Some thoughts on our first proper camper holiday in France

[alan k]

When I say "proper" campervan holiday in France, we used mainly Aires and French Passion sites (instead of camp sites) touring from Calais, southwest along the coast all the way to Pointe du Raz in Brittanny then south to St Jean de Monts then inland along the Loire and finally turning north to visit Tours and thro the Champagne area before returning to Calais in 4 weeks.

 

Why however carefully one tries to park do you find that the shower tray will not empty properly? The cheap wrapped sponge worked wonders!

 

Why is the drain on the kitchen sink, placed the opposite way to the drain on the shower? is it done so at least one of them drains?

 

There seems to be a huge proliferation of 3.5 tonnes limits in towns and villages excepting "desserte locale" which although sounds like the special pudding off the menu is I believe an exemption for local buses/coaches. I must admit to ignoring some of these limits, as the alternative routes sometimes meant quite big diversions. Although plated to 3.8t, we weighed 3.49t when we set off, (according to local trading standards weighbridge with the rear axle right on the limit). We even saw artics coming the other way at times so they seemed to have ignored them as well. What does everybody else do?

 

We found the aires book from Vicarious Publications very very useful but found sometimes that there descriptions and photos underplayed how nice/good/pleasant locations some of the sites were. We did get sat naved finding one or two because my other navigator/destination decider didn't read all the entry which said "only approach from x because of tight corners low bridges/arches" but on a couple of sites I did prove that you could access from the other direction cos I managed to get our 7.2m x 2.3m x 3m van in that way!

 

We had more fun and games with the french passion sites, the ones we stayed on were super, super places, super owners, really interested in us and the local area and more than happy to display their wares for us to taste /buy. Some we'll definitely go back to. For those we went to but didn't stay at, some were extremley difficult to find, one or two i would have had fifficulty getting a vw camper into never mind a bigger van (usually overhanging trees) and one in particular directed us to a spot by a river! A more mosquito infested spot I couldn't imagine, lots of tree cover, standing water, long grass and mud and only just possible witha 5 point turn to get back out to the main road.

 

So all in all a super 4 weeks in August, pity the weather wasn't better tho it didn't rain much it just wasn't up to the standard we've expected over many years visiting France.

 

But we really enjoyed our "new" van, it got us lots of places we hadn't been to before and we revisited places visited with the kids 20 years ago, pity the radio or the aerial (still to find out which) is rubbish, the cruise control and rev camera (fitted by Dave Newell) were a great success!

 

There's a few tweeks needed over the winter to storage (drinks cabinet) (moving some weight forward or not taking as much) and things to make it even better just a pity we've such a full autumn we might not get out in it much for the next couple of months.

 

Oh and the other thing, I know its been covered many times before but we've had panel van conversions for the previous 15 years or so, so we didn't always look like a camper from front on, but now we do, so it was amazing how many waves we got, and from all nationalities. We're not big wavers ourselves, and it became one of those games as we trundled along, will they, won't they? Apologies to anybody out there if we didn't wave back, we did reply to most but sometimes there just wasn't time

 

happy trundling

 

alan

[Randonneur]

Really glad you enjoyed your 'First' trip.

 

We use Aires or France Passion most of the time, I suppose we are very lucky to live where we are and can take advantage of the facilities. We tried to get to a France Passion site recently, not that far away from where we live, there were low bridge signs one way in and when we went round to the other way the low bridge signs were there again, so we never found it. I think it is a trip in the car to see where we went wrong.

 

Anyway, happy touring.

 

Sylvia