What the fare covers, and what it does not
The fare, by sedan as by van, covers the 40 kilometres from the airport, the tolls, the fuel and the parking on arrival. Your fare is fixed when you book. No meter, no surprises.
What it does not cover is just as easy to state: site admissions where they exist, and waiting beyond what was booked. The perfume factory tours mentioned below are themselves free — it is the shops and the create-your-own workshops that are paid.
A promontory, two boulevards, one one-way system
The town describes its own access geography, and the description is enough to understand the run. From the coast you climb by two boulevards that follow the relief. They feed a one-way system that ends at cours Honoré Cresp. Above that begins what the town calls a very tight weave of sloping lanes, small squares and flights of steps.
In other words: you do not drive through this town, you drive up into it and back down by the same arrangement. A car does not enter the old core, and it should not be asked to. Passengers are set down on the cours or at a car park, and the rest is walked.
The hour changes the difficulty, not the rule. The one-way system absorbs late-afternoon peaks badly, and the climb from the dual carriageway costs minutes when everyone else is heading down to the coast. The fare is the same at 8 am and at 6 pm.
Nine oversize bays, and free parking that changes with the season
This is the most useful fact in the commune, and the parking authority publishes it: La Roque holds 480 spaces, nine of them reserved for oversize vehicles and located at the entrance. No other car park in the area explicitly plans for a long vehicle. A van parks there.
The other large structure, Notre-Dame des Fleurs, lists 565 spaces and eight charging points on level 1. Both are open seven days a week and staffed from 7 am to midnight.
Then comes the nuance that costs regulars money: the free first hour is not an annual rule. It runs from October to April. From May to September the allowance falls to thirty minutes. A driver working on winter habits comes back to a ticket in July.