Travel from the Loire to Nice - by car??

There are a few things going on. The viamichelin takes you through the mountains of the Massive Central, down the Rhone Valley, and across to Nice. It's autoroute/freeway/toll road the whole way. When they say dangerous stretch of road, it also says speed limit 130 kh. That's 80 mph. So how dangerous can it really be! When it slows down to 110 kh, that's a little more dangerous. The roads through these mountains do curve and go up and down quite a bit, but it's freeway.

The road along the coast is again autoroute, a little curvy, but not something I'd name dangerous they way viamichelin has.

If you want flatter and straighter, just go east from the Loire towards Montagrgis and then Sens, and catch the autoroute south through Burgundy and the Rhone. You'll avoid the mountains of the Massive Central that way.

Dangerous is not viaMichelin relating directly to driving conditions. Rather it is code. It is illegal in France to have a GPS with speed cameras locations on it, and it is illegal to list speed camera locations.

It is not illegal to note areas where "dangerous" conditions - and so very often dangerous conditions lead the traffic departments to lower speed limits and place cameras - and reduced speed limits are, and the duration of the zone.

So when you are driving, be careful everywhere, but especially careful in the areas marked dangerous. On my Garmin I get a big red banner stating when I have entered a dangerous area and a reminder of the governing speed. I ignore them at my peril.

Ideally you would see the trip across France as a charming road trip, exploring off the beaten path, and would have 4 days or so to devote to it.

Alternatively you would bite the bullet and let a train get you from the Loire to Nice, then rent a second car in Provence (or Nice if that works for you). This is an 8 hour trip. On the other hand, add 25% to viaMichelin's estimated travel time.

It sounds as though you are contemplating a drive without enough time to enjoy it. This strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds, but I find that every trip has some built in logistical gnarlyness that one must just live with. Build in a recovery day in Nice.

Is too too late to rejigger your itinerary? If you could fly into Nice, for instance, and proceed in a more direct way to Paris you would lose the worst of the gnarlyness.

The Cote d'Azur starts going Formula 1 mad, with associated sky high prices and very limited availability, the start of the previous weekend, with the madness increasing the closer you get to Monaco and the closer you get to the weekend of the race.

By Tuesday or Wednesday of the week afterwards everything is back to normal except for the Armco safety barriers which take a few more days to remove.

Then it is just waiting 360 or so days until the next one!!!

Thanks to all of you. Your information has helped us finalize our plans for car rental next spring. Really appreciate the input. Susan