🇫🇷 Inspiration for lesser-known destinations in France - Share your findings!

[Melissa.HomeExchange]

One of the countless advantages of house swapping is that it allows you to travel absolutely anywhere, as HomeExchangers are everywhere.

This thread is aimed at those who want to step off the beaten track, either because they are passionate about fighting over-tourism, or simply because they want to discover lesser-known destinations.

Share your discoveries!

For this new edition, I propose we focus on France.

So, I invite you to share here the lesser-known destinations in France that you loved, for one reason or another, explaining what you liked about them. Feel free to share your tips and good addresses as well!

Do you live in a lesser-known destination in France? Tell us why it’s worth a visit: what is there to do or see? Beautiful walks? Amazing bike rides? A museum or a unique establishment? Make us want to come! (You can even share the link to your HomeExchange listing if you’d like.)

[markau]

The Occitanie region.
Narbonne, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Perpignan - all with good train connections.
The hinterland of above like Corbières, Minervois, Canal du Midi
Coastal villages like Gruissan, Bages, Peyriac de Mer, the resort of Argelès , Collioure.
The Pyrenées Oriental departement for easy access to seaside, mountains and north Costa Brava.

[Melissa.HomeExchange]

Welcome to the Forum and that you so much for your great suggestions. These all sound like great destinations and ones that I am yet to explore myself. I’ll add them to my travel list!

[CapBimet]

I would like to propose several locations along the Mediterranean coast of France:

1. Cagnes-sur-Mer
2. Sanary-sur-Mer
3. Sète

The most famous tourist locations along the southern coast (Marseilles, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Nice, Monaco (not French but embedded in southern France)), are all magnificent and well worth visiting. However, like all famous places, they suffer from over-tourism in the summer… painfully busy roads, busy or sold-out attractions and restaurants, should-to-shoulder crowds, high prices, full and grossly expensive accommodations).

The other three places (one southwest, one south-central, and one southeast) all offer the same wonderful climate, attractions, beaches, culture, lifestyle, iconic architecture, and scenery as the most famous cities, but far less crowded and less expensive.

Cagnes-sur-Mer: This is a small city on the southeast coast immediately to the west of Nice. It has similar gorgeous beaches as Nice, lovely and quality hotels and restaurants, a beautiful old town, and great attractions such as the Renoir museum which was the artist’s home. The transit connections to Nice are plentiful, reasonably priced, and frequent. One can spend a glorious day exploring the wonders of Nice and then take a tram, train, or bus in 30 minutes to a calm and beautiul accommodation in Cagnes-sur-Mer. In my opinion, it has a better waterfront than Nice… it is more casual, more picturesque, more convenient to waterfront bars and restaurants than the Nice waterfront. We have spent 8 weeks across three home exchanges in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and will be there again this summer for 3 weeks. It is our favourite vacation location in the entire world.

Sanary-sur-Mer: This is a small coastal port/village on the south-central coast, west of Toulon. It is a small paradise. An absolutely gorgeous port with picture-postcard beautiful central downtown area. The largest and most interesting weekly market we have ever seen along the southern coast. It is a short drive or ferry ride to the interesting nearby naval city of Toulon, home to the French Mediterranean fleet. It is walking distance to the beautiful sandy beaches of Six-Fours-les-Plages. It is a short daytrip to Aix-en-Provence and the Luberon.

Sète: This is small city on the southwest coast. The city itself is very interesting, with a picturesque port with lots of great waterfront shops, bars, and restaurants, a nice weekly market, and interesting building. it is a short day-trip to interesting destinations such as Carcassonne and Montpelier. But the real attraction is the incredible beaches! The best beaches we have experienced in France, by far! Kilometres long stretches of fine sand, a gradual shallow entry into the water, frequent huge breakers for playing in the waves, many many wonderful and reasonably priced beach clubs where you can reserve a front-row lounge chair and eat and drink all day for a surprisingly reasonable cost that would be double or triple in Cannes, Saint-Tropez, or Nice.

We have visited and stayed at all of these places and consider them all to be superb, available, relatively uncrowded during the high-season, and reasonably priced.

First 11 photos are Cagnes-sur-Mer, next 3 are Sanary-sur-Mer, last 4 are Sete.

[illopart]

The Pyrenees – both the Spanish and the French sides – are full of charm. There are lots of picturesque small towns, great mountain walks, rivers and lakes, perfect spots for hiking and biking, and mild, sunny weather. You’ll also find excellent local food in small, non-touristy restaurants, as well as lively local markets and festivals in every town throughout the summer.

[Trenke]

In 2019, we didn’t have many guest points and I was looking for a reciprocal swap, but nobody I approached said yes. I was getting a bit desperate and put my search on a Facebookgroup of HE. People from Blois responded. I had never heard of the place, but it turned out to be very nice.
We went to Zooparc Beauval.
We did a covered wagon ride in the city itself.

We visited the castle Chambord, which I really recommend for anyone visiting that area. It’s the most beautiful castle I ever saw and even our children, who were in the age of 12 - 16 then, loved it! The inside as well as the outside, so we went there twice.

We also went to the city Troo, where some people live in cavehouses.

[Laurence]

Everybody knows the French Alpes but the region is very large and we are in a not-so-well-known area : the département Isère, and the region called Dauphiné, with Grenoble as a big city and surrounded by mountains, Chartreuse, Vercors, and Belledonne. We are then in the regional parc of Vercors in a small village called Le Gua, so close to the nature.
But I wanted to tell you about the 7 wonders of the Dauphiné. You might have never heard of it and it’s a shame! They are natural or geological phenomena, identified since the thirteenth century and are as many beautiful destinations for walks or hikes! We live at a maximum of 30 minutes drive from 6 of them, the nearest being “La fontaine ardente” (burning fountain ?) 4 km from us and our village. It is a natural gas resurgence that can be ignited and the flames are above the water. The most extraordinary (for me) is Le Mont-Aiguille, which is interesting to see on a walk and always has a different profile depending on the point of view from where you admire it! Its history is just as fascinating because the first ascent of this mountain said then inaccessible, was made in 1492 by military and with the same method as to take a castle fort, with ladders!
If you want to hear more about it : Sept merveilles du Dauphiné — Wikipédia

La Fontaine ardente au Gua

Le Mont-Aiguille from Gresse-en-Vercors

Le Mont-Aiguille from The Trièves region

Our house: An old house near the forest and the mountains