South of France Itinerary: 18 Stops, Skip the Big Cities

This South of France itinerary runs 18 stops from Frontignan Plage to Banyuls-sur-Mer on the Spanish border, then loops home inland over the Millau Viaduct, and it leaves out Montpellier and Marseille on purpose. When I was planning our trip to the South of France, I knew I wanted coastal towns and small inland sites rather than city centres, so the route follows the Mediterranean south, turns into the Pyrenees foothills, and comes back across the Larzac plateau.

This was my third time road tripping the South of France, and the trip confirmed how much of the region sits outside the cities everyone drives to. Below you find how many days the route needs, what it actually costs, when to go, all 18 stops in the order we drove them, and how to get there and where to sleep along the way.

How many days do you need for this South of France itinerary?

Give this South of France itinerary 10 to 14 days for all 18 stops, or 7 days if you only drive the coastal half from Frontignan Plage to Banyuls-sur-Mer. The driving itself is short. Frontignan Plage to Banyuls-sur-Mer is about 185 km (115 mi), which is roughly two hours on the A9 if you never stop, and the whole coastal section fits inside a week at a slow pace. What fills the days is the stopping, the parking and the walking, plus the rest days you need if you are sleeping in a camper.

We alternated driving-and-visiting days with days where we stayed put, and that rhythm is what makes the route work. Four ways to split it are set out in the table below.

Two of the 18 stops sit slightly apart from the rest. Le Barcarès and Carcassonne were visited on an earlier trip to the same coast, and they are included because they are right on this route and readers ask about them.

What this South of France road trip costs

The fixed costs on this South of France route are modest: one motorway toll worth planning around, paid parking of €2 to €5 (about $2 to $6, £2 to £4) a day at the busier sites, and entry fees under €10 ($12, £9) at the three places that charge one. Most of the stops on this itinerary are free to visit, including Mont St. Clair, the Gruissan castle ruin, the Peyriac-de-Mer boardwalks, Collioure, Peyre and every beach.

The three paid sites and the Millau toll are listed below, with the rates published for 2026.

The toll matters more than it looks, because it decides your route home. The A75 across the Massif Central is free apart from the Millau Viaduct section, while the A9 along the coast is tolled the whole way, so an inland return costs you one bridge crossing instead of a full motorway bill. A vehicle over 2 m tall pays class 2 on the viaduct, which is €17.00 ($20, £15) outside summer and €20.70 ($24, £18) from 15 June to 15 September, and motorbikes pay €6.80 ($8, £6) all year. Campervan and motorhome drivers should budget for that height class rather than the car rate.

Paid parking is the other running cost, and it is where a large vehicle hurts. Several stops on this route have car parks that either charge a flat day rate or physically bar motorhomes, which is why we missed one village entirely.

When to drive the South of France coast

May, June and September suit this South of France itinerary better than July and August, because the Millau Viaduct toll rises in high season, the coastal resorts fill up, and the inland walks get hot. September in particular gives you warm sea and empty car parks, with one catch worth knowing about at Le Barcarès.

Five things on this route move with the season, and they are listed below.

• Millau Viaduct toll: the higher summer rate applies from 15 June to 15 September, and the winter rate for the rest of the year.
• Site des Orgues at Ille-sur-Têt: opening hours run from 8.15am to 7pm in July and August down to 2pm to 5.30pm in midwinter, and the ticket office shuts an hour before the site does.
• Sentier Sous-Marin de Cerbère-Banyuls: the underwater snorkelling trail at Peyrefite beach is open to the public from June to September only.
• Le Barcarès: the town is busy through the summer, then a lot of businesses close as soon as September hits and it becomes weirdly empty.
• Leucate: the wind that makes this coast a windsurfing centre is strongest in spring and autumn, so a still week in August is normal.

Winter is not a write-off, but it changes the trip. The Orgues shut entirely from mid-December to early January, the underwater trail is closed, and several campsites along the coast stop taking bookings. Whichever season you drive it in, a little background helps, and our list of interesting facts about France covers the history and customs you meet along this route.

South of France itinerary: skipping the big cities

The 18 stops below run in driving order, south along the coast from Frontignan Plage to Banyuls-sur-Mer and then inland over the Larzac on the way home. If you’re wondering where to go in the South of France on your road trip, the following list of things to do in the South of France should help you plan it.

