Camping-Car Park France Aires

[Derek Uzzell]

I’ve had another look at the St Saturnin CCP site and GOOGLE Street View shows that in 2016 this was a bare loose-surface area with a height barrier at the entrance. There was no road-signage to indicate that this was a public car-park, but presumably that was its use.

 

These couple of magazine articles may be of interest

 

https://tinyurl.com/y32wr2ql

 

https://tinyurl.com/y3okbso3

[Solwaybuggier]

The St Saturnin CCP is adjacent to an area as you describe- loose surface and height barrier. I suspect they may have separated part of it off as a CCP?

[Nicepix]

I've been monitoring the CCP website for Moulismes. All over the Easter period there have never been more than 10% occupancy in a 53 space aire. When I used to go past on a weekly basis there was never less than 20 there in the middle of the day and over double that in an evening when I was travelling back from fishing.

 

This aire was very popular with Brits, Dutch and Belgians heading down to the south of France and Spain and on the return trip. I know a lot of these used to visit the tabac and restaurants across and just down the road. Looking back on the reviews left on Park4night it seems that people are simply driving off once they see the new aire. There are numerous complaints about the new aire being a fenced off tarmac parking area when it used to be more natural. And they seem to be driving a few km more and stopping off at the free aire at Lussac-lesChateaux. Many are saying that there were only 4 or 5 vans inside the aire and a procession of vans entering and leaving with out stopping. Seems like the commune in this instance has scored an own goal.

[starvin marvin]

Love CCP, the standard is high and all the aires we’ve used were easy to access, oh and cheap. What’s not to like?

[Nicepix]

I suppose that we all have our own ideas as what is cheap. For me the cost is weighed up against the various criteria; space, location, tranquillity, aspect, amenities, etc. Also, the needs for pump & dump, EHU and Wi-Fi. I'll pay that price for Capdenac-Gare as it is more like a camp site with more spacious parking and it offers me direct access to the river for fishing. The fishing amenity alone is worth the cost.It is where I head for when the wife is away in England. :-D

 

But I don't regard €10 as being cheap for a site like Moulismes that has nothing to offer the camping-caristes that cannot be found better and cheaper elsewhere and has tarmac side by side parking. For example; if you detoured to nearby Queaux you could park for about the same amount in a beautiful riverside setting in an interesting village. Same with Gouex which is about the same distance away and around €4 less.

 

The Moulismes site is / was used 99%of the time by people going past, not to, the location. When we are doing that we don't usually need any of those services. It seems like most campers are stopping off at Lussac-les-Chateaux instead so that would indicate that they don't need services such as water, EHU and discharge.

 

There is an interesting back story about that CCP site. The municipality received an 80% grant for the approx €300,000 cost of renovating the site from various government departments. The remaining 20% was loaned to them by CCP who got the management of the site without any tenders being sought. The municipality get €7,000 p.a. rent from CCP and also one-third of the receipts. If the site had continued to attract the 40 or so camping-cars it used to before the renovations 365 days a year CCP would be netting almost €100,000 gross (before deductions for electricity, water, etc) and the commune would receive around €53,000 per year. As it is, with around 5 campers per day, CCP would be likely to receive around €6,000 gross p.a and the commune will receive around €13,000.

 

It is easy to see how a Maire can be keen to cash in on the aire especially for a commune like Moulismes that only has 400 residents. If the situation remains the same, and I cannot see that it will not continue be shunned by the camping-caristes, the municipality are getting €13,000 p.a. for no extra work. The village handyman still cleans the toilets and empties the litter bins around the car and lorry parking areas as he did before. They are quids in, but I can't see how CCP are turning a profit.

[Derek Uzzell]

Not all French campsites or French ‘aires’ are created equal and that’s also true of Camping-Car Park (CCP) sites. During our 20-or-so years of motorcaravanning in France we’ve visited municipal campsites that looked like they wouldn’t survive and didn’t, and used ‘aires’ that had been optimistically and expensively installed and were later removed.

 

I’ve also wondered about CCP’s profitability, but there was no compulsion for me to join the CCP scheme or to stay on CCP sites that I (or more accurately my wife) disliked the look of.

 

Take the CCP site at Carentan

 

https://campingcarpark.com/shop/normandie/50-manche/carentan-aire-carentan-port/

 

This is an ex-aire next to a campsite . It’s not a quiet location, the ground is rough, and (as the photos show) the ambience is non-existent. But if it’s wished to visit Carentan, using the CCP site will be significantly cheaper than staying on the campsite (when the latter is actually open) and the CCP site is within a reasonable walking distence from the attractive town centre. I wouldn’t want to stay there long, but for a 24-hour halt available all-year-round, under £10 including motorhome servicng, 230V and Wi-Fi seems reasonable to me. I expect I could park overnight in Carentan for nothing (Lidl’s car park?) but then I wouldn’t have the servicing, 230V and Wi-Fi facilities.

