France Travel Forum

Has anybody use ALLOSTOP Service while traveling around France ?

ALLOSTOP is a car-pooling service where a traveler can go to a destination with a driver who's also going to the same destination !

How reliable is this service ? Is it still functioning ? In Quebec it's banned as so many travelers use ALLOSTOP (paying a small fees as opposed to paying expensive bus/train tickets !)

Regards.

Thanks Barbara.

I saw the ALLOSTOP service from 5 year's old guidebooks ! :) I wonder if the service still exist. If it still does, us travelers can save lots of money as France is so expensive !

You said you were in sw France !! Wow !

Did you see many Bastide towns ??

Allostop is still running, it used to be popular in the more carefree 60s-70s-80s when hitch-hiking was widespread, it does seem less popular now, not sure why exactly, maybe some of the more high-profile murder cases involving some of France's most notorious serial killers picking up hitch-hikers (Chanal, Fourniret, les disparus de l'Yonne, etc) in the 80s and 90s have put paid to this great practice. In that respect Allostop covoiturage is seen as a much safer option.

http://www.allostop.net

Hi Barbara, the trip to France will be next year as this year I have to go to Central Asia (Uzbekistan & Kyrgyzstan) first.

I would like to see those Bastide Towns & Cathars castles & all those sites where people were burnt to death etc etc...witchcraft ?? :)

I am in touch with some people now so we would plan which places, castles, villages to explore.

Please advice me, okay.

ExParisian, it's funny that you mentioned some murders as that's what some people around the region told me !! :)
They told me that the whole region is so morbid that I would have some fun exploring it.

But they said nobody would attack any Asian man anyway.

One thing that I am qualm about is that region is so bloody expensive !
Scarce transportation, expensive hotels...

Which region do you mean? I'm not sure I'm following you.

Well, I have no idea if I am right or not on this one, I was only hypothesing as to why hitch-hiking does not seem to be as popular in France now, but in fairness it is probably the result of a combination of minor reasons rather than as one direct consequence of what happened with some high profile murder cases in the 90s. Do not go back to Malaysia thinking that France is awash with serial killers hell-bent on eliminating every hitch-hiker in the country!
Just like in other Western countries, people value their private space more and more, feel maybe less secure than they were 20 yrs ago, etc. and that creates a vicious circle: fewer people pick up hitch-hikers, therefore fewer people hitch-hike.
It's one of those things, isn't it, I am sure it is still very very safe and that nothing would happen to you if you were to hitch-hike every day for a whole year, but it has this image now, it is a great shame, it is a fantastic way to get to know a country and its population.

France does not have to be that expensive. For hotels, try regional ones instead of international brand names. We use the Logis de France chain of small family-owned hotels. They come in all price ranges and are clean, comfortable and friendly. http://www.logis-de-france.fr/uk/

If you can base yourself somewhere for a week, Gites de France are rental apartments or small houses in rural areas and small towns that are often incredibly cheap. http://www.gites-de-france.com/gites/uk/rural_gites

You don't have to eat in expensive restaurants. Have a typical French breakfast of croissant and coffee at a small cafe, eat dinner at noon when it's cheaper and have bread, cheese and fruit for dinner in the evening. Bakeries and pastry shops have take-out style foods that are excellent and inexpensive and supermarkets have deli sections that are cheap and good.

Stay away from major tourist areas because they tend to be more expensive. If you are in a tourist area, walk a few blocks from the main attraction and prices will go down.

Contact the local tourist bureau and ask for help finding budget food and lodging. They know where to send you.

Thanks Beausoleil !

How much roughly the budget per day that you can propose ?

The main areas that I want to explore are The Dordogne, Languedoc-Rousillon & Aquitaine.
I want to see as many Bastide towns & the castles in these regions.

Somebody suggested to me to stay at Youth Hostels in these regions (make my base there) & ask a few people at the hostels if they would like to join me to see some small villages & some castles. I just want to take photos anyway of these places.

With these people, I could split the cost to hire a taxi to see places & back to the Youth Hostels.

Any advice on this method ?

Thanks ex-Parisian & Barbara for your inputs.

I'll be there in France next year but I like to plan ahead.

You could eat well for less than €10/day if your budget it really tight, and another €15/€25 for accommodation, you could sleep in Youth Hostels (check out the FUAJ site), for instance Cahors YH is very nice, in an old convent and only about €12-€14/night.
Buy cheese/ham/cold meats in rural supermarkets (Intermarché, Super U, etc.), a baguette, find yourself a picnic table and have a nice bonne franquette meal. Or you could eat simply but well in roadside eateries, routiers, buvette types places, pizza vans (loads of them in France, 5,000 to be precise!), food stalls at the local market (every village has a market, at least weekly, choose sizeable ones, they are bound to have good value food stalls).

