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Holidays

Use our Travel forum for recommendations on everything from day trips to the best family-friendly holiday destinations.

Talk to me about France!

43 replies

BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 21:36

Considering taking a family holiday in France in the school Summer holidays.
We are 2 adults, 2 DCs aged 14 and 16 and a dog.

No idea where to start.....I’ve heard of Eurocamp. Are they large resorts involving camping? What do you do for food?

Hiring a villa? What are the nicest areas?

tia

OP posts:
GPTec1 · 05/02/2023 21:45

Huge difference in costs between those two!!!

Eurocamp? Onsite restaurants, cook your own, go to the nearest town... some are huge some are just big, late night entertainment too.

Charente, Alps, Vosges, Aquitaine, Occitaine Languedoc, Loire, Brittany, Lozere, Normandy, Dordogne - coast nr Bordeaux is popular for camping.

All of it basically can be stunning.

You ll need some sort of vet clearance for the Dog, approx £200+ i believe plus be all to date on vaccinations.

mynamesnotsam · 05/02/2023 21:46

France has got loads of lovely areas. Are you able to give any more criteria. Do you want to be near the coast or inland? What sort of things do you like doing on holiday? Are you planning on driving? If so how far do you want to go? What sort of weather would you prefer. The South has more settled weather but can be very hot in the summer holidays.

Parker231 · 05/02/2023 21:48

www.bluecross.org.uk/advice/pets/wellbeing-and-care/taking-pets-abroad-after-brexit

you won’t be able to get a pet passport for your dog to go from the uk to France unless you hold an EU passport.

BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:15

Parker231 · 05/02/2023 21:48

www.bluecross.org.uk/advice/pets/wellbeing-and-care/taking-pets-abroad-after-brexit

you won’t be able to get a pet passport for your dog to go from the uk to France unless you hold an EU passport.

Ah! I hold a British passport...

OP posts:
BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:18

mynamesnotsam · 05/02/2023 21:46

France has got loads of lovely areas. Are you able to give any more criteria. Do you want to be near the coast or inland? What sort of things do you like doing on holiday? Are you planning on driving? If so how far do you want to go? What sort of weather would you prefer. The South has more settled weather but can be very hot in the summer holidays.

We are planning on driving.
Warmer weather would be nice.
A bit of sightseeing, some relaxing, maybe some outward bound activities for the DCs.
We all love good food!
Have heard good things about the Dordogne but is that very far South?

OP posts:
BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:19

Think we would prefer somewhere rural.

OP posts:
Parker231 · 05/02/2023 22:20

BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:15

Ah! I hold a British passport...

Sorry I explained it badly - if you have a pet passport which was issued in an EU country, your pet can use it to travel to another EU country. The problem is with pet passports issued in the UK - these are now invalid for travelling to the EU.

MaverickGooseGoose · 05/02/2023 22:23

What do you want- beach / lake mountain?

BiliousOhGod · 05/02/2023 22:26

If you use a public swimming pool, all male users will have to wear Speedo type trunks - no baggy swim shorts allowed! This came as an unpleasant surprise to my friend's teenage sons....

MissAmbrosia · 05/02/2023 22:27

Dordogne is fantastic. Caves, castles, rivers, lovely food. Places we have stayed:
lebanquet.com/en/ near Les Eyzies
www.sandaya.co.uk/our-campsites/peneyrals near Sarlat

France is massive though. We have done loads of it over many years. Ardeche, Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy, the whole south coast....

How far do you want to drive - do you like coast or countryside?

IwishIwasSupermum · 05/02/2023 22:33

Ardeche, have been a couple of times but in our camper, there might be mobile homes to rent. We enjoyed kayaking the Ardeche, takes about 2 days and Canyoning, great fun although slightly out my comfort zone.

mynamesnotsam · 05/02/2023 22:41

As PP have said the Dordogne is amazing and loads to do. Beautiful scenery, castles, loads of pre-history, canoing, medieval towns like Sarlat and lots of pretty villages. The weather can be hot but a bit more unsettled than further East. You can get an overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Caen and drive down in a day. Its about 800km. It can be hard to get alot of sleep on a ferry so better if you've got 2 drivers so can drive in shifts. Or ferry or eurotunnel to Calais and stay overnight part way through France.

mynamesnotsam · 05/02/2023 22:42

Provence is lovely but can be very hot and traffic on the autoroutes can be appalling if you're travelling down at the weekends.

Bohoboo · 05/02/2023 22:48

We went to South east last year and were plagued by mosquitos. Worth bearing in mind as it really impacted on our evenings outside.

Forever42 · 05/02/2023 22:49

The Loire is more accessible than the Dordogne if you don't want to drive as far. Dordogne should have more reliable weather as further South but the weather has been similar in both whenever I've been (last summer the Loire was unbearably hot - 38 degrees plus every day, but everywhere in France was exceptionally hot last year).

Campsites in France are great fun for kids but the bigger ones can be very costly. You can get a biggish gite for less money (if you are inland without a pool). Gites with pools are more expensive and anything very close to a beach will be extremely pricy.

Tourist areas in France tend to have a lot of activities - eg high ropes, watersports (on lakes and rivers as well as the sea).

BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:50

As we live near a beach in the UK, it’s not that important so I guess we would prefer a lake.
Driving wise......how long does it take to get to the Dordogne from Calais?

