Hi guys just joined site but been looking at it for a year or so. Thinking of going to france next year for the first time in July August time with the wife and two boys 8 and 5. Priced up a site with c and c club about 50 miles north of La Rochelle and with ferries diesel etc think its going to cost anything upto £1400- £1500 .Is there anyway of doing it cheaper or going further north but get some good weather p.s we coming from Co. Durham area . Any advice wood be good and any recomendations for campsites would also be good . Thanks John
Hi and advice please
- Thread starter john2000
- Start date
Hi John
Welcome to the forum. I'm sure you'll get lots of good advice from other members but let me put in my two penn'rth.
A lot will depend on what sort of holiday you want and remember that weather in France, like in the UK, can't be guaranteed. We've had bad weather in all areas of France although, to be fair, better generally than UK.
Sites in July / August, especially near the coast, West or South, will be very expensive. Inland will be less so but still not cheap if you want one with a pool, restaurant and bar etc.
We go in June / early July but still have to watch the costs. Some of my tips are:
1. I guess you will take two days to get from Durham. If so use a CL for the overnight stop. Use a CL near the port and get an early morning ferry. Sites in France near to the ferry ports always seem to cash in on the overnight stopovers.
2. Buy fuel from supermarkets.
3. Use N roads rather than the autoroute, make the journey part of the holiday.
4. Use municipal sites, especially en-route to or from your main destination. These are frequently exceptionally good quality and value.
5. Use a credit card as the charges and the conversion rate is usually far better than using a debit card.
These are just a few ideas for cost saving but still having a good holiday.
Welcome to the forum. I'm sure you'll get lots of good advice from other members but let me put in my two penn'rth.
A lot will depend on what sort of holiday you want and remember that weather in France, like in the UK, can't be guaranteed. We've had bad weather in all areas of France although, to be fair, better generally than UK.
Sites in July / August, especially near the coast, West or South, will be very expensive. Inland will be less so but still not cheap if you want one with a pool, restaurant and bar etc.
We go in June / early July but still have to watch the costs. Some of my tips are:
1. I guess you will take two days to get from Durham. If so use a CL for the overnight stop. Use a CL near the port and get an early morning ferry. Sites in France near to the ferry ports always seem to cash in on the overnight stopovers.
2. Buy fuel from supermarkets.
3. Use N roads rather than the autoroute, make the journey part of the holiday.
4. Use municipal sites, especially en-route to or from your main destination. These are frequently exceptionally good quality and value.
5. Use a credit card as the charges and the conversion rate is usually far better than using a debit card.
These are just a few ideas for cost saving but still having a good holiday.
With your children being school age its not going to be cheap to go anywhere, although I have not taken a package holiday for a long time myself I dont think you are going to get a foreign holiday for any less than £1500 however you do it. Caravaning is not cheap its just better. I would go along with the sugestions already posted about travel , regarding sites it may well be that the prices in the CC booking service are top end and if you do want to advance book, have a look at the sites own booking arangements and prices.
Hi thanks for the comments and i'll iook at a few sites direct , the campsites we are after are prob nice area not to fussed about evening entertainment some to take the bikes and poss a short drive near beech any ideas. Thanks
Your biggest costs are probably going to be fuel, the ferry, and sites. Not much you can do about fuel, though I've noticed that my outfit was doing about 10mpg more than usual coming back through Austria and Germany last year driving at the 80kph (50 mph) speed limit rather than our usual 60mph! In terms of ferry, if you're travelling from the north of England to western France I guess a mid/west channel crossing is logical, but boy do these cost. DFDS have offers on the Dover-Calais/Dunkirk route from time to time, we're paying £78 for a trip next summer. You'll end up driving more but you might save £300-400 on the ferry. And as others have said, the sites you can book via the CC tend to be the high end sites, and you can easily end up paying £700 for a two week stay. We've stayed at a few municipal campsites in France, some are pretty basic but others are quite pleasant and will probably save you half or more of the cost of staying in a big commercial site. There's a reasonable website for these at http://www.camping-municipal.org/
The other thing you can do is order yourself a copy of the CC foreign touring guide, this is a two volume directory of thousands of campsites across europe (though just order the volume that includes France..) This has been our bible for 30 years of foreign touring and is a really useful tool to both pre-book sites or just turn up on chance.
