Bonjour! nous sommes revenus de nos vacances - and I'm sad :(

[Lucycat]

I so didn't want to come home - we had the best time, fabulous weather, food, campsites (well some of them) and all round fabulousness.Oh and a fab tan to go with it

Oh btw slubber I have a photo of the ultimate in Cabanon accessorising - hanging baskets!! I shall put the photo on my profile

Where were you?

oh glad you had a fabulous time

Are you going to try and get in a quickie trip (or 2) before the season is over?

We are heading to somewhere near Ludlow next weekend and then we'll see what the weather does!

I'll post a more detailed report on my hols soon - got to sort another lot of washing out! We went to (mainly) the Dordogne, the Loire and then near Boulogne.

and the photo is misbehaving!

Hello there you .

Glad to hear you had a good time.

at fabulous tan. I have brown hands and feet (everything else covered up).

I am now the owner of two outwell pop ups (if only cabanon did them....) this is all part of my master plan to get dh to France at some point in the future.

Now where is this accessorised canvas beauty of which you speak?

Oh yes I wanted to ask, as an aside, when you were touring the continent, do forrin campers use many mighty windbreaks?

Ok so I've managed to resize the photo for you slubber - the owners also had a shiny red Chrysler and the chap wore pale yellow rimmed glasses

This was the site in the Dordogne where out of 49 touring pitches there were four English caravans/ tents about 5 French and the rest were Dutch! In fact all over the Dordogne there were very few English. We loved the site so much that we are probably going back next year so I'm not going to post a review until we've booked in case we can't get in.

and no, no windbreaks anywhere, all the tents faced out onto the paths and people lived outside as it was so warm, at 11pm it was still 18c and about 30c during the day.

I miss it on the other hand we will not be returning to Chateau de Marais in the Loire - it was an English outpost and definately not for us.

and I'm especially envious of pootle1803 as she is there on the site now

Great picture. I LOVE the hanging basket. My the Biscaya is a handsome looking tent isn't he?

There are not enough s in the world to cover 18c at night. As much as I love this country (and camping in it) I do object to changing into my heavy flannel pjs as lightening speed in August as it is so fricking cold at night.

Campsite full of the Dutch sounds lovely. Were there lots of swoontastic canvas pyramids?

v interesting about the windbreaks (or lack thereof)...another black mark against British camping.

Glad to hear you had such a great time. So how much do we have to bribe you to disclose the name of this heavenly site in France then?

Piccie of my pop ups on my profile for a short while if you are interested.

oh yes lots of canvas pyramids, Guadelope is very popular, but the Dutch don't camp light - huge trailers needed for the canvas - but they do live outside the tents. with an extra tarp to protect them from the sun.

ok then I'll show you the site slubber as long as you don't tell anyone else.
Les Valades in the Dordogne but shhhh.

Oh that looks divine.

How long did it take for you to get there?
What route did you take?

Thanks for sharing.

a long time to get there.

6am Manchester
2 pmish Channel tunnel (which is just fab!)
4pm overnight near Rouen (gawd knows why we went that way!)
9am-6pm travelling to Dordogne - hence v knackered when we got there.

Return route was
Dordogne to Blois - 5 hours
Blois to Calais - 5 hours via Paris - I navigated the peripherique whilst dh was towing a trailer [proud emoticon]
Calais - tunnel at 10am then home to Mcr by 5pm.

and enough dirty washing to sink a battleship!!

oh

There is absolutely no way dh will go for that . I've just multimapped it and it is a long way down isn't it?

Oh bugger.

Never mind, I'll keep it bookmarked for one day when we have our grande 6 week tour of the continent.

Aha! Slubber, there was a French family staying in two pop up tents on our campsite in Brighton. They had them away with a gallic flick of the wrist whilst I was brushing my teeth one morning.

aaah, Lucycat - pootle1803 here with different name - we just got back yesterday! It was amazing wasn't it!! And worth the long drive I thought.
I'm sooooo glad I found your original post with link, thank you thank you thank you. But yes, how do we keep this one a secret?!! Our friends who came too also want to go back next year.
Were you in a woodland pitch near the pool? We would go for that again definitely - easy to keep an eye on kids & no cars to worry about, fantastic.
God I loved it - even with a whole day of torrential rain, we got over it very quickly & went off to see chateaus (or chateaux as it looks like you speak french!).
Oh well, till next year... can't believe we're back home now.

I'm sooo pleased that you loved it as much as we did - we were on pitch 10 up near the top shower block - not far from the reception for our morning bread Did you get a woodland pitch then? How big were they? Have you seen my photo on my profile of the Cabanon with the hanging baskets - just for slubber!

We want to go back next year too and aren't sure when to book - lots of the Dutch were booking for next year as they left this year!

We were also there for the annual barbecue which was a great night and the photos are on their website but you can't see us -we were down by the willow tree by the lake, ahh these memories will get me through the winter!

oh and don't put a review anywhere until we've booked for next year

No, won't be doing any reviews at all ... how mean is that though considering I only found out about it myself through your link!!

Yep, we had a lovely woodland pitch 3 up from the bottom - perfect - thoroughly recommend as it was a good 5-10 degrees cooler under the trees & it was ever so easy to just pop off for a quick dip in the pool or lake and whizz back for some lunch too. They were very spacious as well - our group of 8 spread out v.nicely on 2 pitches (55&56). Our one & only niggle was we didn't have a nice patch of grass but some of the woodland ones higher up do have grass. (mind you it wasn't like the campsite was lacking in grass and we couldn't move a chair to sit on any was it!!)

We'd definitely like to go back but can't confirm dates yet so I really hope it doesn't book up - we only booked 4 months ago for this year though so fingers crossed... Good luck with your booking then & get in before all those Dutch!!!

I've just booked this site for 2 weeks in August, based on this post. Hope it is as lovely as you say and its website looks good. can't wait to be warm!

Aha, brilliant choice!!