I take it as axiomatic that a good stopover – however you define it – is the key to successful touring in France. I know I am not alone in this, because for every time I have been asked to recommend a good museum, château or church to visit, I must have been asked fifty times to recommend a good place to stay.
France On Two Wheels includes about one hundred recommended hotels, spread out along the routes and covering more or less the full range of price and trappings, from B&Bs and the simple Hotel de la Poste in Pierre de Bresse, which won its its first Michelin fork in 2012, to no-holds-barred Relais & Châteaux pampering at La Cheneaudière and the Château de Codignat. We stayed in about half of them, visited or had lunch in the others. This archive will grow as I add hotels to it at the rate of about one a week in no particular order, and may include a few hotels not in the book; some, perhaps, not even in France. The descriptions are mostly lifted from the ‘narrative’ of the book.
Clue: for easier map-reading, click the empty frame-like icon on the right hand side of the black strip at the top of the map
Map Key: red lollipop = hotel with restaurant; yellow house = B&B hotel; yellow knife and fork = restaurant
Hotels.
Prices: from * (B&B for less than 50 euros per person in a shared room) to ***** (expect to pay at least 175 euros)
North
Meurice, Calais *** Route 3
Loire
Auberge du Centre, Chitenay ** (near Blois, Loire Valley). Route 5
Hotel de l’Abeille, Orléans ** Route 5
Burgundy
Hotel de la Poste, Pierre de Bresse ** (east of Beaune, Burgundy), Route 1
Massif Central
Chateau de Codignat, Bort L’Etang ***** (nr Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne) Route 2
La Lozerette, Cocurès ** (near Florac, Gorges du Tarn ) Route 3
South West
Les Pyrénées, St Jean Pied de Port **** (Basque Country) Route 4
Le Sombral, St Cirq Lapopie ** (near Cahors) Route 3
Hotel du Pont, Ambialet ** (near Albi) Route 3
Alsace
Auberge Metzger, Natzwiller **
Corsica
Auberge Ferayola, Argentella * (south of Calvi)
Alps
Chalets-Hotel La Croix Fry, Manigod **** (near La Clusaz)