Camping in France by Ryan Air any tips

[TastyMuffins]

We're off to Ile De Re next week, me and the 6 year old. I haven't camped in France before so would appreciate any tips. We have a lightweight 3 man tent and one checked in bag. I have a trangia type stove which I assume is OK on the plane and hope fuel is easy to find. Otherwise I have a small gas cooker, no gas at the moment but it's one of those ones where you pierce the bottle so probably not a good one for flying.

pack plenty of money for food shopping and even more for eating out. Can you pack a few food items in tins etc to bring with you? Pr buy big tins of casseroles in the supermarket and add bread.

Il de rea is fab, hire bikes and explore, tis warm atm

I'd be worried that packing tins of stuff would add to much to the weight of what I've got to carry as well as our luggage allowance! Wasn't really planning to take any food with me as assumed it would be just as easy to buy there.

I wouldn't pack tins, either. You can buy all manner of tinned food in France. You can buy meths easily at largeish supermarkets - alcool a bruler. It's clear, not purple like here. I would take a sandwich with you when travelling in case Ryanair are late or something or in case you arrive late at the campsite. It will be easier to cook with two burners - one for pasta, one for meat, etc, or you could decide you won't eat pasta or rice, just bread, like the French, or buy frites from the site. Hope you have a lovely time. You're much braver than me. I like to take everything. I'm not good at minimal camping.

We don't have a car so have done lightweight camping before but not in combination with flying so the packing is just a bit different. We have 15kg checked in bag and carry on allowance of 10 kg each which is actually more than I can carry all together!

I think I'll probably take both cookers so I have some variety if we are cooking and depending on which fuel is easier to get hold of. We do a fair bit of outdoor cooking even when we're not away so I am used to what I can do in one pan.

You could pick up a tin bucket at a supermarket and BBQ at night instead. You can buy everything you need at the big/small supermarkets. Lots of fresh seafood too where you are going.
Have you got bedding and that sort of stuff packed? i would imagine that would take up your baggage allowance? Take a washing line, some soap flakes and pack few clothes, things you can wash quickly and dry to wear the next day. Stuff sacks are great for packing small-- here

We're back. Hardest thing for packing was the separating things into the right bags for flying, ie concentrating on division of weight as well as liquids, sharp and pointy things etc. Did better on the way out. It helped knowing roughly the weight of the camping gear so when the big bag was a bit overweight, I took out the camping bed on the way there and it was fine, put that into carry on bag. On the way back the check in guy felt that a camping bed with metal legs was not suitable as cabin luggage but he let me put it back in the big bag and let it through overweight with no extra charge!

Weather wasn't as warm as I'd expected. I could have done with a couple of extra small towels for showering so the large micro fibre towels could be used as blankets also or could have been washed and hung out to dry while we used the smaller ones. The large towels were great for beach towels.

We camped next to the beach. Why did I not realise beforehand that everything would be sandy and we would constantly have sand in the tent? Maybe a compact dustpan and brush would have been a good idea.

Also the French for 'Have you got a mallet I can borrow?' would have been useful. No one around using one when I looked, I hadn't packed it because of weight and not needing it at all when we last camped.

Washing line was definitely useful, I washed a few clothes to keep us going and probably could have packed even less clothes.