Self drive holidays in the South of France: If you have a site relaating to this topic and you would like to see it featured here then please email camp@campingmobilehomesholidays.co.uk

Just picture the scene, it is a pleasant one for once, to start with that is, and you are in the car accompanied by wife and kids, every available nook and cranny of it filled with some sort of useless holiday gear which will never be used at all in the next couple of weeks, but you don't mind for once because..... You are on holiday! All your woes and cares have been left behind, (including all the unpaid bills) and you are cruising your way down to the South of France on a self drive holiday which is richly deserved by all the family. You have just disembarked the ferry at Calais and have made it to the A26 without incident and you are just itching to put your foot down but your wife is a stickler for speeding.

Half an hour later your right foot depresses further as you notice your wife beginning to snooze, and you zoom past a car with some large men in it which is following a huge caravan being towed by a gas guzzling 4X4. You think nothing more about it as you overtake and pull in front of this monstrosity until you hear a rather frightened sounding voice coming from the back of the car, "Hey dad?"

"Yup?"

"Did you see that funny looking woman driving the car behind?"  You look in the rearview mirror and your worst nightmare is realised. You notice the mousey, frizzy hair and the bulging eyes. It is no other than the dreaded Margaret Beckett with her house husband and they are headed in the same direction as you, and you realise that the car behind them contains her minders. You shout, you exclaim, and your wife awakes, marvelling at the noise until she notices firstly that the speedo is touching 150 KPH when it should read 110. She is angry as she had only closed her eyes "for a second and you're speeding!". You explain and ask her to contact the campsite where you are booked to see if they have accepted a booking for a Ms Beckett with a large caravan in tow in recent weeks. You consider changing campsites if the reply is positive. Fratricide and suicide are also available options.

Well, it happens to some people every year as the Becketts venture on their own self drive holidays to the South of France, but in fairness they may be very nice people, politics apart... and that blasted caravan. Don't you just love to hate those things which should only be on the road during the hours of darkness? GRRRRRRRRR!!!

But I digress. The South of France is a large area and depending exactly where you are going to and where you started off from in the UK it can take the thick end of two days to get there, but that is partly the point of self drive holidays anyway.

It would be nice to hear that your self drive holiday to the South of France has been enjoyable and trouble free, and to help make it both of these we have a few pages devoted to a good holiday guide, good holiday tips and probably the most important of all a page about the European driving laws with the odd one or two being especially applicable to France and Spain since July 2008.