on the road less travelled in Ireland and france

By Conal Healy

Some people want to see everything, and do everything. Their idea of a holiday is a Excell spreadsheet with every meal, sight and toilet break colour coded and confirmed.

Fran and I are not like that. We know we can’t see every vast vista, march through chateaux,  or dine … oh hell, you have to enjoy what you find, and have a holiday.

When we were planning our trip across France we decided that we want to stay in places for a few days so we could enjoy the location, try some of the region’s food and wander the “paths less travelled”.

We didn’t want to spend days sitting in the hire car, travelling down highways – we wanted to see the hidden France. We worked out a formulae – our next destination should not be more than two hours drive away.

Why? You usually check out of accommodation at 10am, you usually aren’t allowed to check in to the next place until 2pm.

There is a window of four hours to fill. We decided we would drive for an hour, find a nice town, explore the sights (grab a nice lunch there) for two hours, and then drive (for an hour) to our destination for the following few days.

Arriving at 2pm meant we could check-in, dump our bags and then go and explore our new French town.

It’s a plan.