Country guide

France

Lavender, markets and the art of the long lunch

France invented the art of travelling well, and it still practises it daily — in market squares at dawn, in two-hour lunches under plane trees, in villages so pretty they seem staged. For families, it offers the holy trinity: space, food and a culture that believes children belong at the table.

June – early July for lavender; September for calm

Provence

Lavender fields and honey-stone villages

Provence in early summer is a sensory spell — lavender rows running to the horizon, cicadas sawing in the heat, and hilltop villages the colour of honey. The Luberon and the Valensole plateau are the heart of it, best explored slowly from a stone farmhouse with a pool and a plane tree for shade.

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April – June & September – October

Paris

Boulevards, bridges and the city of light

Paris is a city that needs no introduction and still takes you by surprise — a place of grand boulevards and hidden squares, of riverbanks lined with bookstalls and cafés where the afternoon simply stops. It is walkable, well-organised and, despite its reputation, wonderfully gentle with children, who are folded into the pavement life as a matter of course.

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May – June & September

Nice & the Côte d’Azur

Promenades and the blue Mediterranean

Nice is the warm, elegant capital of the Riviera — a city of pastel facades and a palm-lined promenade curving around a bay of impossible blue. Behind the pebble beaches lies an old town of narrow lanes and markets; above it, a hilltop park with the finest view on the coast. It is the easiest base on the Côte d’Azur, with trains and boats to every seaside village.

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April – June & September – October

The Loire Valley

Fairytale châteaux and gentle river cycling

The Loire Valley is a garden of a region — a slow river threading between hundreds of châteaux, each more improbable than the last: turreted, moated, and reflected in still water. It is also one of France’s easiest places to travel with children, thanks to a network of flat, traffic-free cycling paths that link the castles through vineyards and forest.

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