Driving from Santander to Brittany in a campervan with 2 dcs - am I mad?

[FlyingFlamingo]

At the moment our plan for the summer is ferry to Santander (the dds like the idea of a ‘cruise’ and it’s not that much more expensive than our usual Caen/St. Malo route ) then slowly make our way up to Rennes where MIL lives, spend a few days with her and take one of the channel ferries home. We’ll probably do one night off the ferry in Spain and one near Poitiers to break the journey but we want a few days down south (probably Pyrénées or Dordogne but we can’t decide!) to chill too. We love mountains, lakes, kayaking and wild swimming. Dh and I have been to the Dordogne pre dcs, I have never seen the Pyrénées. Has anyone done a similar trip and can share some experiences? We have found a site we like near Sarlat but I can’t find anything I like in the Pyrenees - ideally something with wild swimming on site or nearby would be ideal!

Help!

I've done similar from Bilbao up to Brittany with 3 DCs and two tents. It was crazy and the best holiday I think we ever had. Organisation is your friend here. Wasn't so much internet when we did it and I used the Alan Rogers books to plan ahead.

I am naturally very organised and it pains me to even think this but part of me wonders if this type of holiday is better as a ‘go with the flow’ plan rather than a fixed itinerary?

Just had to go and check my photo's to see which route we did for that one! We stayed in a lovely campsite not far from Pamplona which was right on a lake, only English speaking people there. Then up to St Emilion, family in Brittany, Normandy and home.

Thank you, I’ll see if I can find the Pamplona one!

I did this with dd7 & dd18 months
The 3 of us set of from Plymouth to Santander, booked ferry but didn’t book campsites, never had any trouble finding campsites & dd8 map read mostly ( didn’t have satnav)

I stayed a little south of Santander near a beautiful cobbled town

Hecho was fabulous, we stayed there 3/4 nights and joined in the Virgin Mary celebrations in the village in August 15th

Didn’t really see any English here and we went out for picnics and swam in streams etc

Drove up into France stopping of, we took about 3/4 weeks to get to st Malo

We stopped near Poitier

Happy days

Hecho isn’t a big place

It’s just where the o is on Anso

It's been a while since we were there but this is where we stayed, it was quite hot but that'll be Spain in summer holidays! Looking for the website I saw some shots of the lake where it was an awful lot lower than when we were there but I don't know how much rainfall they've had this winter. Anyway, this is a perfectly nice, quite remote, campsite with wild-ish swimming, also my favourite campsite showers were right by the lake in the trees. Near Estella in Spain

Thank you! I’ll look at these

Sounds excellent plan it a and write a blog I can't wait

I don’t think it would make a hugely interesting blog to be honest but thanks

We’re doing this in July. Staying near Pamplona then on to Biarritz for a week, then to Puy du Fou for a couple of days before heading home. Really looking forward to it!!

We are doing the same but our DC will be 9 and 4 by the summer. We are going Southampton to Santander, down to Madrid, then to Andorra and up through France via Limoges, Bordeaux and the to the north of France to get the ferry home from Calais or another port in that direction. Very excited. Will look up some of the suggested sites from pp too :)