Shewolf55 Posted July 27, 2020 Share Posted July 27, 2020 Hey guys, we’re in Brittany Trélévern staying at a campsite, but last night we stayed at a beautiful free Aire ille de Bois just above Lézardrieux, almost deserted bay. However, this is our very first trip out ever in our motor home and my husband nearly had a coronary driving the last bit, down a single narrow road. He’s now debating whether to just drive on bigger roads ?? which would be a shame. Any advice on how to know what roads are easier to drive down and how can you tell Is there a particular coast drive route that is accessible or just a case of practice and hope for the best ?? Thanks, we’re going to tour all around the pink granite coast over next 8 days Sarah xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shewolf55 Posted July 27, 2020 Author Share Posted July 27, 2020 Forgot to sat we have a Burstner t615 solano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevec176 Posted July 27, 2020 Share Posted July 27, 2020 Make sure you have a suitable sat nav. A car sat nav is no good you need to be able to enter the dimensions of your van. It wont guarantee you wont go down narrow roads but it should guarantee you can get through. Take the roads slowly and think ahead, it makes touring intetesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barryd999 Posted July 27, 2020 Share Posted July 27, 2020 You must have been unlucky as the roads in Brittany are generally great plus there are two free motorways in the north and the south that can get you along most of it Pretty quick if you are in a hurry. Ive never found anything there that difficult to navigate. If you can get online, check the sat nav, a paper map and then google streetview if you have a concern over a particular road. Do bear in mind though that roads on streetview look a lot narrower than they actually are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 Shewolf55 - 2020-07-27 8:14 PM ...Is there a particular coast drive route that is accessible or just a case of practice and hope for the best ?? Thanks, we’re going to tour all around the pink granite coast over next 8 days Sarah xx I’m surprised, with your extensive touring background and living in Normandy, plus the fact that at one stage your husband was contemplating buying a truck and large 5th-wheeler, that he should be fazed by driving a fairly small motorhome on a narrow road in Brittany. The Côte de Granit Rose is a relatively short stretch of coastline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te_de_Granit_Rose but if you decide to visit the tiny ports that are abundant on the Brittany coastline, your husband must expect to have to drive on narrow roads and to regularly find manoeuvring challenging on arrival. A ‘camping’ sat-nav won’t save you as all such roads would be potential ‘pinch-points’ for a Solano t615. I suggest you avoid going into towns/villages where there are signs advising against entry by large vehicles, as such signs are not there for entertainment value - but otherwise (as you say) hope for the best and accept the inevitable. (I live about a mile from a main road, and I’ve always dreaded driving my motorhomes that mile as it’s so narrow in places and visibility is so restricted. I normally get away with it, but one morning - quite early - at the worst possible place I met a full-size double-decker bus. Cars were behind me and the bus, so reversing wasn’t practicable. Somehow we managed to sidle past each other, with the bus and motorhome leaning over towards each other and (literally) just inches of clearance. I’ve no idea why the double-decker was there - we have no local public transport - but after that experience narrow roads don’t much concern me.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shewolf55 Posted July 28, 2020 Author Share Posted July 28, 2020 Yep, he really did think big at one point with the 5th wheeler ?? and we have been down far worse with a large caravan, possibly because we’re new to motorhoming, it’ll take time to gain confidence. The local detailed maps a good idea and sat nav vehicle dimensions, we’ll get on that now. I want to go everywhere including the Pyrenees in summer, but better not tell him that just yet ???? thanks for the advice and moderator you have a brilliant memory ?? xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 I just used the “Search our Forums” facility and your user-ID - but I have got a brilliant memory too. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brians dad Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 We are old fashioned enough to rely on paper maps, and always carry a Michelin 1:200,000 scale, about 3 miles to the inch map of France. You get every road in detail, and you can tell even on the unclassified local (white coloured) roads just how wide they are and how many bends they have. The amount of detail they have means that Michelin maps take a bit of getting used to, but they do give you a good feel about which roads to take and which villages have potential to be worth visiting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barryd999 Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 Shewolf55 - 2020-07-28 8:13 AM Yep, he really did think big at one point with the 5th wheeler ?? and we have been down far worse with a large caravan, possibly because we’re new to motorhoming, it’ll take time to gain confidence. The local detailed maps a good idea and sat nav vehicle dimensions, we’ll get on that now. I want to go everywhere including the Pyrenees in summer, but better not tell him that just yet ???? thanks for the advice and moderator you have a brilliant memory ?? xx Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!!! (lol) or so they say. You can guarantee the day you wake up and cant be bothered to check the paper map and just bung the GPS into the sat nav and follow it blindly will be the day it decides to take you down a goat track. All part of the fun but mines nearly gone out of the window on many occasions. My own fault though for being lazy. If you go to the Pyrenees I did a guide on some of the best routes and places to stop over. Done them several times now. You will find the PDF guide here. https://sites.google.com/site/hanktestsite2/downloads Follow that and you wont go far wrong but beware of what I said. All the roads on that route are great apart from the one time I took my eye off the ball as we were actually heading out of the big mountains towards the Atlantic coast. Read the bit towards the end "Cambo Les Bains". