I don’t often mention changes I make to the main francethisway site on this blog, and probably you wouldn’t be interested anyway, but something I have been working on recently deserves fanfares, trumpets, and a round of applause. In my humble opinion, of course.

We have added a feature so that for any given destination you can see at a glance all the other fascinating places within about 70 kilometres – an arbitrary distance, but I think most people won’t drive further than that on a day out from their holiday accommodation.

We also show how far places are, and have started noting whether places have particular tourist classifications – most beautiful village, most beautiful detour towns, towns with high scores for their parks and gardens etc. And have added a little ‘route finder’ facility on each place so you know how to get there.

There is still a lot to do (and probably always will be, since there are so many places in France, not counting Historic Mouments and other attractions) but in principle it’s exactly what I would look for myself when planning a visit, so surely must be useful for someone else as well…

Check out your local town from the dropdown box at the ‘Regions of France‘ page (just above the map) – that should make it clear what I’m going on about.

Then please leave a comment below about the hundreds of places we still have to visit…yes I know, but we’re doing our best.

Another big problem is in having fair and representative coverage for everywhere in France. Clearly other organisations have the same issues. All ‘most beautiful villages’ are not equally beautiful, likewise ‘Villes d’Art et Histoire’ or ‘Plus Beaux Detours of France’ covers an enormous range of towns, some where you would happily spend a week and others where a quick 30 minute walk is enough.

I guess this arises because (1) no one person can visit every single place, and (2) most guides, brochures and tourist sites have a vested interest in making places sound better than they really are, or at least describing the highlights without mentioning the downsides.

To make matters worse, a lot of towns seem to avoid all classifications. Toulouse is not a classified ‘Town of Art and History’, for example, despite positively overflowing with art and history. If someone were visiting France looking for art and history it should be high on their list.

Anyway that’s enough excuses, I reckon another 20 years and we will have been to most places, so I’ve a lot to be going on with…