Camping in France

[Loonytoonie]

Are cool boxes an absolute essential, do you think? For 7 days camping?
Thanks.

Yes I think they are.
You can buy meat etc every day if you want but for milk and wine you will need it to keep everything cold during the day.
We keep everything in ours, fruit,yoghurts, butter etc.

yy I agree - can you hire a fridge on site? saves lots of room in the car then we just use cool blocks & a cool bag to keep the wine at the right temp

Great - thanks for that!

Not necessarily-milk will keep cold in a thermos especially if you wrap it in a blanket to insulate it.

We always take a cool bag (folds down small) and freezer blocks. Has worked on even the hottest French days, of which we have been lucky to have many

bigTilly thanks - but how do you keep your freezer blocks frozen?

You take 4 (or more) 2 in your freezer bag, 2 in the campsite freezer (in the shop/reception - ask. It's often free, nominal cost if not) in a plastic bag that you can recognise - there will be loads in there! Swap every day. Some sites will do/you can do your own 2litre bottles of water frozen solid which last longer than the freezer blocks. Or put 4 in freezer and rotate more frequently if it's reallllllly hot

Milk in a thermos - hadn't even thought of that!!

Trying to decide between normal cool box or electric and thinking about my kids endless requests for ice lollies etc, and wondering would either type keep an ice lolly frozen? I'm assuming they'd fairly quickly become a raspberry puddle but hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Mmm, or maybe I should squeeze ice pops into a thermos!!

We put the icecreams into a plastic bag with the freezer blocks in the campsite freezer. We also put beer/wine in for an hour or two in the late afternoon

We have just returned from 5 different campsites around France and not one would let us freeze our own iceblocks - apparently for hygiene reasons. We had to go to the supermarket and buy big blocks of ice each day or every other day depending on the weather. We had an Igloo maxcold box, but the hottest days were too much for it without fresh ice each day.

Lucky We have been going camping for 10 years in France and never had that problem.

Were they small sites?

A mix of large and small.
The first small one had no freezer, but let us use their fridge so ok.
The second was a mid sized site said unhygenic and buy ice from their shop for an extortionate price - er no thanks will go to supermarket.
The third a large site, said no because too many people and too much confusion over which pack belonged to someone.
Fourth site (medium sized) again unhygenic - another Dutch run site, so maybe the Dutch sites might have a hygiene rule?
Final site was small and quite basic, with no freezer.

Thanks for posting that Lucky. We've also got an Igloo Maxcold and I was wavering between fridge hire and relying on the ice box during our August trip. If I'll have to go to the supermarket each day to restock the ice paying 5 euros or so a day for fridge hire seems less of an extravagence.

Can I also ask how long you spent at each of your sites? We're undecided between two sites each for a week or so or a couple of overnights each way plus one main site.

I'm really amazed as we must have been to over 25 different sites and never had that. Maybe rules have changed since last year? Or just a con to make you hire a fridge. Do you have to take your own electrical hook-up if you want to hire a fridge?