@Stay Frosty. By coincidence, we ordered Emovis toll tags for France and Spain/Portugal yesterday (they arrived about 5 minutes ago!). It costs a little bit more overall than stopping to collect a ticket and then to pay cash or put the card int the other end but I'm hoping it will prove worthwhile in the long run. I bought mine via an offer from Le Shuttle which slightly reduces the price. Cruising on French autoroutes can also be a real pleasure - invariably get you where you want to go very quickly as there's usually very little traffic in comparison to the congested UK motorways plus the Aire (motorway service) network is very good with frequent places to pull over and most have very clean toilet facilities and green picnic areas even when there are no retail outlets present. However, as
@JOG says minor roads can be good as well and you do see some lovely countryside.
We use Barclays Reward Cards (Visa) firstly with Halifax Clarity Cards (Mastercard) as backup for spending and ATM cash withdrawals but also tend to keep a few hundred Euros in the safe at home anyway to start us off as we travel over there quite often. When overseas, I've always found having the ability to use either Visa or Mastercard useful as then you're almost guaranteed to have something that works all of the time. Fuel is almost always paid for with cards as are supermarket / shopping bills but with eating out, it usually depends on what sort of place you're in (hence always having a roll of Euros!).
We almost always use ACSI sites and never pre-book. We've found that an ACSI Camping Card can give significant savings out of high season and have rarely been let down by the quality of their sites.
Don't forget to apply for GHIC Cards for all those traveling (it's the successor to the EHIC card that we had before Brexit). That said, I would never travel anywhere overseas, even of a short time, without full travel insurance cover and we always buy annual policy (been with Staysure for the last few years).
It seems very obvious (and I think they all do nowadays) but make sure that your car insurance covers you for Europe and check on-line what else you need to do to be Europe 'road legal' - I'm thinking of stuff like Hi Viz jackets (which must be accessible), UK number plates and /or stickers, spare bulbs etc.
There's a lot of seasoned euro road trippers on here who can advise on specific issues - you just need to ask.
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