I've lived in France for years and explored every corner of the country. This is why it's time to ditch overrated Paris... and the incredible places you should visit instead

There’s a psychological reason why you shouldn’t just visit Paris. Really. The sense of disappointment that people often get from visiting the French capital is called Paris Syndrome, a term coined by a Japanese psychiatrist in the 80s. I’ve lived in Paris, and I still go most months. While I’ve never fallen victim to Paris Syndrome, I can’t help feeling the 50million-odd visitors each year are missing a trick.

Elsewhere are hundreds of islands with white sand beaches fragmenting the Breton coast, 300-foot gorges with turquoise water snaking through the middle, the highest mountain in Europe (okay, it’s shared with Switzerland and Italy, but technicalities).

I’ve lived in France for years and worked on dozens of guidebooks, so there are few corners of the country I’m yet to explore. I’d skip Paris for the following places any day.

Marseille is cool. Not an understated cool, but the in-your-face, look-at-me kind. Several of the districts, including the city’s oldest quartier Le Panier, and restaurant and thrift-shop lined Cours Julien, are so caked in street art you can barely see the original buildings. There’s always something to discover: parties and exhibitions in a multi-storey car park turned events space (Friche la Belle de Mai), an old hospice transformed into an art gallery, reproductions of subaquatic caves covered in prehistoric drawings… the list goes on. This is a place to live it up – not for rest and relaxation.

Don’t miss: Freediving down to see the underwater museum just offshore at city beach Plage des Catalans.

Where to stay: Grand Hotel Beauvau, right on the seafront beside the Vieux Port, has doubles from £130.

How to get there: British Airways has direct flights from London Heathrow, taking under two hours.

This little alpine town bursts at the seams in winter, when skiers come to whoosh down the slopes of the Portes du Soleil station (with reason, there’s a whopping 370 miles of runs!), but it’s when the mountains have shed their winter coat that visitors get both the best value and variety. In summer, luxury chalets are a fraction of the price, and it’s an outdoor sport paradise. Trail running, mountain biking, hiking or paddleboarding on Lac de Montriond – there’s no need for a gym when nature’s own fitness centre is all around you.

Don’t miss: A trip to the farm shop at Chèvrerie des Félires, where you can meet the goats that have produced your cheese.

Where to stay: Chalets 1066 has a huge variety of self-catered accommodation. Rates start from £600/week for 4.

How to get there: Geneva is the closest airport (Easyjet flies from various UK cities). From here, hire a car or take the bus, changing in Morzine (approx. three hours total).

Never heard of the Cévennes? It’s a little remote, and even now there are small villages where residents live entirely off-grid, with no WiFi and not even refrigerators. Outside of these little pockets, you’ll find all the comforts you need, but its inaccessibility means the landscape has changed little for hundreds of years. Craggy hills, cobblestone villages, and in spring, carpets of colourful flowers. This is a place that attracts adventurers and lovers of the great outdoors: motorcyclists enjoying the sweeping bends in the roads, hikers and… donkeys. The Stevenson Trail cuts through here, which Robert Louis Stevenson famously hiked with a donkey.

Don’t miss: Canyoning in the nature-made playground that marks the source of the Tarn River, before it turns into a vast canyon some 1600 feet deep.

Where to stay: Auberge des Cévennes has doubles from £63.

How to get there: Catch the TGV (high speed) train to Avignon (2 hrs 40 mins), and hire a motorbike from Good Motors to explore the region.

The invention of Beaujolais Nouveau, a young wine drunk the same year as it’s harvested, for better or for worse sealed Beaujolais’s reputation. Cheap, poor quality wine, but an excellent place to party (particularly during the third weekend of November when that year’s vintage is uncorked) is how the rest of the world sees it. In a quiet revolution, it’s become one of the best places for up-and-coming winemakers producing organic and natural vintages at rock-bottom prices. Tastings are often free, or rarely more than €5 (£4.35).

Don’t miss: Booking a mâchon, Beaujolais’s answer to bottomless brunch, in the vines. Traditionally it’s served at 9am, but many wineries such as Domaine Passot organise it at more civilised times if you don’t fancy washing down your pain au chocolat with a carafe of gamay.

Where to stay: Château de Pizay has doubles from £200.

How to get there: Easyjet has direct flights from London Gatwick and Luton. Hire a car from SIXT at the airport.

