Provence by car

A car is what makes the interior of Provence possible. The Luberon villages, the Alpilles, the lavender plateaux, the Verdon and the wine roads have one or two buses a day and no trains — see transport in Provence for the split.

It is also what makes the coast miserable. On the Riviera in July the train is faster than the road, and parking costs more than the ticket.

Where to hire

The efficient pattern: take the train to a regional city, hire there, give it back before the coast.

  • Avignon — for the Luberon, the Alpilles, the Rhône vineyards and the Camargue
  • Aix or Manosque — for Haute-Provence, Valensole and the Verdon
  • Nice or Marseille airport — if you are flying in and heading inland immediately

Both Avignon and Aix have a city station and a TGV station out of town, with hire desks at the TGV ones. Collecting there and never driving into the walled centre is the sensible move.

Tolls

A toll plaza on a French autoroute in Provence

The A7 down the Rhône and the A8 along the coast are tolled and not cheap. The parallel routes nationales — the N7, the coast road — are free, much slower and far more interesting.

  • Card lanes take foreign cards; the orange t lanes are for subscribers only and will trap you.
  • Free-flow sections read the plate and expect payment online within 72 hours. Easy to forget, and the fine follows you home.
  • Keep the ticket you take at entry; you need it to pay at exit.

Crit’Air

Low-emission zones operate in Marseille, Nice, Toulon and Aix, and they require a Crit’Air sticker on the windscreen — including on foreign-registered cars. Order it from the official French site before you travel; there is no way to buy one on arrival, and hire cars usually have one already.

Parking

This is the recurring problem in Provence, and it has a simple rule: every historic centre is pedestrian, so park on the ring and walk in.

Places where the car park fills by mid-morning in season, and where arriving before ten changes the day:

See parking in France.

Drink-driving

Provence is a wine region and this needs stating plainly. The limit is 0.5 g/l — about one glass — and 0.2 for drivers licensed under three years. In an accident, any alcohol in your blood will effectively decide fault whatever else happened.

On a wine route, nominate a driver who does not taste, or take one of the tours that run from Avignon, Aix and Nice.

Roads worth driving for their own sake

  • Route des Crêtes, Cassis to La Ciotat — over Cap Canaille, the highest sea cliff in France
  • The Verdon rim roads — the Corniche Sublime on the south side and the Route des Crêtes on the north; see the gorge
  • Gorges de la Nesque — from Sault west along the canyon rim
  • The three corniches between Nice and Menton, of which the Grande Corniche is the Roman road
  • Mont Ventoux — three roads up, and the Sault side is the humane one

Several of these close in high wind or high fire risk, and the closures are decided the day before.

Practical notes

  • Speed limits — 130 on motorways, 110 in rain, 80 or 90 on two-lane roads, 50 in towns and 30 in many centres. Cameras are everywhere.
  • Priorité à droite still applies at some unmarked village junctions.
  • The mistral makes the Rhône valley genuinely hard work in a high-sided vehicle, and it can blow for days.
  • Avoid the first weekend of August — the French holiday changeover produces hundred-kilometre queues on the A7 and A8.
  • Village roads are narrow. A small car is a real advantage here, and passing places matter more than power.
  • Fuel is cheapest at supermarkets, and many of their pumps are card-only and unattended at night — some reject foreign cards, so do not run the tank down in the countryside.

See driving in France and transport in France.

Photo credits

Photograph from Wikimedia Commons: autoroute toll plaza — Niels Hoogvliet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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