hi, we did the drive 5 times last year. paris can be busy even at night. the best time we did was birmingham to tortosa via eurotunnel in 20 hrs. The longest it took us was 28 hrs. That was the weekend that the whole of france started there holidays, at 3 am we were in 3 lanes of crawling traffic for about 150 miles. Lyon is definately the safest option. it can get very busy around lyon, so time that part  well.