The other thing you can do is order yourself a copy of the CC foreign touring guide, this is a two volume directory of thousands of campsites across europe (though just order the volume that includes France..) This has been our bible for 30 years of foreign touring and is a really useful tool to both pre-book sites or just turn up on chance.
As everyone has said, your fixed costs will be the ferry, and fuel. You can cut down the ferry cost by using one of the shorter crossings, and the Caravan Club are 'hinting' that they may be making some 'very special' offers in the New Year. Fuel you can't do anything much about if you want to drive to France. On sites, however, if you can go for the last two weeks in August, rather than late July to early August then you may find sites are slightly cheaper, and even possibly be able to use one of the discount schemes such as Camping Cheques or the ACSI card. *see www.campingcheque.co.uk and www.campingcard.co.uk. Each offers a discount over the 'normal' site tariff, usually in what is considered low season, but that can be any dates, and some sites accept them all season. ACSI card offers sites for 10, 12, 14 or 16 euros per night, and that includes a pitch, two adults, car and caravan, awning, and electricity. Camping Cheque sites cost £13.95 per night for the same 'package'. The 2013 ACSI Card dates are now available on line, but Camping Cheque haven't yet announced their dates for 2013, so it's hard to see which sites might just be available.
The Vendee isn't an area that we've visited - we prefer the more wilder parts of France. Just as an example of what you might get at the back end of August, is Les Charmilles, in the Ardeche (which is much further south, with more dependable weather) which is an ACSI card site, which accepts the ACSI card from 17th August, and includes up to three children under 6, in the 16 euros per night price band, but does 14 nights for 12. That means you'd pay 192 euros for 14 nights, plus a supplement for your 8 year old of 4 euros per night
So your spending could be reduced to:
Ferry £78.00 return (DFDS offer)
Campsites 14 nights at around £250
Overnight campsites in each direction £40.00 or £80..00 if you want two overnight stops
Fuel £250
So a total of around £656.00 (or less given the exchange rate) - which is rather less than your total of £1500 - but a very different holiday!!
The Ardeche area is a wonderful area for holidays - with wild scenery, a great river, some fantastic wildlife - birds of prey, beaver in he rivers, fishing in the river, and beautiful mediaeval villages with lovely markets - and is where we spent many happy years when our children were small.
The Vendee isn't an area that we've visited - we prefer the more wilder parts of France. Just as an example of what you might get at the back end of August, is Les Charmilles, in the Ardeche (which is much further south, with more dependable weather) which is an ACSI card site, which accepts the ACSI card from 17th August, and includes up to three children under 6, in the 16 euros per night price band, but does 14 nights for 12. That means you'd pay 192 euros for 14 nights, plus a supplement for your 8 year old of 4 euros per night
So your spending could be reduced to:
Ferry £78.00 return (DFDS offer)
Campsites 14 nights at around £250
Overnight campsites in each direction £40.00 or £80..00 if you want two overnight stops
Fuel £250
So a total of around £656.00 (or less given the exchange rate) - which is rather less than your total of £1500 - but a very different holiday!!
The Ardeche area is a wonderful area for holidays - with wild scenery, a great river, some fantastic wildlife - birds of prey, beaver in he rivers, fishing in the river, and beautiful mediaeval villages with lovely markets - and is where we spent many happy years when our children were small.
Hi we talke our two grandchildren to France every summer holiday for two weeks and have found it cheaper to go at the end of the school holidays as you can very often use ACSI Card or Camping Cheques and some of the sites are great for kids with all the facilities which of course they will want to keep them happy. Ours have a great time last year we went to Parc du Val de Loire at Mesland in the Loire and it was great for children.
Another idea to save on costs and one that I've done for the last couple of years after hearing about it on here is to use your Tesco vouchers (if you shop there) in exchange for a crossing via the tunnel. I actually posted mine off today for next June's holiday, crossing would have cost £220 in cash but vouchers covered the cost.
Caravan Club can offer good deals but shop around, I've used Select Sites before and got a decent price (and good service) from them. I usually use the Caravan Club's Red Pennant insurance scheme, you don't need to have booked your holiday through the CC to use their insurance.
I would suggest having a good look round at what prices different sites are charging, you still have plenty of time to do that. As someone else suggested try the sites a little bit more inland, they are generally a bit less expensive, also often have bigger sized pitches as well.
