Chassé-croisé: France prepares for busiest travel weekend of the year
But it also has the
chasée-croisé
, which is usually the busiest travel weekend of the year, especially on the roads, where people are generally advised to avoid travelling if possible.
This is due to traditional French summer holiday patterns in which many people take either the whole month of July or the whole month of August off work. They are then highly likely to travel within France, usually to popular holiday destinations such as the Mediterranean coast of the Alps.
This creates
the 'crossover' weekend
, when the July holidaymakers return and the August ones set out.
READ ALSO
:
Juilletistes vs Aoûtiens: Do France's two summer holiday tribes still exist?
In the week leading up to this particular weekend, you're likely to see and hear media reports about it, the traffic predictions and the places to avoid.
This year, that falls on the weekend of August 1st - 3rd.
Roads
The French traffic forecaster Bison futé grades each part of France from green (normal traffic) through yellow (difficult), red (very difficult) and finally black (extremely difficult driving conditions due to heavy traffic on major routes).
On Friday the country is evenly split between red in the north west and south east (including holiday hotspots like Brittany, Normandy and the Alps) and yellow for the rest of the country.
On Saturday the whole of France gets a 'black' rating for outward traffic. This means that traffic on major routes is likely to be extremely heavy with long traffic jams at key points such as motorway intersections, sliproads and
péages
.
The traffic prediction map for Saturday, August 2nd from Bison futé.
People who don't have to drive on Saturday are advised not to.
You can find the full Bison futé calendar, and the detailed road-by-road breakdown
here
.
Railways
The railways are also likely to be busy, although they don't get quite the same
'chassée-croisé'
effect as the roads - during July and August in France the rail network is busy most weekends.
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Tickets for the high-speed TGV and Intercité trains must be bought in advance, and the SNCF website is already showing quite a few trains to be fully booked this weekend.
It will still be possible to travel by train, but you may need to be a little flexible about your travel time. The advantage of the advance booking system is that booking a ticket also gives you a seat reservation, so you won't have to spend four hours standing in a corridor (unless there is some kind of emergency that involves train cancellations).
The local TER trains don't have the same pre-booking and seat reservation system and these can get very busy over holiday weekends - especially in tourist hotspots - so you may end up having to stand if you are travelling by TER. These do tend to be shorter journeys, however.
Plane/ferry/Eurotunnel
This will be a busy weekend at France's airports, although not noticeably busier than other weekends during the peak holiday season. Make sure you check the information provided by your airline on how far in advance you should arrive at the airport.
If you are travelling from the UK to France by ferry, expect heavy traffic around the ports and the possibility of long queues at border control - the post-Brexit travel checks are still causing problems, especially at the Port of Dover, at peak travel times. If you miss your ferry due to being stuck in a queue, you will simply be transferred to the next available crossing.
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The Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone seems to have fewer problems, and so far this summer traffic has generally been running smoothly.
Paris
And finally, a note about Paris - if you are travelling to the French capital, remember that summer is when public transport operators take the opportunity for engineering works (while the Parisians are at the beach) so Metro, tram and RER lines may be running on a slightly different schedule. Find the full details
here
.
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