Car Hire in France - Getting to France

There are numerous ways to reach France. Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Strasbourg and Toulouse all have international airports, but it is Paris that receives the lion’s share of long-haul flights. There are limited transatlantic flights to Nice, and Marseille is serviced by several North African destinations. Other popular routes include arriving via Frankfurt and London.

Paris has two airports, Aéroport d'Orly, 16km south and Charles de Gaulle, 27kms to the north. The latter receives most the long-haul traffic.

From the UK, the Eurostar takes three hours, while France’s efficient SCNF trains connect with the Rhine valley, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Geneva, Zurich, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels and Amsterdam. Local trains also the cross the borders in many places and longer distance trains depart from Paris several times a week.

Likewise, buses follow similar routes and offer endless options for international travel, but are less comfortable.

By sea, the quickest passenger ferries and hovercrafts to England run between Calais and Dover, and Boulogne and Folkestone. There are numerous routes linking Brittany and Normandy with England; Saint Malo is linked by car ferry and hydrofoil with Weymouth, Poole and Portsmouth, while Roscoff has ferry links to Plymouth. Ferries also ply the waters between France and Ireland (Cherbourg-Cork), the Channel Islands, Sardinia (Marseille-Porto Torres), Italy (Corsica-Genoa) and North Africa (Marseille-Algiers, Marseille-Tunis, Sète-Tangier).

France’s road network is very well developed and carries an enormous amount of inter-continental traffic. Crossings into Belgium and Luxembourg are numerous, as are the routes to the Rhineland via Strasbourg and other eastern frontier towns. The two main routes into Switzerland are in the north and south of the frontier, while the Pyranees are skirted to the east and west. Italy is a mere hour’s drive from Nice, while Dover is reached by car ferry or Chunnel service. Schengen visa arrangements and 24/7 border times make driving to France a doddle.