1. Frontignan Plage

Our first stop was Frontignan Plage, and there isn’t much to see and do here except go to the beach, which is exactly what we needed after driving more than 1,000 km (621.4 mi). Frontignan Plage sits right next to Montpellier, so it works as a quiet beach base if you want the city close by without sleeping in it. The beach is long, flat and sandy, and the town behind it is residential rather than touristy.

2. Mont St. Clair in Sète

Mont St. Clair is the hill in the middle of Sète, and it is the one part of the town we would go back to. We had planned to visit the centre, the beach and Mont St. Clair, and ended up doing only the last of the three, because the centre was hectic and finding a parking space with our RV was as good as impossible.

Up at Mont St. Clair there were plenty of spaces, and the view over the port, the lagoon and the coast is worth the drive up on its own.

Tip. Across the street from the large viewing platform is a house you can climb to the top of, free when the door is open, for a 360-degree view of the surroundings.

3. Cirque de Mourèze

The Cirque de Mourèze is a natural site of massive limestone rocks a little inland from Sète, with a marked loop trail running through it. Hérault Tourism sets the full circuit at 7.5 km (4.7 mi), around 3 hours, with 422 m (1,385 ft) of climbing and a moderate difficulty rating. It is also possible to cut through the loop in the middle to make the hike shorter.

The walk itself isn’t hard, but it does need a moderate level of fitness, because it goes up and down over rocky terrain. The height gives you long views, and there is a small platform at the Courtinals belvedere looking straight down over the rock formations. At the end you reach Mourèze itself, with its little alleyways and old buildings, which is fun to wander through and very small: the hike takes three hours, the village takes half an hour.

Practical information. The Courtinals car park at the entrance to the village is paid, listed at €2 (about $2, £2) a day by Hérault Tourism, though €3 ($3, £3) is also quoted on site. We paid €6.50 ($8, £6) to spend the night there with the motorhome, so check the machine for the current overnight rate rather than assuming.

4. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a cliffside village in a gorge, and we never made it in, because every parking space along the access road had barriers to keep motorhomes out. The photo above is a stock photo for that reason.

I understand wanting to keep the spaces for day visitors. What made this one hard is that Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert sits in a gorge with no other options for a big vehicle nearby, so there was nowhere to leave the RV at all, after we had driven quite a way to get there. People say it’s pretty, so let me know if you make it.

Tip. Nearby you can visit the Pont du Diable, or Devil’s Bridge, where a staircase takes you down to the bottom of the gorge right under the bridge. It is a popular bathing spot in summer.

5. Vendres and Valras-Plage

Vendres and Valras-Plage are two beach towns you can walk between, and Vendres was one of the places where we simply stayed put for two nights. Vendres, like Frontignan Plage, is visited mostly for its beach, and the sand runs all the way to Valras-Plage.

We stayed at a campsite right on the border of the two, so on our rest day we made that beach walk into the centre of Valras. There are more cafés and shops here than in Vendres. We walked up and down the pier and went for mussels and fries. If you want to rent a small boat or go jet skiing, this is one of the many places along this coast where you can.

6. Gruissan

Gruissan was the nicest surprise on the whole route. We had stopped because I’d seen some photos of it, and it turned out better than the photos. Go for a stroll through the streets of the old town, climb the castle ruin above it, which is free, for 360-degree views, and look for the pink salt pans in the distance.

Afterwards you can walk down to the pleasure harbour and grab a bite before moving on, as we did, or spend the afternoon at Gruissan Plage.

7. Peyriac-de-Mer

Peyriac-de-Mer is a village on a lagoon with wooden boardwalks running out over the water, and it wasn’t in my plan at all. We were done in Gruissan, wanted one more stop before finding a campground, and a quick check on Google Maps showed a wooden path crossing a lake here.

Parking was hard again with the RV. We had to use an overnight lot that cost €5 ($6, £4) at the time, while cars parked free at several spots around the lake. The lot was close to the water, though, and within a couple of minutes we were on the boardwalk I’d spotted online less than an hour earlier.

There are several trails here. None of them are signposted, but you cannot really get lost, because you walk around the lake towards the sea and back. The lake comes in two parts and you can cut across the middle to shorten the walk. On the way back into the village, watch for flamingos on the water, then turn onto the town square for a drink before you drive on.

8. Leucate Plage

Leucate Plage is a windsurfing centre, because of the strong wind that often blows here, and we had already stayed a week there several years earlier. On that earlier trip we walked the town centre, the lighthouse and the harbour, and I wrote the whole thing up in our guide to windsurfing at Leucate Plage. This time we were only spending the night.