 

Plainly if one is motorcaravanning a lot in France, the ‘parking’ element of that exercise becomes financially significant. But I suspect that, for most UK visitors, the £10 to £12 per-night cost of staying on a CCP site will be considered good value.

[Nicepix]

In the two examples I used both are sites that have been renovated at the public expense in the form of grants to improve tourism. Capdenac-Gare was a camp sit owned by the municipality that was only open for around 4 or 5 months a year due to ground conditions.

 

Moulismes was created around 30 years ago on the initiative of the Maire of the time to improve trade in the village which is situated on a busy route. The aire had become unfit for purpose due to the increased usage and vehicles becoming heavier.

 

The cost of renovating Moulsimes was €239,000 excluding taxes and 80% of that came from the public purse. The scheme has been controversial to say the least. A local restaurant owner and the Maire have had a public spat where each has implied the other of nepotism and wrong doing; as in accepting a bribe or dodging taxes, which has not for me addressed the real issue. Why should the tax payer fork out around €170,000 only for the 'management' i.e. profit of the site to be passed to a private company?

 

In the case of Moulismes all CCP have put up is a loan to the commune of the 20% of the renovation costs. For that loan they get 66% of all income for €7,000 p.a. rent. Even at less than half the previous usage CCP would gross around €30,000 p.a without having to do anything on site. There are also questions about who pays the standing charges; electricity, water and sewage and any commercial rates that may be levied. The Maire has not clarified that.

 

Capdenac-Gare will not have cost the same as Moulismes but again, most of the cost was met by public grants and then CCP got the management on the same sort of basis. At that site they open the pre-existing showers and toilets for the peak months which is a strange thing to do given their mission statement of camping-caristes being autonomous, an argument used to close down sanitation blocks elsewhere. It doesn't make sense.

 

There is something distinctly fishy about the whole thing from a funding point of view.

 

[Billggski]

In most capital ventures the basic cost of setting up is insignificant compared to the ongoing running costs.

This is why the National Trust and similar organisations refuse free gifts of property without a covenant to cover running costs in perpetuity, and local government outsources whenever possible.

I don't know the details of the contracts between local mayors and the companies, but I guess they are glad to offload the costs to someone else.

[Nicepix]

I don't see how there can be much expense running an automated barrier on a tarmac aire. The CCP charge is only one or two Euro less than many municipal camping grounds that have grass that needs mowing and sanitation blocks that need cleaning plus a reception that needs someone there. As I said on the other thread when the CCP card dropped out of the machine it was covered in cobwebs and muck. That machine hadn't been serviced in weeks. Someone else mention the machines running out of cards.

 

 

[Derek Uzzell]

I’m not aware that Camping-Car Park has a mission statement that includes camping-caristes being autonomous, but if an ex-aire or ex-campsite has a sanitary block, there are valid reasons for closing this when the aire/campsite becomes a CCP site. This reduces the cleaning and maintenance overheads and - as CCP sites are not actively supervised - makes the site less attractive to unauthorised users.

 

As a motorcaravanning visitor to France I’m glad that CCP exists and, if the financing is iffy, that’s up to the French to sort out not me. I’m sure that any French camping-caristes visiting this country won’t concern themselves with how UK campsites are funded.

[longtemps]

I must admit that I am at a loss how this venture is profitable. The French motorhomers are far from fond of these aires because previous non payant has now become payant! However, some of the locations do leave me much perplexed. They are very often surrounded by the traditional free alternatives and are not exclusively in tourist locations. Also, when researching, it is clear that they are very rarely full or even half full. However, if they are to succeed then good customer service is vital and so far they have demonstrated this admirably, at least to me.

[Derek Uzzell]

There is a short article in the May 2019 edition of “Camping-Car Magazine” saying that Camping-Car Park was 116th in a list of 500 French businesses that had flourished best between 2014 and 2017. During that period CCP’s turnover is said to have risen from €823,000 in 2014 to €3,295,000 in 2017, and the workforce number increased from 15 to 26.

 

Unsurprisingly, if a monetary charge is imposed on a facility that was previously free to use (like a free motorhome ‘aire’) there will be complaints about this. I’ve never attempted to research how many of the current 160-or-so CCP sites were originally 100% free aires offering free parking and free ‘servicing’. I don’t know what the annual footfall (or ‘tyrefall’) has been across the complete CCP network or for individual CCP sites. CCP’s system should allow those statistics to be easily established, but I suspect that they would not reveal that information to Joe Public.

 

I know why I use certain CCP sites but not others, but not what selection criteria other CCP members apply. I’d expect CCP sites to get more usage in July/August and in the off-season when campsites are shut, but that’s just quesswork. The technical side of the CCP system seems to work OK nowadays and, if their sites are never crammed with motorhomes, that’s a big plus as far as I’m concerned.

