Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Food/Fuel stop in southern France close to Spain?

My family and I are looking for a nice (good food) stop somewhere in the South of France. Our final destination is either Sabadell or Granada. We don’t speak French but Spanish so something at the airport or next to it would be convenient :-)

Any recent experiences, recommendations? Many thanks.

Frequent travels around Europe

Take a look at this thread http://www.euroga.org/forums/trips-airports/4253-trip-to-southern-spain

I got some recimendations: Beziers, Perpignan, Carcassonne, Monpellier …

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Among these Bezier does not have a restaurant, in Carcassonne “Le Salvaza” has very poor ratings on TripAdvisor, “les Terrasses du Sud” in Montpellier and the one in Perpignan “La Caravelle” have no ratings.

If the quality of the restaurant is important to you, I would plan on going into town. Carcassonne airport is very close to the city and the city is very scenic.

The only way you can pay for fuel in Carcassonne is by BP card.

LFPT, LFPN

Not so close to the border to Spain, but may still be of interest to you, Avignon has an excellent restaurant right on the airport where I had lunch on my way down to the Calvi fly-in last year. They also have plenty of fuel and you can pay by any means you please.

Last Edited by Aviathor at 01 Jul 05:25
LFPT, LFPN

Thanks so far. I’m mostly looking for some smallish restaurants with good food that are located right on the airport premises. The airport itself can be VFR.

I remember @boscomantico telling about good food at small airfields in Italy. Something like that would be great.

Wasn’t there someone working on a tourist guide for pilots recently?

Frequent travels around Europe

France publishes (or used to – the last one I had was 2002) a guide called something like Delage, which (among airfields) listed a load of restaurants and hotels.

But airfields which sell edible food are pretty rare. Even a lot of the Ryanair-type ones sell absolute crap (vending machine stuff, basically). In the UK, they are practically nonexistent unless you like Grease #7.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Perpignan is an excellent GA platform, unfortunately there is no FOOD anywhere even close !

FAA A&P/IA
LFPN

We stopped in Rodez (LFCR) during our trip to Spain in Mai (http://www.euroga.org/forums/trips-airports/4095-balearic-islands-and-valencia). Was good but we didn’t try the restaurant.

EDFM (Mannheim), Germany

Hi Stephan

Pau airport (LFBP), in the South West of France, has a decent restaurant with views of the Pyrenees and could be along your route to Granada. If you wanted to stop there for longer, with a taxi ride into town, I could recommend some very pleasant places to eat.

See http://www.pau.aeroport.fr/passager/commerces

Landing fees are reasonable (about Euro 17 inc. one day’s parking), formalities are easy and they have self-service BP.

Cheers
Neil

NeilC
EGPT, LMML

Pau (or Tarbes) don’t make sense here. In such places, what will happen is that when you have finished lunch you will find yourself in fromt of a huge wall of cumulus clouds over the front range and no way to climb above it.
Therefore: always stop at least 60 miles ahead of the big mountains if you intend to cross them (or, like here, choose a place which allows you to fly around them).

The Delage guide hasn’t existed anymore for a few years now.

Generally speaking, the subject of restaurants at french airports is a little difficult. There are five types of airfields

1. no restaurant
2. just an airliner tourist style sandwich place
3. restaurant available, but open only on weekends
4. restautant availbale, but only open weekdays (very frequent case)
5. restaurant available, but with totally random opening hours, as to liking of the owner (also quite frequent)

This can sometimes make it a challenge. The only way if you don’t want to strand somewhere and remain hungry all afternnon is to find out the restaurant name and tel number and call in advance to check opening hours.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 01 Jul 14:50
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany
21 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top