We didn’t get good wind until we had already started the drive home. On the way back we stopped at a roadside parking area for lunch, found it overlooked the lagoon at Leucate, saw how many windsurfers were out, and delayed our drive by a day to use the wind.

9. Le Barcarès

Le Barcarès is a family beach resort right next to Leucate, and it is the opposite of it in character. In Leucate everything is about the wind and the surfing; Le Barcarès has a long sandy beach and a promenade with evening markets through the summer. I include it here because it is on this route, although we visited it on a different trip.

Good to know. It’s lively here in the summer months, and as soon as September hits a lot of businesses close and it becomes weirdly empty.

10. Carcassonne

Carcassonne is the one large town on this list, and the old walled city inside it disappointed us. We visited a few years ago on the same trip as Le Barcarès, and went only to the medieval part.

Carcassonne looks remarkable from a distance. Inside the walls it is very touristy, and while touristy isn’t always bad, here the cafés and souvenir shops clutter the alleyways enough to take the historical atmosphere out of them. It’s worth a stop if you’re passing, and I wouldn’t make a detour for it.

11. Orgues d’Ille-sur-Têt

The Orgues d’Ille-sur-Têt are sandy rock columns, or fairy chimneys, along an 800 m (about 2,600 ft) trail, and the same “worth a stop, not a detour” verdict applies. You need about as long to walk from the free car park to the entrance as you do to see the site itself, and €5 ($6, £4) a person felt steep to us for an area that small.

The Orgues are genuinely beautiful, and they photograph better than almost anything else on this route. Two things made the ticket easier to accept: you get a detailed brochure when you buy it, and the site is properly maintained, with free toilets at the entrance and separate car parks for cars and motorhomes. The ticket office closes an hour before the site does, so arrive with time in hand.

12. Villefranche-de-Conflent

Villefranche-de-Conflent sits at the edge of the French Pyrenees, and it is the stop that made us want to come back and explore this region properly. Villefranche-de-Conflent is tiny, just a few streets inside Vauban fortifications, with a clear view of Fort Libéria on the mountainside above.

You can hike up to the fort in about 20 minutes, and the views alone justify the effort. The fortress itself is what surprised us. We visit castles constantly and our standards are high, and this one had a well-signed and logical route, an explanation in every room, a proper ground plan, an accessible defence wall, and a tunnel of 1,000 steps leading back down into the town.

Entry on foot is €8 (about $9, £7) for an adult, €7 ($8, £6) reduced and €4.50 ($5, £4) for children aged 5 to 10, and a 4×4 shuttle from the village plus entry is €14 ($16, £12). There is also a free tour of the castle grounds if you would rather hear it from a guide, and there are toilets and a café at the fort, so you do not need to carry everything up.

Villefranche-de-Conflent is also the lower terminus of the Train Jaune, the narrow-gauge yellow train that climbs into the Cerdagne. More on that below.

13. Collioure

Collioure is a harbour town of coloured houses on the Côte Vermeille, and it was the clearest tourist hotspot on the route as well as the easiest to understand. Collioure has houses in every colour, small galleries, restaurants, a harbour, a castle, a pier running into the sea and a small beach, all within a few hundred metres. It’s one of those places where you feel like a kid again, wondering what’s around each corner.

Above the town is Fort Saint Elme, a fortress looking down over Collioure and the vineyards behind it. To reach it, follow the shore until you can follow it no further, take the steps up next to the Relais des Trois Mas hotel, cross the street and follow the signs. You pass an old windmill on the way. The climb takes about 20 minutes, and it is steep and rocky, with long views the whole way.

Near the top we crossed an older couple taking a break at the same moment we did, and stopped to talk. They told us they had been up there countless times and made the walk purely for the views and for the sake of walking. That’s what I want to be like when I grow old. The fort itself didn’t look or sound interesting enough to us, so we went back down for ice cream on a terrace over the water.

14. Banyuls-sur-Mer

Banyuls-sur-Mer is the last stop on the coast before the Spanish border, and it is a wine town as much as a beach one. Banyuls-sur-Mer covers more than 40 km² (15.4 sq mi), but the centre is small, and most visitors come for the vineyards in the hills behind it, the beach and the pleasure harbour.