One site on the west coast that I visited and would recommend is La Garangeoire. Been a few years now since I was there so not sure how it is cost wise.
http://en.camping-la-garangeoire.com/
Caravan Club can offer good deals but shop around, I've used Select Sites before and got a decent price (and good service) from them. I usually use the Caravan Club's Red Pennant insurance scheme, you don't need to have booked your holiday through the CC to use their insurance.
I would suggest having a good look round at what prices different sites are charging, you still have plenty of time to do that. As someone else suggested try the sites a little bit more inland, they are generally a bit less expensive, also often have bigger sized pitches as well.
One site on the west coast that I visited and would recommend is La Garangeoire. Been a few years now since I was there so not sure how it is cost wise.
http://en.camping-la-garangeoire.com/
The suggestion Val makes about some sites taking the ASCI card scheme in late August is a good one. Most sites in France, even the ones that are jam packed in late July/early-mid August, start having space from around 20th August onwards and might accept ASCI or Camping Cheques. As it happens we've booked our £78 crossing with DFDS for August 19th next year, we haven't booked our sites yet but we'll look closely at ASCI and Camping Cheques as they really are great value.
In terms of weather, I think the Vendee is a decent choice. Having said that, personally I find the Vendee a bit bland, and from Calais its pretty much a 2 day trip so we tend to bite the bullet and do a 2 day run down to someone on the med instead. Though this doesn't do much for the budget, so you pays your money etc...
Tony
In terms of weather, I think the Vendee is a decent choice. Having said that, personally I find the Vendee a bit bland, and from Calais its pretty much a 2 day trip so we tend to bite the bullet and do a 2 day run down to someone on the med instead. Though this doesn't do much for the budget, so you pays your money etc...
Tony
We called there this year and its a very nice site owned and run by very nice people. It is in the Camping Cheque scheme but not during July or August. I would also say it is a bit out of the way and the beach is going to be a car ride.Rob-T said:
David
another David said:
You're right about it being a car drive to the beach David, think the nearest beach is about 10 miles away if my memory serves me correctly. Perhaps I should have made it clear that I was following my own recommendation of staying a little inland when mentioning that particular site. Would also add that Garangeoire has the biggest pitches I have ever had the pleasure to stay on, certainly the serviced pitches anyway.
We went to the welcome drink with the owner, it was very long and in French however when he got round to us Brits he did say that the huge pitches had been a deliberate policy of his wifes father (I think) who set up the site in 1948 and it is all the more remarkable as at that time pitches were generally much smaller as they were catering for tents.Rob-T said:
Lovely site but I dont think we will be going back as we were not very impressed with St Giles.
another David said:
We enjoy the area around St Giles, St Jean De Mont & Challans
In fact we were pricing up the cost of houses in Challans the last time we were there
Hi John,
We went to the same sort of area a few years ago to St Jean de Monts at the Camping Les Amiaux (I think thats how its spelt) booked through the camping and caravaning club, the site was very nice with each pitch seperated by a hedge, you had your own water supply, drainage and unusually your own toilet disposal point, there is an open air pool and also an enclosed one a decent bar and restaurant on site. One thing I would recommend is that you use Portsmouth to Cean ferry it will knock 5 hours off your journey if you go Dover Calais, which ever way you go enjoy France it really is a nice place and on the whole the people are pretty decent as well.
P.S. the beach is about 600 meters away it can also be seen on google earth
Try this http://www.amiaux.fr/
We went to the same sort of area a few years ago to St Jean de Monts at the Camping Les Amiaux (I think thats how its spelt) booked through the camping and caravaning club, the site was very nice with each pitch seperated by a hedge, you had your own water supply, drainage and unusually your own toilet disposal point, there is an open air pool and also an enclosed one a decent bar and restaurant on site. One thing I would recommend is that you use Portsmouth to Cean ferry it will knock 5 hours off your journey if you go Dover Calais, which ever way you go enjoy France it really is a nice place and on the whole the people are pretty decent as well.
P.S. the beach is about 600 meters away it can also be seen on google earth
Try this http://www.amiaux.fr/
Hi guys sorry for the delaid response we've had a few things to sort out, but hopefully all sorted now. We are prob going to holiday in the UK this year and France next year .But thanks for all your replys they have given us a lot of useful info . Thanks again
Hi guys to cut a long story short we've booked up for France in August for two weeks at Last Ferme des Aulnes Nampont - Saint Martin it was a bit off the cuff but its done now. Has anyone been here and any advice what we need for driving in France with the car and caravan for the first time would be good as we have looked on the net and all seems a little confusing thanks for your help
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