Eating out in France....is it expensive?

OP posts:
BaconAndAvocado · 05/02/2023 22:52

I would love to visit Sarlat. My eldest has been and it looks stunning.

OP posts:
YourWinter · 05/02/2023 23:03

We did Canvas Holidays camping lots of times in the ‘90s, I think the last time we went the kids were 11, 9 and 6. I’m not sure whether teenagers would find the lack of privacy difficult. My (now) exH would never put up with no sex for more than two consecutive nights. I guess as teens they can go to the pool unaccompanied though, you’d have the tent to yourselves for a while!

Canvas Holidays, then anyway, were leagues ahead of Eurocamp and there was another firm I’ve forgotten, who were awful too. Better pitches, definitely, and massively better camp hosts, who all genuinely understood customer service. The one year we used Eurocamp, we went end of June, the pool wasn’t heated and was intolerably cold, the pitch was dreadful, we asked to move to a different site as we and the kids were all counting on being able to use the pool every day, and the very young (19-20?) Eurocamp hosts lied about availability elsewhere. We eventually drove out to other sites and found we could have moved the first day. And we strolled past their own accommodation one evening to find them all sitting outside smoking weed. Our kids were too young to realise.

We loved the Dordogne and stayed at several different sites. South Brittany is lovely too, we liked Guilvinec. We had a great site at Royan on the Atlantic coast, but it’s a longggg slog across dunes to the beach, also lots of naturist beaches which may or may not bother your teens. The awful Eurocamp holiday was down south, near the Spanish border, and although we broke the journey with a night in Burgundy on the way down and a night in the Loire valley on the way back, it was just far too much driving with a car full of children. We never took the dog.

I think with older kids I’d go for a gîte, so there’s a proper indoor bathroom and you all have privacy!

BeautifulDayintheneighbourhood · 05/02/2023 23:10

The Dordogne or the Lot would be my pick. Take lots of mosquito repellent and avoid areas with stagnant water. Fly to the nearest airport and hire a car. I don’t like camp sites so a Villa or gite would be my preference.

mynamesnotsam · 05/02/2023 23:14

Google maps says 8.5 hours from Calais to Sarlat. That's via Paris though. My French friend advises taking a longer route and avoiding Paris.

fruitpastille · 05/02/2023 23:20

We love the Huttopia camping/glamping sites in France. Pricey but we like the log cabin accommodation. Just check the local area as some are far away from other things to do.

drinkingcream · 05/02/2023 23:21

Following! Lovely suggestions here!

Arrrrrrragghhh · 05/02/2023 23:23

Parker231 · 05/02/2023 21:48

www.bluecross.org.uk/advice/pets/wellbeing-and-care/taking-pets-abroad-after-brexit

you won’t be able to get a pet passport for your dog to go from the uk to France unless you hold an EU passport.

You don’t need a Pet Passport to take your pet to France
You do need ;
Microchip
Rabies vaccination
Animal health certificate
Tapeworm treatment (dogs only).

DailyMaui · 05/02/2023 23:41

Oh I love France (I'm going to live there in about 4 years time, my parents have lived there for 16 years) and we have had some wonderful camping holidays there.

I'm obsessed with the Ile D'Oleron and the Cote Sauvage but if you don't want beach then the Dordogne is wonderful. Easy to drive to really. French motorways are a dream - it only gets problematic if you are near some kind of periphique but I hate the Bordeaux one way more than Paris - I found driving from Calais down to the Lot et Garonne/Tarn et Garonne border via Paris surprisingly ok. It was fast and we had around three stops. Took about 11 hours. Paris was a breeze - surprisingly - as you are on the same road and don't come off into the city. We were having drinks with my parents by dinner time after an early tunnel crossing so you could make the Dordogne in a day without an issue. We did Portsmouth to Caen last year and it was worse: it took two hours to clear the ferry port and the crossing was five hours of grim. Only six hours to the Vendee though so there was that... Driving BACK to Calais is pretty awful though, the last few hours seem to go on forever.

If the Loire is tempting I can recommend this Huttopia site - there's a pool, big lake with beach, nice towns nearby (Saumur is fab and great fizz for less than 5 euros). We have been back several times. My kids loved it as they could be "free range" (their description).
europe.huttopia.com/en/site/rille/?gclid=CjwKCAiAxP2eBhBiEiwA5puhNe5Ag11BWQgJWYUbSSPn6aCij6R0IXVv4DgW4MkRAHS_ZPnLeH9osRoCPnIQAvD_BwE

Can I make a suggestion? Buy a decent tent - there are some amazing bargains on Ebay where people have bought all the gear and hate it. We bought a big 5m bell tent with huge canopy and it gave us many many wonderful French holidays. French campsites are usually fantastic and it is worth looking on the UK Campsite website for recommended sites (there's a French map search facility as well as a decent forum.)
www.ukcampsite.co.uk/

My old teens are out of the camping phase now but we camped in France from when there were tiny up to mid teens and I have such brilliant memories.

Coolcoolcool · 31/03/2023 11:09

@DailyMaui We've just booked Cote Sauvage and I'm getting slight fear that it might be too back to basics with our DC 5 & 2. Hadn't quite clocked there wasn't a pool and beach only at high tide. Can you give me you top tips to do there?!

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