Ask Joan: French Atlantic resorts, New England autumns and border crossings

French coastal options, fall foliage in Boston, and the Schengen convention

We are flying to Tours in France for a friend’s wedding in early September. We are planning to extend our holiday in France after this. We would love to ideally get a train to somewhere on the west coast and spend seven nights at a beach town to relax and unwind. We are open to anything but don’t want to have to travel a huge deal. – CK

Within two hours or so from Tours you can be on the Atlantic coast with a good choice of places to stay. First choice could be the swanky seaside destination of Parisiens, Ile de Ré. They will all be gone by then and you could have the island to yourselves to explore by bicycle. You can take a bus from the train station and the town of St Martin de Re would be a good place to base yourself.

La Rochelle is itself is a lovely seaside town and port with great beaches and eating out and not as pricey as the Ile. Steeped in history the town has lots of things to see for visitors and that lovely French cafe culture. Outside La Rochelle and accessible by bus in the small seaside town of Châtelainnon Plage, with a long beach and it will be quiet enough in September, see visit-poitou-charentes.com for more information and voyages.sncf.com for train timetables.

I will be travelling to Boston at the end of October for a week. I would love to see New England in the Fall, I was wondering if this is too late in the season if it is not do you know of any tour companies that would do a two or three day return tour. Alternatively I would use public transport as I would hope to avoid car hire – RB

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At the end of October you will just catch the last of the leaf-peeping season. It is a beautiful time of the year in New England.

Boston is the main gateway to New England and a lovely city, a few days there would be enjoyable. There are day tours you can take from the city to go leaf-peeping as they call it, see viator.com, though October 23rd is the last day for the tours.

You can follow the fall foliage on this website, yankeefoliage.com and see how the colours are progressing. You will find a list of places to see the fall foliage near Boston on this website, bostoncentral.com/events/fall_foliage/p1250.php. Some are accessible by public transport and some are in the city.

You could hug the coast from Boston to Brunswick, Maine on the Amtrak Downeaster service. It operates up to five times a day, and you could consider making a trip of it by staying in one of the town along the way, see amtrakdowneaster.com. Boston city website is bostonusa.com and the transportation is MBTA.com

My wife and I are planning to travel to the Danube Valley in June (not on a river cruise). Our route will take us through parts of Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria. Can you tell if we likely to encounter issues like serious delay in crossing borders? We are reading about various countries tightening controls in response to the immigration crisis with the Schengen Agreement being discarded to some extent by some countries – JF

The Schengen Convention is still largely in place for the present. Austria, Hungary and Slovakia along with France and Germany, did reintroduce border controls to cope with the numbers of refugees crossing Europe in the past year. Who can say what will happen this summer, but once you are EU passport holders it should not impede your trip too much.

Send your queries to jscales@irishtimes.com.