Villa holidays in France

France continues to be one of the most popular destinations for a villa holiday. It's perhaps surprising to learn that more UK holydaymakers head for France each year than any other country, even Spain.

Where France scores is in the sheer variety it has to offer. Want a traditional bucket and spade holiday? Brittany is like Cornwall but with better weather and fewer traffic jams. Want a restful rural retreat with excellent food, lovely countryside and balmy weather? Book your villa in the Dordogne, the Cevennes, the Ardeche, Charente, Gascony.... Fancy some serious mountains to stretch your leg muscles? Try a villa in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Alpes Maritime... Want to bake in the sun, or strut your stuff in fashionable resorts? Head for a villa on the Côte d'Azur, or in Biarritz.

You get the picture: France has something for everyone. And what all these areas have in common, along with the rest of France, is a good supply of houses and villas available for holiday lets. Most tend to be in popular holiday areas, of course, but there are few corners of France that don't have their quota of run-down rural properties bought up and lovingly restored by Brits or others who've fallen in love with the area. As a result, most of the holiday homes you'll find on offer are individual properties in the countryside. There are modern developments along the south and west coasts, but they tend to be bought by the French, who can't understand why these mad foreigners are so keen on old-fashioned rural hideaways.

Getting to France

Flying is becoming a sensible option with the growth of cheap flights to Nice, Carcassonne, St Etienne and other airports in the south, but most British visitors still drive to their holiday destinations. If you haven't done it before, don't worry. France is such a big place compared with Britain that its roads are generally much less crowded, although it might not seem that way if you choose to travel on a peak Saturday in August, when the whole of Europe seems to be trying to get from one end of the country to the other.

Thanks to the strong pound, a holiday in France is less expensive than for a long time past. Of course, a beautiful mas or farmhouse in Provence, with a swimming pool, or a magnificent château in the Dordogne, won't come cheap, but there are plenty of properties to suit every pocket and taste. France is divided into almost 100 départements, almost every one of which is worth visiting (we'd better not list the exceptions!). If you take one villa holiday a year in each, that should keep you going for a while...