You people who talk about camping in France. Do you take your own tent?

[MaryMotherOfCheeses]

And if so, what are the pitches like?

The ones we saw on the Eurocamp type sites in Italy looked a bit grim to be honest. Rather small, some half baked stumps of hedges around them, gravelly floor. And that seemed to be the same on several sites.

How easy is it to find a lovely site with grass and nice facilities?

No idea, but am planning to do just that this year so am watching your thread.

Yes we do

Depends on the site TBH. Some are lovely large and grassy, personally I have never founf one that is grim, BUT I wouldn't go to Italy so I coldn't say. France though is fab

Crunchie - any recommendations? I'm hoping to go to France, south preferably. We have a huge tent and three dc's.

We have done both, used our own tent and gone with Eurocamp.

The only problem we found with taking our own tent is that the pitches are a bit on the small side. We have a large family tent that sleeps 8 and we found it very hard to fit it onto the pitch, we had to pitch it at an angle to get it to fit.

Take a motor home - now - used to do three man tent with dd's when they were much much smaller.

The campsites can vary considerably, just like any other type of catering over night.

Have found some excellent campsites in the Alan rodgers book but more often use the caravan club book for campsites as we tour mostly even with little three man tent - just pitching up for 2-3 nights and if we like the place stay on for longer.

Even when the dd's were little never booked a campsite just turn up and was only ever turned away once in about 6 years (just headed of down the road and got a site in the next village)

Samur has a lovely campsite out of town at chantapie (?) I think that site is my all time favourite.

I do like the region right down south near Perpignan - lovely beaches and lots of campsites to choose from.

We were goingt o this year, but then DS1 had a big replapse and decided the idea of being stuck in a country where we barely know the language (I do a litte, dh not at all) with a melting down autistic child was too awful at this stage.

We were going to go via the caravan and cmping club- they use big ell known sites but you ahve all the reassuarnbce etc of membership (and it is only £35 a year so worth that imo). Pitch sizes there were averaging at 10m square, fine for our sun valley 8.

Nice grass to some extend depends upon the climate! Much harder to get nice grass in the south of france esp near the sea.
Have camped in Italy where there was a very grassy tidy campsite outside Assisi. Also stayed in a brilliant one outside Rome (12 years ago) where there were Rheas and llamas wandering about the site freely.