Camping help!!

[PeterH]

i'm planning a trip through france in my VW T2 Devon this summer, i'm trying to book some camp sites in the Arachon area on the Atlantic coast and they will only accept bookings of 7 nights or more. We only want to stay 2 nights and be able to move on, anyone got any advice on whether you need to book during peak periods or is it easy to stumble accross sites with vacancy's. :confused:

[Sara Campbell-Lynch]

We went touring in France last year on a couple of motorbikes. The first couple of days we were fine to just roll up and find some where to stay. In early August we headed for Arachon because we had heard it was a beautiful beach. Even on bikes we got stuck in traffic for hours. When we arrived we were told there were not places to stay available. We briefly saw the beach and true it is beautiful but had to drive on to find a bed for the night. We headed south and stoped at every village to ask and the whole area was full. Eventually after riding all afternoon and half the night we had to stop in a town for fear of running out of petrol. We spent the night in a lovely bus shelter! And no I'm not young enough to appreciate the experience. From then on we always booked ahead and it wasn't always that easy to get a place. Met other bikers who were touring and camping and they were saying that the sites were full at various places. We had a really great time in France covered about 2500 miles in just under a month. Saw lots of T2 buses out there and when we came home we bought one. No more sleeping in bus shelters for me, but be warned the French get up and travel around their own country for holidays and August gets really busy.

Hope you have a great time. Don't know what your French is like but we found if you tried a bit first no matter how bad they were always really helpful and usually tried out their English, however it was often as bad as our French but no real problems.

[frenchdub]

Hi Pete

I live in France and you'll find that as the previous poster says July/August are really busy in France as a rule. You'll find spots on campsites easily enough in the more out of the way places, but if you head for a resort or any of the main tourist areas you'll need to book.

There are books available in most large book stores in France detailing all the major campsites...even though they are in French the essential info is easy enough to understand. I got the 'Guide Officiel Camping and Caravanning' in the FNAC (kind of French HMV) for around 12Euros.

Also many towns have camper areas set aside, where you can overnight and empty loos etc. http://campingcar.enliberte.free.fr/03_franc/03c_fr-d.htm

(the music is a pain.. but there are loads of free, caming areas, just click on the area you want and use a map to find it.)

Hope you have a good trip
Gareth

[vw77bus]

Hi,

I've just been round 5 European countries and got all my campsites from here, the routeplanners are spot on from there too. Can't fault it, and we only stayed max 3 days each place. www.eurocampings.co.uk/en/ :) Have fun