FAMILY holiday in FRANCE...where?

[SlightlyMadStuffing]

Looking at camping life or French life cottages.

Lots of sites on the west coast and the cote d'azur. Will be ferry + car. Not sure I can face the drive to cote d'azure. Anyone recommend any specific areas in Brittany or Vendee?

I presume coast is going to give a better all round family holiday than Paris area (Disney)?

Oooo dunno what to do now.

Have just double checked and Benodet was were SIL has already been. It was near St Malo that we were still considering in Brittany as it is the closest that we fancy. We kind of all want to go to the Vendee are though.

Will be travelling to Calais and driving down so Vendee coast is no further than Benodet and we are hoping that weather may be slightly better/more reliable than Brittany/Normandy. TBH there aren't many places to stay in Normandy. We were expecting a 5-6hr drive + stop....is that an underestimate?

We would be travelling an extra 2-3hrs to get to Portsmouth/Poole for the Cherbourg/St Malo/Roscoff ferry so I don't think we will be much better off sailing into Brittany and it is soooo expensive.

Leslaki you post is v helpful.
We were thinking Camping les Bois Masson...may rethink as it sounds as thouhg we can get better.

Is Acapulco really that good? We were looking at it but favouring other sites which have an indoor pool as a back-up.

When I say there aren't many places to stay in Normandy I mean Camping Life/French lif cottages. After all ATM we are looking at paying £300 for 10 people for 10 nights in France....and I don't think that Matthews can beat that!!!

The indoor pool is a good back up but if weather is bad, there are indoor places you can go to and there are also local municipl pools in the area if you were stuck.
We much preferred Acapulco but we did still have a lovely holiday at Les Bois masson. Just very British. les Bois has its sister site across the road which is much nicer - bigger plots, quieter atmosphere - not as lairy and the restauarant overlooks the pool and you ahve use of les Bois Masson facilities (called le bois dormant). You could book that through Siblu. If I had the choice between the St jean de Monts ones though, I'd go for Acapulco.

Wouldn't be much longer to drive to jard or that area slightly south if concerned about weather. More likely to get sun in vendee or further south!

Another thought, you could do a stop off at one of the Disney sites on the way back and stay on site on the west coast for 10 days instead of 14! Would still be covered in your Tesco vouchers except for actual Disney tickets. Would round off your holiday nicely!

OK, am panicking about the drive now.....may have to go for the choice of 2 in Normandy/Brittany....

Drive o Brittany is similar to drive to vendee! Weather in Normandy is similar to UK. Drive isn't as bad as you think - toll roads in France may cost you some money but mean you get a smooth usually trouble free drive. We've only once been stuck in traffic!

Driving in France is fantastic, their roads are very good, we drove from Le havre down to the Auvergne in one swoop, did it overnight. Dh could not believe how smooth the roads were.

but 7-8hrs.....plus 3hrs in UK...plus 1 1/2 hrs on Ferry

Overnight ferry is cost prohibative...

I know drive to Vendee is same as Brittany (if not shorter and more directly accessiblle from motorawy thingys)...which is what has swung it that way over the many recommendations for Brittany....

I will admit it's not for everyone but, we did it because dh just wanted to get on with the holiday, rather than spend 2 days driving there. We thought it would take 6 hours to drive it and actually it was more like 9.
Where are you sailing to? We didn't find the overnight ferry to be that expensive, but we didn't sail to St malo because that crossing was really expensive, day or night/

Calais...is less than £30 (current plan)
Le Hargue is £360
St Malo is £400

we once did a stopover in Rouen - the hotel was fantastic and it was a nice break - not done it again tho!

10 days accomodation is only costing £200 - so the extra freey costs are significant

Le Havre £360, that's over double what we paid in the summer, is that from Newhaven?

Portsmouth retun overnight with LDL

with cabin...

In the summer we paid 160.00 for a return trip with a four bed cabin, it was from Newhaven, though.

And it was Ld lines aswell.

When we went to Brittany, we sailed to Cherbourg on the Fastcat and drove down to St Malo where we had a hotel booking (excellent place, btw - we were within the walls, and the older kids could go off and do their own thing while we drank wine outside our hotel). I wish we had sailed to St Malo, because it is a very tedious drive from Cherbourg, and the traffic into St Malo is not pleasant.

We would have had a shorter drive from St Malo but the ferry would have cost £577!

Ouch!

The other option is to sail to Caen or Le Havre, and then have access to Autoroutes rather that the N-roads out of Cherbourg.

It would be £220 from Newhaven but not overnight....so overall probably not quiker than driving.

Deffo £400 (less £40 accom only refund) from portsmouth

My parents go to Calais and stop off in a Formula one on the way, to split the driving up a bit.