Driving through France

I like the Michelin Atlas for planning the trip at home visually, but use the Michelin country maps for actually driving with the GPS. The Michelin Green Guides are also useful for a complete listing of towns & significant sites, so you can decide on the fly whether or not to detour. Intend to buy a RS country map for this fall's trip and see how it meshes with the RS guidebook.

Besides the Michelin map, the AA road atlas for France is excellent. It's the same scale as the Michelin map (four miles = one inch). If Amazon doesn't sell it, try Amazon.co.uk.

Buy a GPS map of Europe (or France, but usually the cost for an European map is few bucks more) and load it into your GPS. On arrival, buy a Michelin road atlas as a complement to the GPS. Michelin maps (also available online on viamichelin.co.uk) are extremely useful in indentfying roadside attractions and the likes.

If you are a good, intuitive map reader, there is nothing like the old-fashioned look of a good Michelin Map. You can buy it on Amazon.com. However, they are inconvenient to use on the fly and bulky. If all you are really concerned with is not getting lost and you carry some sort of electronic device with a screen, Google Maps is an excellent accurate map with as much detail as you will ever need. Take screen shots of the map when you are within wifi range, if you don't have a "3G" device. It's free and endlessly useful.

Check your routes on ViaMichelin before you leave so you'll be prepared in case of tolls. Some are a few Euro, some can be over 20Euro. You'll need to know this so you can keep change handy.

Hi Laurie...September is a wonderful month to drive around France. We are photographers and try to go every year. The vineyards should be in color in September and October.We take our own Gps because often now you have to pay a lot for them. if you do get one with your car, make sure they put in into English.We use the Gps for everything. If you find a lovely place for a picnic, put down a marker, if you find a village that you want to return to, put down a marker. We use it to mark places we want to photograph if they are in bad light. Or if it is raining and we want to return another day. that said there can be problems with a GPS?.....there are many villages in France with the same name so be careful of you may wind up on the other side of the country. we tend to stop and buy local maps while in France to use in addition with the Gps, because it is nice to know where you are in relation to everything else.I find that local maps often have more little, wonderful places .For example we stopped in Avallon ,inBurgundy and got a map and it had many more neat, little places. we found a bookstore and a pharmacy that had great maps. Your trip in the fall sounds wonderful. have fun and get on some of the back roads.In many places in the country there will be picnic tables, and you can stop and get your lunch in a village and have a picnic. If you have any questions about travel in France, send me a Pm.

The nice thing about a GPS is you can program it to find a specific address or a point of interest (parking lot, restaurant, etc.) along your route. Having a map is good. Realistically, however, you need a small scale map to cover details. It's cost and weight prohibitive to cary small scall maps for all of France. I generally have a highway map in addition to my GPS and rely on free maps from TI's for walking around cities.