It’s the colour of the buildings that makes me drool over Saumur. They’re the colour of a really flavourful vanilla ice cream, and they’re so clean looking, like someone took a giant pressure washer to the whole town. This is the heart of chateau country, and Saumur has a spectacular one of its own, the Château de Saumur, which began life in the 10th century (albeit it looks pretty different today), and the vanilla stone is tuffeau, a kind of limestone typical to the Loire.

Don’t miss: Fontevraud-l’Abbaye, the largest monastic settlement in Europe, which has worn many habits, including being a prison in the 19th century, just 20 minutes from Saumur.

Where to stay: Glamp it up at Huttopia Saumur, which has Canadian-style trapper tents sleeping 5 for just £330/week.

How to get there: High-speed trains link Paris Austerlitz and Saumur (2h40) multiple times per day. Book via SNCF Connect.

The Dordogne fills me with nostalgia for childhood camping trips, and it’s a place where time spent between four walls is time wasted, because it’s so delightfully green. Saussignac is my latest coup de cœur (favourite), a picture-perfect town encircled by vineyards in the hills just behind the Dordogne River. Days are (naturally) made for languidly sipping wine; hire an e-bike to explore further afield, no one’s going to want to be the designated driver here.

Don’t miss: Taking a one day yoga retreat at Château Feely, before ruining all your zen with an organic wine tasting on-site.

Where to stay: Le 1500 has doubles from £125/night.

How to get there: Ryanair has direct flights from multiple UK airports to Bergerac, including Bournemouth, Bristol and Liverpool. From Bergerac it’s a 20-minute drive.

France has its own Salt Path, the 2,000km coastal hiking trail (GR34) that runs around the whole Breton coastline. It’s all incredibly scenic, but nowhere beats the Pink Granite Coast, a section where cliffs plummet into the English Channel, losing igloo-sized boulders along the way. Lighthouses, sheltered coves, white sand beaches only accessible on foot and dozens of little islands, it’s enough to make you forget that the Côte d’Azur even exists.

Don’t miss: A day trip to the Sept-Îles (seven islands) to marvel at the bird life.

Where to stay: Spa hotel Roz Marine Thalasso in Perros-Guirec has doubles from £164.

How to get there: Brittany Ferries crosses from Plymouth to Roscoff most days (often overnight), or from Portsmouth to Saint-Malo, from April to November. It’s just over an hour’s drive from either.

I could have recommended ten different places in Corsica in all sincerity, but if you only visit one place, make it Cap Corse, the historic heartland. The old manor houses, now semi-dilapitated with an air of faded grandeur, tell a tale of the wealthy merchants that used to live here, but nothing leaves your jaw on the ground like the contrast of near-vertical mountains peppered with vineyards plunging down to meet beaches in all shades of grey and gold. The roads to access them have more spirals than a slinky.

Don’t miss: Hiking the Sentier des Douaniers (Customs Trail) all around the northern headland.

Where to stay: Ultra-cool design hotel Aethos (doubles from £250), in a 17th-century manor house at the foot of the peninsula.

How to get there: Easyjet has seasonal direct flights between London Gatwick and Bastia.

Besides the fact that you can get here in just 90 minutes from central London (plenty of people have a commute longer than that), this northern city has soul. Beer rather than wine is the name of the game, with craft breweries every which way you look, plenty of red brick and opulently carved Flemish architecture. The art galleries are exceptional, and it’s worth the schlep into the suburbs to visit La Piscine in Roubaix, a gallery inside an old swimming pool.

Don’t miss: Eating chips soaked in maroilles cheese sauce at Bierbuik.

Where to stay: Colourful Mama Shelter (doubles from £139).

How to get there: Eurostar has nine trains per day between London St Pancras and Lille Europe, taking under 90 minutes.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met a Brit in Drôme Provençale. Perhaps that’s because it’s pretty complicated to get to, or maybe it’s France’s best kept secret. Visit between mid June and mid July and you can see the lavender in full bloom without worrying you’ll lose an eye to someone’s selfie stick as you would in Luberon. Outside of lavender season, there are epic limestone gorges, vineyards producing the region’s sparkling wine Clairette de Die and villages clinging to the hillside, all framed by the immense limestone Vercors Massif.

Don’t miss: Feet-in-the-water hiking at Gorges du Toulourenc; take dry bags, at some points the water is more than waist high.

Where to stay: Get back to basics with a yurt stay at Drôme Esprit Nature, from £173 for two.

How to get there: Drive it – it’s not well connected! Take Le Shuttle under the Channel, and then road trip down (roughly nine hours).