[Nicepix]

For our part Derek, we tend to have two or three fortnight long holidays in France in the summer months and quite a few short breaks through the year. Plus a fortnight trip to Spain in the winter.

 

I plan the trips so that we almost always stop somewhere interesting and I am not averse to paying €15 - €20 or more for the right site & location. Our camping-car is no slouch and we can do up to 700km in a day's travelling and prefer to minimise stop overs in tarmac aires in the middle of nowhere. To be honest I'd rather park in a quiet supermarket, picnic site or similar place than pay CCP / Flotte Bleu / Euro Relais €10 to park side by side at the side of a busy road in an official aire where nearby other vehicles can park free of charge. For me CCP is the Travel Lodge of camping. OK for an overnight stop, but not somewhere I'd take my wife for a short break.

 

Park4night is a Godsend and that is why some of the CCP sites will struggle especially if the latest court cases have the effect that some are hoping. If you are interested in gaining a wider view of aire users you can trawl through the comments left on P4n or Google reviews. It can be quite illuminating.

[Derek Uzzell]

We’ve been holidaying in France in a motorhome for about 20 years usually visting 3 or 4 times annually (never in the tourist high season) and each time limiting the trip’s duration to a fortnight or less. To begin with we never used campsites, staying instead on ‘aires’. public car-parks or ‘wild camping’. Then we began to stay on France Passion sites fairly frequently. A few years ago we stopped using France Passion and increasingly began to frequent campsites in the ACSI network. More recently, we joined the Camping-Car Park scheme.

 

Our annual Brittany Ferries expenditure exceeds £1000, so the small cost of staying on an ACSI campsite, a pay-to-use aire or a CCP site is academic. However, we won’t stay on just any campsite, aire or CCP site if it has no appeal. You say "I'd rather park in a quiet supermarket, picnic site or similar place than pay CCP / Flotte Bleu / Euro Relais €10 to park side by side at the side of a busy road...” and so would I. But I’d rather stay on on an attractive CCP site costing €10, or an ACSI campsite costing €18, than on a bare supermarket car-park, or in a no-security roadside lay-by picnic site or on a noisy packed (free) aire.

 

It’s easy enough (as you have done in your posts) to cherry-pick from the CCP network sites that lack eye-appeal (eg. Carentan, La Fleche, Sainte Suzanne, Millau) and there’s no doubt that (as forum-member rupert123 observed here in 2013) CCP’s technical system used to leave much to be desired. But CCP installations based on redundant campsites are generally pleasant and nowadays the CCP system seems to work pretty well - though I’d certainly recommend that UK motorcaravanners considering using CCP sites follow longtemps approach and obtain the CCP PASS’ÉTAPES card in advance.

 

I can understand that many French motorcaravanners will take the view that the CCP network is the invention of the Devil and offends the camping-car ethos. But I’m sure UK motorcaravanners would appreciate a similar scheme if it were introduced in this country, just as they would like an ‘aires’ network and the ability to freely and easily park a motorhome and overnight in it pretty much anywhere.

 

 

[Nicepix]

ACSI - now you are talking! Especially if you research the comments on their site and P4n. You can find some really nice sites for not much more than the 'modern' charmless aires.

[witzend]

Derek Uzzell - 2019-04-27 8:24 AM

But I’m sure UK motorcaravanners would appreciate a similar scheme if it were introduced in this country, just as they would like an ‘aires’ network and the ability to freely and easily park a motorhome and overnight in it pretty much anywhere.

 

If ever introduced Here it wouldn't be long before some organisation like CCP would come along and start charging. If we stay away and avoid CCP's sites they may notice there not popular

[Nicepix]

Well, regards the site I mentioned at Moulismes there were never less than 20 vans parked there whenever I passed and now there might be 6 at most. Plus none park up for lunch breaks as they would have to pay CCP for a five hour stay. The restaurant owner across the road is really suffering.

 

But, CCP aren't that bothered as they had have put nothing into the site except a loan which has to be repaid by the commune from any takings. The tax payer has effectively funded the creation of the site and the Maire has then handed the management for what it is over to CCP who get the lion's share of any takings. So even if the site does nothing more than the 6 campers per night average it has been doing over the Easter and May Day holidays CCP would still net over €7,000 p.a. for nothing as they do not do anything except collect the payment via an automated pay barrier.

 

The Maire is getting it in the neck from the two local businesses who have suffered losses of customers but he doesn't care because the commune gets about €10,000 per year from CCP, or will once the loan is paid off.

 

Meanwhile down the road at Lussac-les-Chateaux and Queaux the local businesses are doing very well out of CCP and the Maire ruining what was previously a popular free aire.

The morale of this for any Maire who is looking in *-) is to get the tax payer to fund a new aire and then run it yourself as that way you will double what you would get from CCP even if far less people use it. (lol)