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Planning a holiday to France? Read our guide to the best regions, including expert advice on where to go on the Côte-d'Azur and Aquitaine Coast, in Provence, Languedoc-Roussillon, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and the Dordogne as well as the best operators and booking details. By Anthony Peregrine, Telegraph Travel France expert. Click on the tabs above for our expert's picks of the best beach, villa, culture, food and drink, activity and cruise holidays in France.
FRANCE RENTAL CAR REQUIREMENTS & DRIVING INFORMATION
We are reliably schizophrenic about the French. This is understandable. They are both our next-door neighbours, and hereditary foes. Because we live so close, their supposed foibles - arrogance, slipperiness, dubious morality - are amplified. And yet, and yet, we can't keep out of their country.
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Clearly, and like a classy courtesan, France is so damned seductive that she lures us away from fiercely-held principles. You can see how she might. The most diverse country in Europe runs from celebrated mountains to the continent's finest coast via everything else in-between. Great rivers run hither and yon, forest covers 28 per cent of the landscape and there's hardly anyone about.
Amboise, in the Loire
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For roughly the same population, France covers more than twice the area of the UK. The few there are have filled the place with the first-class food and wine, châteaux (not all built to fight the English) and variegated culture. In few other countries can you go, as I did four summers ago, from a bull-running festival to major Signac exhibition in under 25 minutes. Villages remain complete unto themselves, rather than urban out-reach communities. They will have proper bakeries. The chain store might still be the ironmonger's. The mayor will take him(her)self very seriously.
As importantly, and despite (or because of?) its Jacobin impulse to centralisation, France has retained marked regional identities. The country covers the West European spectrum, from Flemish and Germanic in the north to Latin in the south. You can holiday in a different France every time you go. But how do you choose where
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