The west coast of France is so popular

Posted on March 22, 2012 by artj

Well of course, anyone who has taken a holiday in France will know that it is a hugely popular country for British tourists, and that applies especially to the west coast where you find so many resorts catering for camping holidays.

When we speak of camping holidays though, we really mean holidays in mobile homes which is the same thing really as camping holidays covers that and a multitude of other related terms.

So if you are to take a camping holiday in France then what is the first thing you need after deciding to go? Well we suggest a cheap ferry which will take you a part of the northern coast of France nearest to where your resort is located.

What we mean by the above is that instead of sticking to the Dover to Calais route if your resort is on the west side of the country, you could sail to Cherbourg, Caen or St Malo and save several hundreds of miles driving.

It may well cost a tad more than the short crossing but when you think of the high fuel costs these days and an extra 300 miles of driving then you could even save money by taking the longer ferry route!

Remember that the less driving you have to do to get to your chosen resort the less stressed you will be and the more you will enjoy your camping holidays.

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A camping holiday somewhere nice

Posted on March 20, 2012 by artj

How many times have you thought about a camping holiday somewhere nice? I don’t mean tent camping where you have to walk half a mile to the toilet in the middle of the night; I mean a camping holiday in a proper, well equipped mobile home.

Mobile home holidays abroad are simply the best even though you can easily take a break in one of the very many caravan parks which are dotted all around our coastlines.

Now these caravan parks are somewhat different to the ones mentioned above in France in that the UK parks tend to emphasise the entertainment aspect of their businesses whereas the mobile home parks abroad (exactly the same thing) are for a far more laid back vacation altogether.

It seems to us, even though we promote both types of these holidays, that if you want enforced entertainment that you pay for whether you want it or not, then you stay here in the UK and take your holiday in a caravan park.

Otherwise your best bet is to cram everything in the car, wife, kids, money, passports etc and grab a cheap ferry to France. Personally I cannot think of anything worse than spending 2 weeks in the dubious company of a host of people whose only thought on their holidays is to be entertained by some third rate entertainer.

 

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Camping and mobile home holidays

Posted on March 14, 2012 by artj

Lots of different terms for certain types of holidays all come under the same banner of camping holidays; caravan holidays, mobile home holidays, caravan/static caravan holidays are all classed as camping. Strange really but that’s the way it works.

Camping abroad in France is probably one of the best holiday experiences you’re likely to have with this type of vacation because it is such a vast country compared you our own that it never seems to be too busy even at peak holiday times apart from the bigger resorts that is.

But to get there with your own car you either need to get on the Eurostar or take a ferry to France on one of the many routes from Dunkerque in the north to Roscoff which lies southwest of there in Brittany.

Of course you need to find out which route will be the most suitable because taking the Dover to Calais route when you are going down the west coast, for example, would involve you in much more driving than you really need.

Most of the camping parks, or should we say caravan parks over in France are superb, and they have to be because they are much more highly regulated than ours over here which is fine because it means that there are no bad or dirty ones.

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For camping in France you need a ferry to France

Posted on March 12, 2012 by artj

Well the title is only partly true these days as you can always hop on Eurostar so you don’t necessarily need a ferry to get to the Calais area, but you most certainly do if you’re thinking of taking camping holidays anywhere further west, unless you want a long drive that is.

Yes, sourcing a cheap ferry crossing is the order of the day but that is easier said than done unless you are prepared to travel at unsocial hours like very late at night or through the night.

That is ok if you’re young, and I have done it several times in order to save money, but when you reach 65 you don’t have the stamina to drive all day, do a ferry crossing of x hours and then carry on driving at the other end.

So that means that if you don’t have someone with you who can take over the driving (safely) after the ferry then you have to spend the night somewhere, and by doing that you wipe out any savings you have made on your cheap ferry crossing.

If your camping holidays are on the west coast then you really need to take a ferry to Caen, Cherbourg or St Malo, otherwise your driving time and the fuel you will use will be excessive.

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Shop around for a cheap ferry to France

Posted on March 12, 2012 by artj

When you go across the channel do you just look at one ferry operator’s fees and book your crossing, or do you look around to try and find the best and cheapest ferry to France?