South of the town lies a marine nature reserve with an underwater snorkelling trail, the Sentier Sous-Marin de Cerbère-Banyuls. It starts from Peyrefite beach, about 5 km (3.1 mi) along the road towards Cerbère, you swim it on the surface with a mask, snorkel and fins, and it is open to the public from June to September only. We meant to go and ran short of time.

15. La Couvertoirade

La Couvertoirade is a medieval walled town on the Larzac plateau, and it was our first stop on the inland route home. I’d planned to drive back a different way from the one we came so that we could see some of the inland South of France, and this was the pay-off. To me, La Couvertoirade is what Carcassonne should be, but smaller: a Templar and Hospitaller village with a windmill above it that you can walk up to.

You’d think a town like this is only an attraction, but people do still live inside the walls. Visitors cannot drive up to the gates, so you leave the car in the large paid car park outside, which takes motorhomes and charges a flat daily rate that changes with the season. Walking the ramparts is a separate ticket, listed by Aveyron Tourism at €3 (about $3, £3) for an adult self-guided visit and €8 ($9, £7) for two adults and two children. It buys you access to a short section rather than the full circuit, and a good view over the rooftops.

16. The Millau Viaduct

The Millau Viaduct is the tallest bridge in Europe, at a structural height of 343 m (1,125 ft), and it held the world record for over two decades until late 2025. There’s an interpretation centre covering the construction just before you cross, and the crossing is tolled: €11.30 (about $13, £10) for a car outside summer, €13.80 ($16, £12) from 15 June to 15 September, and €17.00 ($20, £15) or €20.70 ($24, £18) for anything over 2 m tall.

Doing my research, I’d read that it’s better to drive under the viaduct than over it if you want to see it properly, and since we wanted to visit Peyre anyway, we made sure we took the right exit. Coming from La Couvertoirade and heading for Peyre, you’ll be fine. You see the bridge on the approach, pass directly underneath it, and then get the long view of it from Peyre as well.

17. Peyre

Peyre is a village built against the cliffs of the Tarn valley, and it is the free viewpoint for the Millau Viaduct. It was afternoon when we visited and there wasn’t a soul in sight, although the cars and the state of the houses made it obvious that people still live there.

Walk the street to the end of the village centre to reach a bench overlooking the valley and the bridge, and watch for the butterflies covering the plants and the cliff face along the way.

18. The Gorges du Tarn

The Gorges du Tarn is a destination in its own right rather than a stop, with hiking, kayaking and swimming, several small villages and larger places like Sainte-Énimie. We could only give it a day, because our RV rental was ending, so we mostly drove through and made notes for next time.

One thing I can recommend already is the drive up to the Point Sublime, the roadside viewpoint over the gorge, which gives you the view in the photo above. If you have days rather than hours, this is where to spend them, and it is the natural place to end a South of France loop before you head north.

How to get to the South of France and travel between the stops

A car is the practical way to do this South of France itinerary, because six of the 18 stops have no useful train service, but the coastal half of the route is genuinely doable by rail. The nearest airports to the start of the route are Montpellier Méditerranée, Béziers Cap d’Agde and Perpignan Rivesaltes, and Toulouse and Barcelona both work if the fares are better.

Flying in

Fly into Montpellier if you want to start at Frontignan Plage, or into Perpignan if you would rather run the route in reverse from Banyuls-sur-Mer. Béziers Cap d’Agde sits roughly halfway between the two and is the smallest of the three. Compare the three airports together rather than one at a time, because a €60 difference in fare often outweighs an hour of extra driving; a flight search across all three French airports is the quickest way to see that.

Renting a car or a camper

Rent the car at the airport you fly into and drop it at the same one, because a one-way drop across departments carries a fee on most French rentals. We did this route in a motorhome, which is common here and gives you the campsites, and it also cost us two stops: Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert had barriers against motorhomes and Sète had nowhere to put one. A normal car makes the villages easier and the nights harder. If you want to compare vehicle sizes and drop-off points before you commit, car rental across the south of France is worth pricing both ways.

Trains along the coast

Take the Côte Vermeille line if you want the southern coast without driving. The regional TER between Perpignan and Cerbère stops at Elne, Argelès-sur-Mer, Collioure, Port-Vendres, Banyuls-sur-Mer and Cerbère, and the full run takes about 50 minutes non-stop, so Collioure and Banyuls-sur-Mer are easy without a car. Further north, the main line links Montpellier, Sète, Béziers, Narbonne and Perpignan, which covers the start of this route.

