We were in France in early June, we only hit one cache, we attempted others, but didn't search because our language was limited and we were in an area where many do not speak English. We were basically afraid we'd be shot or thrown in jail. I reasearched the caches I thought might be fairly easy by using www.geocaching-france .com, they have an interactive map look for "outils" then geo-carto then consulter la carte ici. This took me to the area we were traveling. My GPS is an Garmin e-trex and it worked fine, I didn't have to load anything. I took 5 bugs and a geocoin and all have been picked up, it took a while for the finders to log because of internet access.
Good Luck, the French are very nice contrary to popular belief.
Have fun!