Do you just accept that the Dover to Calais crossing is all that is available, or do you look at what great deals there are going to Caen, Roscoff or St Malo?

It can be a nightmare but if you shop around then you can very often find a ferry crossing which will suit your journey far better than just taking what, at first glance, seems to be the cheapest.

Often what seems to be the cheapest is actually not so, especially if you are taking camping holidays somewhere down the west coast of France.

Why, you may ask? Well with the high cost of fuel both here and in France (even though diesel is much cheaper there) it could well be cheaper to sail to Caen, Cherbourg or St Malo when you work out how much fuel you will use just by taking the short Dover to Calais crossing.

Even if you find that the longer crossings are just a tad dearer when all is taken into account, you should also take into account the extra driving time and stress of driving the extra distance when taking the short crossing, and very often that is the clincher which makes people think more about alternative crossings.

All in all your 2 week holiday in a mobile home somewhere in France should work out at no more than the same time spent in one of the UK caravan holiday parks.

 

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Book a cheap ferry to France

Posted on March 12, 2012 by artj

If you book a camping holiday or a mobile home holiday in France with one of the tour operators then they automatically throw in the short Dover to Calais ferry crossing as part of the deal. If you want to take another route then you pay the extra. Fair enough, but there are masses of people travelling to France who arrange their own holidays and they are just looking for a cheap ferry deal, and not necessarily just on the short crossing route.

We are off to the south west in June and will be taking our camping holidays near to Lacanau Océan where the surfing is probably the best in Europe. At age 65 I’m probably a tad old in the tooth for starting in this game, but what the Hell, you only live once. The surf around Lacanau is very often 5 metres by the way, so it should be fun.

Now we are organising our own holidays rather than going through a tour operator, and we feel that this is the cheapest way, but if you are new to travelling in France then stick to the traditional method of booking through a company you can rely on, at least until you will feel comfortable with booking your own.

We all term our vacations as camping holidays but in actual fact 90% of us stay in mobile homes which are really caravan holiday parks without all the entertainment which is thrown in by the UK park equivalents.

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Get camping holiday bargains

Posted on March 9, 2012 by artj

If you haven’t given your summer holidays much thought yet then we reckon that it’s time to sit down with the family one evening and discuss just where you want to go, do and see. Camping holidays are probably the best value for money, especially if you have a family, but when we mention camping holidays we have to say that the term includes caravan hols and also holidays in mobile homes.

Quite a number of the UK based camping holiday companies dealing with France, Spain, Italy and other European countries have special offers at various times during the season depending on how their sales are going, so it’s well worth keeping a lookout so you can jump in when the time is right.

If you are taking a “staycation” holiday, and by that we mean a holiday taken here in the UK, then there are masses of caravan parks for you to choose from which offer a variety of things for the family to do. Most of these parks are dotted around the coastlines, and most have a surprising amount of “free” activities for all including day and night time entertainment.

Camping holidays abroad are the thing though, and they are relatively inexpensive. In fact, the holidays themselves cost very little but the expense starts to hit when you go shopping. We cannot alter that though, but we hope the exchange rate between the £ Sterling and the € Euro will be more in our favour soon.

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Its time to book your camping holidays

Posted on March 8, 2012 by artj

The time is nigh, in fact it has been nigh since last October, to settle down with the family and discuss where you want to go for this year’s holidays. Will you be taking camping holidays somewhere, probably in France, Italy or Spain?

Camping holidays are always a good bet for cheap times here or abroad, and even cheaper if you can take your own tent and equipment. Better still if you have a trailer tent which is way off the ground when opened out and so, so easy to erect. Having a trailer tent means that you can keep your car clear of so much clutter and it makes for such a cheap holiday it just isn’t true!

Caravan parks? Well of course these are wonderful, but we are talking about mobile home type caravans, not the beastly little things you tow behind a car!

The new breed of mobile homes, which are really static caravans, are really, really superb and they have virtually everything in them that you would find at home. A word of warning here though; make sure that you book your holiday with a British company. Why? Because they will provide you with British electrics in the caravan/mobile home. If you book through a French or Italian tour operator then the odds are that you will be on a 110 volt circuit.

Whether you take tent camping holidays or mobile home holidays in France you are certain to have a wonderful time.

