FRANCE: THE ROUGH GUIDE.

This guide to France includes accounts of the various attractions and reviews of the best places to eat, drink and stay in all price ranges. It also contains practical tips on exploring the Pyrenees and the Alps, and coverage of the cuisine, wine, festivals and politics.

The people
Visual appearance is important to the French. No effort is too great to make things look good: witness the food shops in even the poorest neighbourhoods of a city, always sparkling clean and beautifully displayed. The people too take pride in looking neat and sharp; they inspect others and expect to be looked at. Life is theatre, lived much more in the public eye - especially in the warm Mediterranean south - than in Anglo-Saxon societies. And for the visitor it's a free and entertaining spectacle.

The French are extremely courteous with each other - it's not unusual for someone entering a restaurant to say "Good evening" to the entire company - and rather formal in their manners. At the same time, if they want something, they may be quite direct in ways that are disconcerting for Anglo-Saxons brought up in the belief that it's improper to state clearly what you mean or feel. If you are feeling self-conscious about coping with the language, this can seem like rudeness: it isn't. If you observe the formalities and make an effort to communicate, you'll find the French as friendly and interested as anyone else. As for their reputed arrogance, the French are certainly proud of their culture, something that is reinforced by the education system. Artists and thinkers are held in high esteem in France and their opinions are listened to. Even prime ministers tend to be literate, and are often accomplished authors. But in a world dominated by commercial values and, in addition, the English language, the French (not unnaturally, for their language was once the lingua franca of the educated) feel this culture is under threat.

Where to go and when
France is easy to travel around. Restaurants and hotels proliferate, and the lower-budget ones are much cheaper than in most other developed western European countries. Train services are admirably efficient, as is the road network, especially the (toll-paying) autoroutes, and cyclists are much admired and encouraged. Information is highly organized and available from tourist offices (Offices de Tourisme) across the country, as well as from specialist organizations for walkers, cyclists, campers and so on.

There are all kinds of pegs on which to hang a holiday in France: a city, a region, a river or a mountain range, physical activities, cathedrals, chateaux. And in many cases your choice will determine the best time of year to go. Unless you're a skier, for example, you wouldn't choose the mountains between November and May; nor at this time would you head for the seaside - except for the Mediterranean coast which is at its most attractive in spring. Climate, otherwise, need not be a major consideration in planning when to go. Northern France, like nearby Britain, is wet and unpredictable. Paris perhaps has a marginally better climate than New York, rarely reaching the extremes of heat and cold of that city, but only south of the Loire does the weather become significantly warmer. West coast weather, even in the south, is tempered by the proximity of the Atlantic, subject to violent storms and close thundery days even in summer. The centre and east, as you leave the coasts behind, have a more continental climate, with colder winters and hotter summers. The most reliable weather is along and behind the Mediterranean and on Corsica, where winter is short and summer long and hot.

The single most important factor in deciding when to visit France is tourism itself. As most French people take their holidays in their own country, it's as well to avoid the main French holiday periods - mid-July to the end of August, with August being particularly bad. Almost the entire country closes down, except for the tourist industry itself. You can easily walk half a mile and more in Paris, for example, in search of an open boulangerie, and the city seems deserted by all except fellow tourists. Prices in the resorts rise to take full advantage and you can't find a room for love nor money, and not even a space in the campsites on the Cote d'Azur. The seaside is the worst, but the mountains and popular regions like the Dordogne are not far behind. Easter, too, is a bad time for Paris; half Europe's schoolchildren seem to descend on the city. For the same reasons, ski buffs should keep in mind the February school ski break. And no one who values life, limb, and sanity should ever be caught on the roads the last weekend of July or August, and least of all on the weekend of August 15.