Whilst you might consider the major car hire companies abroad, you might also consider Holiday Autos, because you can reserve your car in France but pay in sterling before you go. And whoever you book with, please remember BOTH parts of your UK driving licence!

You should look up all the possible arrival airports, then look at car hire/location de voitures to see who offers car hire at each location and then get comparative quotes from their websites. Make sure you pay in advance, and always return the car with a full tank of petrol. You should ask at the rental desk where the nearest petrol station to the airport is, and its opening hours, and fill the car just before returning it. Also make sure that you look over the car very carefully before driving it away to make sure that the car rental company are aware of what scratches etc are already on the car and cannot claim that you put them there during your rental period!

Trains can be found very easily on http://www.deutschebahn.de ... which although it is German, can be made to show information in English and is much less temperamental for train times than http://www.sncf.fr . (This latter is due to be upgraded in the next few days, but there might be teething troubles.)

Normally train tickets cannot be booked more than 12 weeks ahead of travel and the German site only shows trains for the next 3 months, hence your need to wait a bit!

I quite understand your frustration with buying rail tickets via the internet with SNCF, and I LIVE here!! If you are near to London, it might be worth your while visiting the French Railways shop (Rail Europe) at 1 Regent Street, London SW1Y 4XT.

For useful advice, you might like to visit http://www.seat61.com .

Thank you so much for the advice. Regarding the driving licence - we both only have the old style paper licence, will that be a problem? Nels

I wouldn't have thought so. You might like to give the AA or the RAC a ring or see if their website has that as a FAQ .........