UKH

Major tip for France.Take a good supply of pain killers with you.Pharmacies don't stay open late,and supermarkets DON'T stock painkillers.Also,stop, totally, at EVERY road junction with a stop sign.If you don't some beady eyed cop will be fining you 80 Euros.Even if the road is clear.

And avoid overpriced Burgundy 

Haven't driven in France for a long time - how's 'priority a droite' these days?

Supermarkets selling painkillers isn't something usual in many places.  I've been caught out myself.  

Gauloise are good strong fags and calvados is tasty.

French food is rather nice.

Its "priorite a tous" in Paris.......

Point to remember, codeine based painkillers are a no no in France unless you have a prescription and you keep them in their original packaging. 

Top tip to save space though, carefully remove the sticker from the huge box that all pills seem to come in these days and apply it to a brown pill bottle you can get from amazon. That and a valid prescription got me through a random check at customs the other year 

Another thing worth being aware of that applies to quite a few countries.  

Another tip, if you do manage to get hold of French painkillers is to check the dose. Paracetamol here often comes as 1000mg pills, which I never saw in the UK. I nearly took two by assuming they were 500mg.

On most major routes it rarely applies and there is loads of good signage to direct you, but it's still there in some cases, particularly on minor roads and in villages and housing estates lurking to ensnare the unwary, where as a Brit you least expect it, as I found to my embarrassment.

If you're racing back for the ferry and get stopped at the toll for speeding, be aware that (a) the French police seem to take a particularly dim view of foreigners in flashy cars, (b) if they don't like your face they apparently can impound said flashy car on the spot, (c) the massive cash fine they demand there and then may well prove only to be the deposit and you will later receive a demand for the even more massive balance and (d) you can be banned on the spot, which I was. I recommend being fluent in both French and charm: luckily my mate was in both and talked them out of making us walk to Calais. 

Also if you have a sat nav de-activate the speed/radar warning trap facility even if you are not using it. These are illegal in France, and if you get caught they will fine you and just rip it out regardless of how much damage it does to your dashboard.

And as in the UK beware of the police stopping you to breathalyse you in the morning. It's happened to me twice at the first payeage on joining the motorway after leaving Font., where they were testing everyone.  I was ok both times and got a salute! But if you are tempted to have a few bevies on your last night in Font bear in mind that the legal alcohol limit in France is lower than in the UK and you may not be clear by the next morning.

and the Hexagon falls flat on its face?

I didn't know Codeine based drugs were illegal without prescription on the mainland!

We have always carried codeine/paracetamol off the shelf painkillers in our first aid kit for serious accidents in the mountains.  Wow.

This thread is absolutely terrifying! Having said that I drive across France at least twice most years and have never had a single issue - apart from being involved in a motorway pile up (not of my making), and even that was dealt with perfectly OK.

When I moved from Switzerland to France, 20 odd years ago, I naively stuffed the contents of my flat into a small van and drove off. I was stopped at the first peage in France, had my van searched and made to pay a £500-ish fine for having my computer, bought in Switzerland, which I hadn't declared. The customs people weren't very nice.

On the other hand, when some years later I fetched up on my bike at the Arc de Triomphe, having somehow survived the passage across the roundabout that surrounds it, the policeman who told me that I wasn't allowed to do that, and that I had to set off again immediately, couldn't have been more polite.