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Will somebody please steal my Citroen C3?

Posted on February 28, 2012 by artj

Yes, it’s that bad!

I bought this brand new diesel Citroen C3 VTR in September 2011, and I have to say that both my wife and I loved the shape, the metallic red colour we chose, the huge windscreen, in fact pretty well everything about it.

We had down sized from a Picasso Xsara, and though I thought the C3 was a tad on the small side, there are only the two of us now the kids have grown up and left the nest, so having a large car was a waste of space and also a waste of fuel as the larger Picasso was getting about 39 mph on a run.

This C3 is supposed to get around 70 to the gallon, not that we have seen anything like that returned as yet, but we live in hope.

The problems started quite soon after purchase when I noticed that there was a considerable amount of wind noise generated from around 45 mph upwards. At speeds of 70 to 80 you can barely hear yourself chat, and that really, seriously made me think I had dropped a huge brick by buying this model.

We put up with the noise for a few months and it was roughly 2 months after purchase that a nasty clunking sound started underneath the the car in the rear, so at 3 months I took the beast back to the dealers from which I had purchased the bloody thing.

They were, and always have been, very nice and polite, but the mechanic who tested the car couldn’t hear either the wind noise or the clunking coming from the back end.

Dear God, but at that stage I truly thought it was me!

Fast forward another month or so and I returned the car to the dealers for another check up, and this time the guy who came with me to test it immediately said that the clunking noise coming from the rear end was the rear shock absorbers and it was a well known fault with this model.

The shockers were duly replaced, but sadly the same chap was unable to shed any light on the wind noise problem which, by this time, was driving me crackers. His opinion was and still is that this is how these cars are. At the same time I reported that the front screen washers had packed up, so this was fixed whilst the car was in dock.

I picked the car up later that day and asked what the problem had been with the washers, and was told that a fuse had blown. On asking why a fuse had blown on a car with barely 1,000 on the clock the mechanic told me that if you pressed the washer when it is freezing then it blows a fuse.

“How do we solve that?” I asked and he said he recommended that I bought a dozen or so fuses for when it happened again!

So, if it freezes and I press the washer thingy it will blow another fuse and I will have to scrabble under the bonnet and replace said effing fuse! I was, and still am, underwhelmed by this.

I wrote a letter to the dealers and cc’d it to Citroen customer services and have been invited today to visit the dealers to test drive another C3 to see if that had a wind noise problem. If it did the  dealers would do their utmost to sort out my problem, but if it didn’t then I was facing an uphill struggle – on my own.

I tested their car for 10 minutes or so and had to report back to the dealers that it was at least as bad if not worse than my own.

So, where do we go from here? If anyone reading this has any sensible suggestions then please leave a comment – PLEASE!

In conclusion I can say that our previous car, the Picasso Xsara, was pretty well wind noise free, and we also have what we call a “bottle bank car” – a 14 year old diesel Fiesta which you can take down the motorway and talk to your passenger in a whisper!

So much for the advancement in wind noise technology over the past 14 years – but now do you see why I would just love someone to (legally) steal the freakin thing? Grr!

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Dover to Calais is too expensive for my taste

Posted on February 28, 2012 by artj

There have been plenty of times during the last couple of years when I have wondered if taking camping holidays in the Eurozone is really worthwhile right now. You may ask why I have come to that conclusion after so many years being a Francophile, and I can tell you that it is down to just a few small things which are as follows:-

Unless you are prepared to sail at some unearthly hour then the cost of the ferries between England and France are extremely high – high enough in my humble opinion to be termed as a good old Rip Off.

I have often thought that the 22 miles between Dover and Calais must be some of the most expensive water on the planet, and ferries to Caen, when you can actually find a sailing at a reasonable hour – we don’t all live in the south you know – is as dear as it gets.

The more we have to spend on getting to our holiday destination in France, Spain, Italy or wherever, the less we have to spend on mobile homes when we get there.

And when we are talking about mobile homes there is a company out there called Select Camp who offer luxury mobile home holidays pretty much all over Europe. This company are also offering tents for hire with complete kitchens AND bathrooms. They must be the first in this marketplace to offer this sort of luxury which leaves all their competition standing.

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