Check out Globalfreeloaders.com and couchsurfing.com, they put people together and are a great way to get to know the locals, and it's free.

Servas is also excellent, http://joomla.servas.org/, but you need to register and be "vetted", it's not difficult as such but requires more preparation.

Local buses are usually cheap in France, some departments (via the Conseil Général) subsidise heavily the network, sometimes you can travel long distances for €1 or €2. Check out the bus networks of the departments you are targetting.Open a new thread if you need help with that.

Ranger, I was typing my message while you were presumably doing yours, I hadn't seen the content of yours obviously, great suggestions, I have provided a link for couchsurfing.com, it is a great way to get to know people, have used it myself, it's fab, I have also used Servas many times (the more "middle-class" version), all I can say to the OP is to have no hesitation to use these networks, they are fantastic and you will derive a great deal more out of your stay in France.

Thanks guys !

I hope many people (especially people from Asia, backpackers like me...) would read this post so that they know HOW to travel around the south of France.

Europe is getting so expensive for us here. I started my life as a traveler around Europe...a few countries with my budget USD20 to USD50 PER DAY, believe me ! :)

I even slept at train & bus stations & even took overnight buses & trains just to save costs ! I am kinda proud of that, saying it now as I knew HOW to survive ! Ha ! Ha !

BUT when Europe is getting more expensive, I had to post this thread because I need some inputs if I could still 'afford' Europe. Ha ! Ha !

Thanks guys !
Your advice & suggestions are much appreciated !

Well, you know, it is the same for many youngsters and students here in Europe, not every European person has pots of money and can spend lavishly on their travels. It is easier now maybe with with the likes of EasyJet, etc. but it is relatively recent.
I "started" just like yourself, as an impoverished student, with the equivalent of €10/€15 day in today's money, hitch-hiking, camping, sleeping in hovels, on roof terraces of hostels, sleeping outside on golf courses, in fields, woods, train stations, toilets, huts, beaches, bunkers, caves, abandoned caravans, etc. you name it- all over Europe, North America, Mexico, etc. It is a great way to meet interesting people when you're young and adventurous (and it helps to be a bit mad as well!), I never really felt unsafe for all these years, the insouciance and adrenalin of the open road swept every rational fear away, that'll always represent the essence of travelling to me. Of course now it is a little different, I "see the world", I have a good time but it is not the same, it's travelling Jim, but not as we know it... (my wife would not take too kindly to roughing it...).

Go for it, hit the road, you don't need much money at all, I think you should tap into the couchsurfing/Globalfreeloaders community (see websites), and later in life Servas, you would love it, right up your street really.

You folks are great. We get too caught up in luxury travel and forget how much fun you can have on a budget. I might add, you don't even have to be young to have fun on a budget. LOL

When I said that the south of France is morbid, I didn't mean it to be funny !

The 100 Years War...The Religious War...The Cathars War...all the ruins that I want to see...& then I found this small town called Oradour sur Glane :

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=oradour&search_type=

Look at how a mistake could do to the whole town & its people !!!!!

Atrocious !!

Well, what you call the "South-West" encompassing the Cathar area, Oradour (in fact in the Limousin), etc. is in fact many different areas with their own identity, this vast area is nearly the size of England, so naturally, like many other sizeable areas in Europe it has seen its fair share of horrors and was a bloody battleground for many centuries. Not uncommon for France, think of Picardie, Alsace-Lorraine, Ardennes, etc. But it is a much more cheerful place now, full of festivals, bonhomie and joie de vivre. Don't think of it as morbid, I suppose it is my fault (for mentioning serial killers...), so I deserve a red card for that and exclude myself from the thread...

Not red card but yellow card...;)

History plays vital part for me in choosing the countries that I want to go !

I first visited Europe...I read the history so much that I visited more churches then going clubbing ! :)
In fact, I went to England because I wanted to see The Cotswolds ! Not really to see London...;) The 'period' places give me a tingling feeling inside !

A Yellow card only? Thanks ref for letting me off, I deserved to be red-carded...

I usually do both in equal measure (the culture/historical bit and the epicurean/sybaritic bit), you have chosen well, that area of France is ideal for that, also very pretty and scenic as well. The Dordogne/Périgord area has the largest concentration of pretty villages in France, many of them having strong links with history (all listed below).

http://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/index.php?lang=en

PS: Re the serial killers, you're all right, they did not operate in the south-west...

Serial killers are everywhere ! :)
Let's put it that way.
These days people kill not because they are lunatic but because of love, because of greet, because of jealousy, because of power...

They did once & they'll do it again.

I meant those serial killers and those cases that I mentioned in my first post, ie Chanal and Fourniret. They did not operate in the south-west, that's what I meant.


(blimey, I wish I hadn't mentioned them at all...)

:)