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Best Route From Calais To Valencia

Discussion in 'Touring' started by Neal, Oct 21, 2019.

  1. But you don’t want to go to France and drive/ride the motorways unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s boring as f*ck.

    I got three speeding fines within a few hours this summer and didn’t see any of the cameras and we were only doing 90 kmh in each instance.

    I understood any camera warning device is illegal in France and the fine for getting caught is about 1500 euros and you run the risk of losing the device and your vehicle.
     
  2. The French speed cameras tend to be signed about 1km in advance followed by a sign showing the speed limit on the road before the actual cameras. The cameras themselves take several different forms, but all are grey and easy to miss unless you know what you are looking for.

    Your sat nav will warn you that you are close to a camera by probably using a term like "dangerous road" and not telling you the precise location of a camera and is therefore within French law, unless you have turned the feature off. If you have an old sat nav and have never updated the maps it might be illegal.

    However, the French police are highly unlikely to ever check your sat nav to see if it is legal. They would have to have a very good reason to search through your sat nav or phone. They can't do it just because they want to. They have to have reasonable cause to search through a vehicle or someone's belongings (unless they are customs officers, but they won't look at your sat nav). When the law was proposed in France there was a lot of debate about it. The general consensus being that it was a slightly pointless piece of legislation especially once all the sat nav manufacturers altered their maps to be compliant.
     
  3. Bear in mind that the UK has more than double the number of speed cameras than France and approximately half of the French cameras have been vandalised and so don't work. France has about double the mileage of roads that the UK has, so you should encounter far fewer speed cameras than you would in the UK.
     
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  4. But only one of the Wiltshire fixed cameras is currently working - guess how I know ;p
     
  5. That is correct, a camera radar detector is illegal. But the positions of fixed cameras are well publicised on government sites and there are signs before them.
     
  6. I was acutely aware that you can get into bother for speeding in France. So I didn’t! Well, except once when I wanted to see how fast my new van would go.
    A lot of main motorways are 130kph (81mph ish) which isn’t bad. So I’d set my cruise control to say 84mph guessing that would be within limits. It was fast enough. And I did notice that not many people were speeding tbh.
     
  7. Remember that there is no 10% leeway on speeding in France, it is exactly what the sign says.
    Your speedo will always read over and can be checked by using a phone app like "GPS speedo" on your mobile.
    A mate was done for 53 kmh in a 50 zone, he moaned. We went out to show that his speedo was reading about 60 when the car was doing 50, so it would have read over that to be doing 53.
     
  8. Yeah, it’s a Mercedes van so reckoned ~6-8% over reading.
    Haven’t had any unwelcome letters anyway :):upyeah:
     
  9. Got a ticket this summer and they took 10% off the recorded speed and charged me for that...ended up 45 euros.
     
  10. Just stick to their speed limits, although I must admit sometimes you dont have a clue what it is.
     
  11. Didn’t the 90 zone outside towns get dropped to 80 not too long ago - then bumped back up after the public chomped?
    And guess who got flashed in excess of 80...
     
  12. Kind of. The gov chickened out of the fight by rescinding the change, but then granted powers to individual departments (counties) to set lower limits.
     
  13. A lot of the French departments (there are 100) have/will return to the 90kph speed limit, however the following departments have decided not to: Meurthe-et-Moselle, Loire-Atlantique, Rhône, Ardèche, Gard, Var, Ardennes and Pyrénées-Orientales.
     
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  14. Thread moved
     
  15. Steve , I’m there this weekend my friend
    Biting the bullet and riding from Calais as not a place to be had on the Bilbao, or Santander ferry ⛴
    Not ideal but needs must
    If you’re about and fancy a sherbet pm me mate
     
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