Take a stress free self drive holiday over the channel and get away from our miserable climate for a while. The pound GBP is doing better against the € these days – in fact it is the best rate now for 18 months, but if you can leave things just a little longer you may see more improvement still as the Eurozone is in complete confusion right now after the recent French elections.

This is all excellent news for anyone wanting to take a holiday camping in France this summer as the exchange rate has been rather grim for the past couple of years, but now, given a teeny bit of luck we hope that the tide is turning in our favour once again.

Of course, that leaves you with a dilemma as to which part of France to visit, and then you have to make a choice of campsite and whether you want to go tent camping or stay in a mobile home.

Hopefully our family will be camping in the south of France later this year but just before the kids break up for their summer holidays. That seems a sensible decision and it is cheaper at that time too.

“So what,” you may ask, “is the attraction of camping in France?” Well, I have to say that tent camping these days is not for me or my wife so instead of that we stay in mobile homes – and at this stage I must stress that holidays in mobile homes or static car5avans are classed as camping holidays.

The attraction is easy to describe but not at all easy to tell your on one page of a blog. You have the space of a large country in France because you have so many different regions which all have their own personalities, different foods, ways of life, different wines and different climates too.

It truly is a magical place and if you are tempted to pay a visit then we strongly recommend you read up about the country as a whole, the regions, climates, foods, and anything else you can cram in because you will find it to be a fascinating country and your biggest problem by far will be deciding just where to take your holidays.

If you take your car then all you need to do is to book a cheap ferry and drive off at the other end, providing you know where you’re heading, but for a good all round holiday with sunshine camping in the Vendee is a very good bet.

Probably not because it is one of the regions of France which is often overlooked. Why? Possibly because the weather there is very similar to the south of England, probably because it is so near England that people don’t feel it is “abroad”, but more likely is the fact that tour operators haven’t pushed the area for reasons of their own.

And that is a good thing for those of us who visit Picardy because it means it is less crowded than would be the case were the tour operators to push their advertising towards the region.

Camping in Pas de Calais is similarly affected by a lack of holidaymakers; not because there is anything wrong with the area at all, far from it in fact. But campers do actually use the Pas de Calais on a regular basis for overnight stays either going south or returning to England.

You can go to either of these lovely areas in high season and not be jostling for space like you would be around the coastal areas further down country, but we believe that if you camp in France you won’t find anywhere more peaceful.

For those new to camping holidays may I first point out that “camping” as a term covers holidays in mobile homes or static caravans which are normally on sites so you are with lots of other laid back people who have left work at home and haven’t a care in the world.

Newbies who don’t know the country probably don’t really know where to go for the first time either, so that being the case may we make a couple of suggestions?

First of all, if you haven’t been to France before we suggest trying somewhere reasonably near to one of the northern ferry ports, Somewhere close to Calais would be the Pas de Calais or Picardy, but sail to Caen and Normandy beckons.

If your party includes children this first time then how about camping in Brittany? Brittany is so near to St Malo ferry port that you can be at your holiday destination in no time.

There is a mass of history there for you to discover, fine food and drink and really wicked beaches with enormous rocks for climbing. The climate in Brittany is similar to that of the south of England but just a tad better.

Just a little further down and on the west coast is the department of the Vendée just below Brittany. The Vendée is a shade or two warmer than Brittany and the beaches are more inclined for surfing too. All in all camping in the Vendée is a wonderful experience.

The Pound and the Euro are still having a battle as to which can be worth the least, and at the time of writing the tourist pound £ is worth a measly €1.17, but if you have some spare space in your car then you can take a great deal of your own non perishable food with you and that always saves a deal of money we find.

But first you need to fix yourself up with a cheap ferry to France, which is entirely possible of course, and especially if you are able to sail at an unsociable hour. The ferry company will be most happy to accommodate you then and will offer you a substantial discount on peak time fares.

Then you can potter off on your camping holidays wherever they may be, France, Italy, Spain, and if you have booked in time we hope you got an excellent deal.

Now Brittany is OK, it has masses of history, a very rugged coastline and some excellent scenery, but sadly there is something about that department which doesn’t appeal all that much to me.

I appreciate that this applies to me and nobody else in our family but the place bores me for some reason – and Quiberon! Well that is a complete dump and no mistake, though Quiberon town is nice and quite an upmarket little town, certainly upmarket price wise!

Well camping holidays this year will be somewhat further south than Brittany; probably the Vendee or Charent-Maritime where the sunshine is more guaranteed, though it can be hot in Brittany during the summer but we want to make certain of it this time.

Sadly, the Pound had not rallied a deal against the Euro of late so it looks like another year of £1.17 exchange rate again, and if our daughter is anything to go by I can see myself remortgaging the house to afford a decent break away. She costs us more now she’s 35 than she did as a teenager!

Select Camp, which is a company deeply into providing luxury camping and mobile home holidays in France, Italy, Spain, Croatia and lots more European countries, not only have tents with fully fitted kitchens but they have one or more models which have complete bathrooms too!

Now this company must be the first in Europe to provide this level of luxury, and if the competition doesn’t wake up then they will be trailing in the wake of Select Camp’s holiday sales.

Select Camp, as you would expect, also provide luxury mobile homes in all the resorts where they have a presence, and these vary in the level of comfort from the “normal” luxury mobile home to the much larger than average with an en-suite bathroom thrown in.

Where will all this advancement in luxury camping holidays end we wonder, as if you have a kitchen and a bathroom in a tent, what more is there to provide?

At the moment nobody is laughing and saying that high fuel prices will have an adverse effect on self drive holidays, and especially self drive holidays in France, Italy, Spain and other European countries because it must do.

Nobody can alter this situation unless you happen to be the Chancellor that is, and he sees high fuel prices as being a cash cow because the higher it is the more tax he gets, which is a very unfair situation indeed.

The alternative is bleak because the alternative means taking a Staycation in good old Rip Off Britain, or ROB for short, where the nearest thing to a mobile home holiday is to stay in one of the ghastly caravan holiday parks which are all over the place where you get their version of “entertainment” whether you want it or not.

Seriously though, these caravan parks here are not a patch on the real thing that you get on camping holidays in France or anywhere else in Europe.

We do not use tour operators these days because we find that camping holidays wherever we look in France can be rented much more cheaply, and as cost is a perennial issue with us we take things like that seriously.

We look at ferry crossings in a similar fashion and are always on the lookout for a cheap ferry for the same reason even if it means travelling at a reasonably unsocial hour.

One thing we do not do though is to travel at such an unsocial hour that we have to have a sleepover on the other side of the channel as this defeats the object of taking advantage of cheap ferry fares.

We have always enjoyed these caravan park holidays in France and Italy and have set our sights on a holiday in Croatia very soon.

We love travelling through France and enjoy the freedom which this type of holiday affords you, and to be fair, it is a country where you need some form of transport to (a) get to your resort and (b) travel around some when you get there because this is one very large country compared to the UK and so it follows that places on your visit list are likely to be some distance away from each other.

We never book through a tour operator these days because you can get a better deal most times through the campsite owners, but first of all we are on the lookout for a cheap ferry crossing to whichever port is nearest to our eventual destination.

That makes sense when you think about it because if you book with a UK tour operator they automatically include the short Dover to Calais crossing and call it “free.” Well free it is not, and not by any means, so if you decide to use another carrier you need to make sure that your tour company fully discounts your account for the cost of the short crossing.

We have been stung before some years ago when we first took camping holidays in France and sadly we ended up paying for two ferries!