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weldted Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 We have covered that area many times lately in a Burstner Iexo 736. It’s our first A Class but I actually find being right hand drive an advantage as I can get right in close to the edge and stopping to let the oncoming traffic pass me by. Near Toulouse at the moment currently 39/40 c. Not many Brit vans about seen a couple. All well here everyone wearing masks and distancing, only eating at restaurants if can sit outside, keeping away from big towns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StuartO Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 Brians dad - 2020-07-28 11:30 AM ..... We carry a Michelin 1:200,000 scale, about 3 miles to the inch map of France. ... I rely primarily on satnav these days but when touring in France I also like to have the relevant Regional Michelin Map, the ones which have an orange-coloured cover. These provide far more detail than the national ones. A single Regional Map Number 512 will cover Britanny so it will be £5 well spent getting that from Amazon before you go. I have ended up on some undesirable roads occasionally due to sat nav taking what it thought was a paved road as the most direct route which was actually a narrow and unpaved farm track, so double check before you act on instructions to turn off onto what might be such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deneb Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 StuartO - 2020-07-28 3:00 PM I have ended up on some undesirable roads occasionally due to sat nav taking what it thought was a paved road as the most direct route which was actually a narrow and unpaved farm track, so double check before you act on instructions to turn off onto what might be such. There can be unintended consequences to some programming options on sat-navs as well. Some time back I selected the "No U-turns" preference on my Garmin, as I tend to program a destination but sometimes deviate from the programmed route for a variety of reasons, rather than following the instructions blindly. As such, I wanted to silence the constantly repetitive instruction to "make a U-turn where possible". It did silence the instruction, as well as prompting the unit to calculate new routes much faster whenever I chose to deviate from its instructions, but after a while I found that it was sometimes selecting some very odd routes, such as cutting down narrow lanes and telling me to leave a main road only to rejoin it later after an apparently pointless deviation. It took me a while to figure out the problem, but with the option to avoid U-turns selected, it would plot routes to avoid any junctions where a turn of more than 90 degrees was involved, preferring narrow lanes or little back alleys on occasions, and wanting me to drive through villages or housing estates instead of staying on the most obvious route. So that option is now turned off and normality has been restored, including the persistent nagging to "take a U-turn" *-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barryd999 Posted July 28, 2020 Share Posted July 28, 2020 Funniest "TomTom moment" I remember was right at the top of the Simplon pass between Italy and Switzerland where it promptly instructed me to turn right (over a cliff) and take the ferry. 8-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shewolf55 Posted August 3, 2020 Author Share Posted August 3, 2020 (lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shewolf55 Posted August 3, 2020 Author Share Posted August 3, 2020 Thanks everyone for the great advice, i will certainly get the orange local maps in future. We have also just downloaded the 'Copilot caravan app' which seeeemmmssss quite good Our next trip is straight down and across the Pyrenees in two weeks time and i will be planning what routes are the best to go down, without getting stuck *-) I will be checking out your posts on your own experiences going through the mountain passes!! Sarah xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shewolf55 Posted August 3, 2020 Author Share Posted August 3, 2020 Hi Barry You mentioned your Pyrenees trip!!! We are going in two weeks’ time and Mike (husband) is looking forward to the amazing roads, but not anything too narrow! I am currently reading your amazing info on the trip you made with all the aire stops etc Is there anything you would suggest avoiding? Anything that really should not be missed? Can’t believe how fantastic your write up is, it will save me tons of planning time – thanks Sarah xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevec176 Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 I did the Pyrenees last year and found Co-Pilot worked well, no bad turns. There was a lot of narrow roads but not a lot of traffic and lots of wonderful views. Enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barryd999 Posted August 3, 2020 Share Posted August 3, 2020 Shewolf55 - 2020-08-03 3:47 PM Hi Barry You mentioned your Pyrenees trip!!! We are going in two weeks’ time and Mike (husband) is looking forward to the amazing roads, but not anything too narrow! I am currently reading your amazing info on the trip you made with all the aire stops etc Is there anything you would suggest avoiding? Anything that really should not be missed? Can’t believe how fantastic your write up is, it will save me tons of planning time – thanks Sarah xx Thanks, I hope it will be useful. For me the best bits are the areas around Gavarnie and Cauterets but all of it is fantastic. At Gavarnie you have the Cirque of course but nearby the Cirque de Troumouse (mentioned in the guide). The roads are generally fine. Its a very easy drive up to Gavarnie. The road beyond above the Aire up to the Col de Tentes is doable in the motorhome and the views are stunning. The road (which is a toll) up the Cirque de Troumouse is a bit hairy but ive seen vans go up it and again its just amazing up there. Pretty much all the roads in that guide are fine for motorhomes, I just got caught out on that last day as we headed out of the big mountains because I didnt bother looking at the map and relied on the sat nav Im envious. Its a fantastic place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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