains. The bus itself was more of a motorcoach like tour companies use rather than what most of us would visualize as a public transit bus. The bus schedule is limited to daytime hours, and I think it only runs certain days of the week. I would imagine it's a similar story in other parts of the country. You'd have to do some true schedule coordination.

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I agree that it is much easier to get around using a car. My wife and I have been to France once before. We flew to Paris and stayed a few days there and then took the train to Versailles and got the rental car there because I figured it was easier to negotiate getting on the highway farther from Paris. Then, we drove to Chartres to see the cathedral and spent a wonderful night at a B&B. We then drove through the French countryside and stayed at another B&B near Lyon in a small village where we could explore the area to go to Luney and Taize. We finished up the driving portion of the trip by driving to Aix-en-Provence where we returned the car and took the train to Marseille to take the night train to Rome. So, we did see many small villages and enjoyed staying at charming little inns in country settings because we could drive to them. I would like to drive again but just was not sure about the affordability at this time. Happy Travels.

Although I often rent a car, I've found the village services are often limited to routes at the start and end of the day, oriented around work and school schedules, M-F. And at other times, unpredictable) It can definitely be an adventure. I have a sense it can vary by region, however. My village bus experience is mostly in the south, and I've only ever driven in the other regions.

I've found the village services are often limited to routes at the start and end of the day, oriented around work and school schedules, M-F.

That's definitely true. And, as others have mentioned, it varies significantly from region to region. It takes some time, but you can usually find out the transportation system and bus schedules for most areas in France on the Internet. While driving through rural France we've often seen bus stops in the most unlikely, out of the way places.