electric hook up in France - help for a newbie pleeease!

[liz98]

hi I've just booked a campsite in France, first time camping abroad as a family. And for the first time I've booked EHU as we would probably want to use the DVD player and charge phones etc. I went into our local camping store (Towsure) to look at what to buy and even the most well-informed staff got confused when we looked at what to do. As far as I understand, we have to take polarity checker, then possibly a two pin adaptor to plug the three pin adaptor into. And if the polarity is different to UK we have to re-wire the adaptor. It all sounds so complicated and I'm scared I could blow up the campsite! The lady in the shop said some people take adaptors especially for France and the UK once they've worked it all out. If anyone could offer a step by step guide who's done it before I'd be so grateful. And also, tiny extra question - which should I book - 6A or 10A? I didn't know so I went for the biggest! Thanks very much

Never heard about the polarity thing and we've camped a lot in Europe. You do need one of those campsite big blue plug thingys - it goes into the EHU and then plug the extension lead to that. I must admit, I do not know if a UK big blue plug thingy is the same as one for France, but surely the camping shop can tell you if it's European or not.

Last time we went, I went on to eBay and found a guy selling a kit with all the bits I needed. I think it had a continental-schuko adapter (schuko is the big blue camping adapter), a polarity tester, a polarity reverser (schuko).

I seem to remember campsites either had the schuko connectors (but the polarity might be swapped, hence the need for adapters), or regular 2-pin continental sockets. Therefore, you need the right adapter to connector to UK 3-pin.

The ebay guy (jegs11) was very helpful and sent it with instructions etc. There will be other places to buy too.

Thanks so much for the replies. Lifestooshort - I was hoping that might be the case for us, but knowing my luck I'll turn up with all the new fancy cables and realise I can't use any of it....trashcan - the way you've described it sounds exactly like the conversation I had in the camp shop. I've found that seller on ebay and the kit he sells looks like a reasonable price, think I'll get in touch with him. Thanks again for the help - this site is brill!

we camped in france last year, and used our normal uk EHU…..

When are you going? If it is the school holidays, we are going before then, so I will report back on my findings when I get back. I think, like Shiraz, we just used our UK set-up last year but we do have some sort of adaptor thingy which we will take with us again this year.

watching with interest as we are doing this too and totally confused by it all.

Def need the two pin to three pin adaptor. We've never checked the polarity and have never blown anyone up. DH says it shouldn't matter about the 6A or 10A as they're both quite low. We got our adaptor in a French supermarket but I'm sure Halfords or somewhere online will have one.

The normal ehu works, you only need an adapter for the older sites and even then most sites will lend you an adapter

Hi thanks for the extra advice, especially about the french supermarkets selling the adaptors. Frozen - we're going 21st July so would be great to hear how you get on. We're going to borrow a cable. I've emailed the campsite to see if they can advise us - I'll let you know.

Hi this is what the campsite told me -
You will be able to use your standart uk cable but you will need and adapter for our French plug.
The polarity may be reversed and some English campers have an adapter for both in case. We also have our own adapter that you could borrow in case...
So I'm off to buy an adaptor and polarity checker...

Well we needed our adaptor at the site we are at now. Bought at Go Outdoors for a few quid but they sell them at the shop near our site too. I would get one before you get here if you can though. Don't worry about polarity checking though. The French use the same system as we do in the UK. Enjoy your holiday.