France Trip suggestions?

We're planning a big one! Ireland to France, two weeks or so....sometime next year. We've been once before, but were preceeded by French speaking friends who knew the country and found sites for us etc.
That was a few years ago, this time we're planning it ourselves from scratch. Rather than head off and hope for the best, we thought we might ask for suggestions, or even an overall plan, on the Craic Forum.
Basically, we can travel at any time, although warm weather would be a plus. We'd love to hear from anyone who has done a similar trip recently.....where they stayed, what they saw and did, the good points, the bad points etc. We'd happily follow in someone else's 'footsteps' if the plan seemed good for us.
So over to you, looking forward to your comments!

Thanks for the reply, and yes....we want pre-conceived ideas, hence my post! We're looking for a suggested route to follow, with recommended sites etc. Your 'furthest point' idea makes sense, also researching places to explore on the way. Any further comments welcome....and thanks again.

A lot depends on what you want out of a holiday.
Some like castles, fishing, cycling etc. others want to sit on a beach or campsite and see next to no attractions.

We have been going for many years and have done a lot with and now without kids. Gone are the days of theme parks as we now prefer the culture. I go in summer as there is a lot more going on. Markets and local fetes etc.

As Nick has said, get off the boat and follow your nose but a rough idea of regions you want to visit would be good.

It may be a good idea to not drive too much on your first solo trip. We have been known to get of the boat in cherbourg at 11am and drive for about 7 hours (with a short lunch break) and then something similar the next day just to get us to the south Coast. Spend most of the trip in that area and perhaps 4 days driving back up. This is quite achievable but consist of a lot of motorway driving and tolls. Another option is to not go so far and stay off the autoroute and enjoy the towns and villages. You will see places to stop that you would never see on autoroutes.

Another questions is, do you prefer campsites of aires? If it is campsites you have the option of going off season and using the ASCI book for great discounts.

For a first two week trip sticking to Loire valley, Vendee and Brittany would be very comfortable.

we went on our first euro trip in June just past, 17 days Friday sailing Rosslaire Roscoff. we had only finished our van at Easter, with two shakedown weekends away beforehand.

We first travelled up to Ponterson (4 kms from Mont St Michel), spent the rest of the day there, then on to Mont St Michel the next day, before moving on to Le Mans, where we visited the 24 hour museum. we then moved on to a site near Dijon, before heading through Switzerland to lake Como, spent six days there, travelling home through Interlaken (we stopped for one day to do the Piz Gloria revolving restaurant/ James Bond museum on top of the Schilthorn). We stopped in Beaune on the way home (could really have spent more time here) and on to Normandy, where we did WW2 stuff for a few days. We stayed in municipal sites and ordinary sites but no Aires.

2400miles in 17 days.

we could do greater mileage at higher speed than most being in a Transporter/camper, but would probably settle to do slightly less miles next time. Also we went through Switzerland/Italy with next to no German, only high school French and absolutely NO Italian, so I wouldn't worry about language.

We had one middling campsite, the rest were generally grand, having access to tripadvisor was very useful (the wife brought her work ipad which had signal throughout). None of our phones had net access apart from site wifi.

tolls for crossing France two ways diagonally were £93 in total, we had bought a beeper thing for the windscreen to save having to stop/communicate at tolls, it was linked to the wife's credit card.

like someone else said, all depends on what you're into. feel free to ask anything about our trip

def dont go too far.....its a huge country.....if its your first trip and your going into cherbourg...def take in mont san Michel....if you know your rough route i can help with aires and stuff...