The other train here is an attraction in itself. The Train Jaune, the narrow-gauge yellow train, climbs from Villefranche-de-Conflent at 427 m (1,401 ft) to Latour-de-Carol at 1,232 m (4,042 ft) in about 3 hours, and the official single fare is €22.50 (about $26, £19). You can book French rail tickets for both the coastal line and the connections into it.

Buses and regional coaches

Use the liO regional network for the gaps the trains do not cover. liO runs both the TER trains and the coach lines in Occitanie, including services along the Côte Vermeille, and its fares are low by European standards; it has offered a €3 (about $3, £3) unlimited day pass on summer weekends between Perpignan and Cerbère, so check whether that is running before you buy singles. Long-distance coaches connect Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne and Perpignan to Paris, Lyon and Barcelona, which is the cheap way in if you are not flying.

Where to stay along this South of France route

Campsites are the standard accommodation on this coast, and hotels cluster in the towns that have a train station, so where you sleep depends mostly on whether you have a vehicle. We used campsites throughout, including one on the border between Vendres and Valras-Plage, and we spent nights in paid motorhome parking at Mourèze and Peyriac-de-Mer.

Four bases cover the whole route, and they are listed below.

1. Frontignan or Sète: the northern base, close to Montpellier, good for Mont St. Clair and the Cirque de Mourèze.
2. Vendres or Valras-Plage: the middle base, a walkable beach town with a rest day built into it.
3. Gruissan or Narbonne: the base for Gruissan, Peyriac-de-Mer and a Carcassonne day trip.
4. Collioure or Banyuls-sur-Mer: the southern base, on the train line, within reach of Villefranche-de-Conflent and the Orgues.

Book Collioure and Banyuls-sur-Mer earliest, because both are small and both fill in July and August. If you want to compare campsites, apartments and small hotels in one place, accommodation across the south of France covers all four of those bases.

Tours and day trips along the route

Day trips along this route concentrate on the things that are awkward to do alone, such as wine tasting in the Banyuls and Collioure vineyards, boat trips out of Gruissan and Collioure, and walking tours of the walled city at Carcassonne. Day trips also solve the parking problem that cost us two stops, because a coach or a boat leaves the vehicle question to somebody else. Current tours and prices for this stretch of coast are shown below.

Don’t forget travel insurance

Travel insurance covers you when part of your trip is cancelled, when you get sick or hurt abroad, and sometimes when your electronics break or get stolen, and I make sure I am covered on every trip I take. If you do not have travel insurance yet, check out SafetyWing. Their plans are flexible enough that you can sign up while you are already travelling, and when I caught COVID on a trip they reimbursed all my expenses without fuss. I recommend them from experience.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below come from driving this route in a motorhome and from re-checking the tolls, tickets and opening seasons since, and they are the ones that cost us time or money to learn.

1. Treat Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert as a car stop only. Every parking space along the access road carries a barrier that keeps motorhomes out, and the village sits in a gorge with nothing else nearby, so we drove a long way to it and had to turn around at the entrance.
2. Go home over the Larzac on the A75 rather than back down the A9. The A75 is free apart from the Millau Viaduct crossing, which costs €11.30 (about $13, £10) for a car outside summer and €13.80 (about $16, £12) from 15 June to 15 September, while the coastal A9 is tolled the whole way. A vehicle over 2 m tall pays €17.00 (about $20, £15) or €20.70 (about $24, £18) on the same bridge.
3. Arrive at the Site des Orgues with an hour in hand. The ticket office closes a full hour before the site does, the hours swing from 8.15am to 7pm in high summer down to 2pm to 5.30pm in midwinter, and the site shuts entirely from 18 December 2026 to 2 January 2027.
4. The underwater trail at Banyuls runs June to September only. The Sentier Sous-Marin de Cerbère-Banyuls starts from Peyrefite beach, about 5 km (3.1 mi) along the road towards Cerbère, and you swim it on the surface with mask, snorkel and fins. Outside those months there is nothing to join.
5. Budget separately for parking if you are in a camper. We paid €6.50 (about $8, £6) to stay the night at the Courtinals car park in Mourèze and €5 (about $6, £4) at Peyriac-de-Mer, where cars were parking free a few metres away. Carry coins and read the machine rather than the sign.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from her third road trip along the South of France coast, from Frontignan Plage to Banyuls-sur-Mer and back over the Larzac by motorhome. The team covers France for independent travellers, including the car and camper rental, campsites and hotels, tours and travel insurance worth booking on this route, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and toll rates change.