Caravan camping holidays in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the UK

As this is such a much used search term we thought we had better make a page on the topic and the various options of caravan holidays available

Sorry boys and girls but this page is not for you if you are one of those saddos who block our road system towing your ghastly caravans during the hours of daylight, totally unconcerned that there is a queue of traffic a mile long behind you.

Try that in France or anywhere else in Europe and you will quite rightly be awarded a severe ticking off and a stiff on the spot fine. This is not for you who are the most selfish, most hated and despised drivers on the British roads.

No, this page is for normal people who go on holiday once or twice a year to somewhere decent like France and who hire a caravan in situ, a static caravan or mobile home on site.

As you may have gathered, we are not fans of towing caravans (or their owners) per se unless they are parked on a site and forgotten about. For a decent holiday you really need something larger - a minimum of 28' up to 40' for comfort - depending on just how many of you are going to occupy it.

France is full of static caravans like this though we much prefer to call them mobile homes, albeit that they ain't so mobile, but they have wheels so the thought behind it is well founded. They come complete with a proper inventory of utensils and crockery which is perfectly adequate to give most families a comfortable holiday without having to go out and buy bits and pieces in order to get by.

All you need is a decent site near to a beach or in walking or cycling country, near lakes or just to use as a one night stopover on the way to your final destination, but for those of us who are staying put for a week or two all we need to do for a cheap and relaxing holiday is to pop out and buy the food and wine. Can't be bad!

Caravan camping has improved no end in the last few years as the manufacturers have been made aware of their customers requirements, and in this case I mean that their customers are the tour operators themselves who act on feedback from you and I.

Static caravan design is now so advanced that surely it cannot be possible to cram anything else into such a small place and still leave room for comfort can it? Probably so, because in 2007 we rented a Cottage mobile home for our camping holiday which was really a huge square static caravan. Now this was the latest that the French designers had dreamed up and it was so  new and spacious it was untrue!

There were only the two of us and so most of the space was wasted, but we had never, ever stayed in anything so luxurious on any holiday, and because it was mid June and out of the high season we only paid a pittance for it.

The above Cottage was for the second week of a two centre holiday we had arranged with a large French company to see how they operated. This second week and we were in St Jean de Monts in the Vendee but had just had a week camping in a rather cramped and confined rabbit hutch caravan in Quiberon, Brittany, about which I complained bitterly because it was so small, so we received an apology and an upgrade for the second week.