Product Description

"The Drive Around" series provides you with a comprehensive but flexible reference source as you tour a country or region by car. This guide divides Languedoc into touring areas - one per chapter. Major cultural centres or cities form chapters in their own right. The best of Languedoc's diverse and unspoilt landscapes is included, from the beaches of the coastal resorts to the wild and remote mountain plateaux, such as Cathar country, the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, and the Tarn and Gard regions. Each chapter contains enough attractions to provide at least a day's worth of activities - often more - and has an introduction that sums up the main attractions and a ratings box. It is then divided into an alphabetical gazetteer and a suggested tour. In every chapter, you will find lodging and eating recommendations for individual towns, or for the area as a whole. A locator map in the introduction shows the position of the tours. The tours include: the Pyrenees, Perpignan and the coast south of Perpignan, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Montpelier, and the heart of the Cevennes. No touring holiday is complete without one of these essential guides. A great combination of guidebook and route map, they contain everything the self-drive traveller needs en route. These are unique guidebooks for fly-drive travellers. There are road safety information for drivers. There is descriptive instruction setting the scene for the route ahead. Rules of the road are explained for each destination. It has full-colour detailed maps with major destinations and places of interest along the route are clearly pinpointed. It also provides select accommodation, dining and shopping options.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #370409 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Good concept but doesn't deliver as well as you'd hope
We bought this guide to use on a driving holiday around Southwest France. It gives directions for a number of one-day driving tours in the Languedoc region as well as guides for walking tours in the major towns (ie: Montpellier, Perpignan, Narbonne, Carcassone, Toulouse and Albi). In a geographical sense, it doesn't cover the eastern part of Languedoc (Nimes is excluded) and it goes further west (including Toulouse, and the areas around Castres, Albi and Foix).

I tried several times to use it, but in the end I didn't find it terribly useful. While each suggested route has an accompanying map, it is near-impossible to navigate off these maps and driving directions are non-existent. (Cue unfair muttering from my husband about women and maps). The city walking tours were better but the maps varied hugely in scale and our experience was that they took much longer to complete than the indicated walking times.

I also didn't find the authors' reviews of places very reliable. The Narbonne we visited didn't bear much resemblance to the book's description and the Hotel du Languedoc has not been an "elegant hotel" for some years now. The walking tour of Toulouse is well planned but inexplicably takes you near but not past the wonderful Musee des Augustins - don't miss this former convent which was one of the highlights for us. No mention of it in the guide. Nor does the guide tell you how to arrange a tour of the Airbus factory which is also well worth doing (note that you need to book well in advance if you want take the tour in English).

On top of these, the book is heavy for its size and the photos are for the most part uninspiring. I did feel that it had been well researched and some of the background information was interesting. But as a driving guide, it failed for us.