Best affordable places to stay in France

It’s rare to be able to delve into your heart and pull out all your favourite places for one article, but this feature for The Guardian allowed me to do just that. And even though I’m lucky enough to have stayed in some pretty luxurious places, these easily rival them for comfort and friendliness of […]

A family road trip through France

On July 4th, 2020, the British government gave the green light for travel in France after four months of lockdown during the pandemic, so I booked the Eurotunnel and put together a trip of a lifetime through France, taking the route straight through the middle, stopping for adventures on the way that ranged from a […]

Paris for families

In November 2019 we went to Paris en famille for a story for The Independent. Story below… For further tips not included in the story, scroll down! Paris for families The child-friendly guide to Paris – not including Disney! Strolling the elegant boulevards, dining in atmospheric brasseries and admiring world-class art in Paris can be […]

Blog: a handy list of villas and gite companies

‘Can you recommend a good gite company?’ is one of the questions I’m most frequently asked, so here is a list of the companies and individual gites and villas I most often mention to people: BUDGET Sawday’s If you’ve never heard of Sawday’s, then they’re a great place to start your search. They list characterful […]

Blog: 7 reasons to love self-catering in France

Some of the best trips we’ve had in France have been when we’ve been based at a gite or villa and this style of holiday works perfectly for France. Yet you don’t often find recommendations for individual rental properties in the press. This tends to be because editors prefer to recommend accommodation that will have […]

My favourite finds in 2019

What were France travel expert Carolyn Boyd’s favourite finds in 2019 – ranked 1 to 10! From beaches to hotels to food trails, add them to your list for 2020.

About the France Traveller newsletter

This newsletter, what’s all that about then? As you’ll have seen from this website, I write about France travel, food and drink for national newspapers and magazines (and a few websites too!), but as there are always more tips, ideas, photos and videos than I could ever cram into my articles, I’ve given them a […]

Best stopovers en route south

“Where do you stop when you drive south?” is possibly the number one question I get asked… and it’s so good to have dozens of suggestions up my sleeve. Whether you want to just enjoy a bit of luxury and switch off at a beautiful boutique hotel, or have a more adventurous stay in a […]

30 best B&Bs in France

I love a chambres d’hotes – the French answer to a BnB gives you a chance to chat to the owners, get the inside track on what the best places to visit, best restaurants, and the history of an area. This made it a joy to put together my favourite 30 in France for The […]

Best places to stay in Brittany

  If you clicked onto this post from the map, you might have noticed there are a lot of stories about Brittany… I’m rather in love with it at the moment. And if you’re going, you’ll need somewhere lovely to stay. There are 20 in the article – click here to read it –  to […]