This is how the French do cheap summer holidays (and you can too)

There’s a big split that carves France in two every summer – whether you are a juillettiste or an aoutien, that is, someone who prefers to take their holidays in July or August. But never mind the month, for families, the destination is often the same: a campsite, preferably along either the Atlantic or the Mediterranean coast.

Esterel Caravaning, big on space.

The French are big on travelling within their own country (in 2022, domestic trips accounted for 83 per cent of all travel, according to GlobalData). Having lived in France for the past 15 years, I understand why. So diverse is the landscape of the country that you feel like you could be in Italy one day (the rolling hills of the southwest around Toulouse are reminiscent of Tuscany), the US another (Provence’s Gorges du Verdon is considered the Grand Canyon of Europe) and even take a short break to the Caribbean (the shallow turquoise waters and buttercream sand beaches of Ile de Porquerolles are a world away from the pebbles of the Cote d’Azur seashores). That’s just the southern half of the country, too.

While the gite, or self-contained cottage, is an ever-popular accommodation option, there’s yet another category French families particular adore – camping.

I don’t mean pitching a tent, either — although there’s a lot of that, too. Instead, many French camping holidays involve booking a fully-equipped mobile home, or bungalow, on a site with frills such as a kids’ club, communal pool, an evening show and an overpriced onsite superette (small supermarket) for those emergency dashes when the rosé runs out.

Films have been released about it, including the hugely popular Camping trilogy which have made actor Franck Dubosc’s Speedo-loving character, Patrick Chirac, the most famous camper in the country. Camping Paradis, a TV show that follows the trials and triumphs of a campsite owner on the coast near Marseille, first aired on the nation’s main broadcaster, TF1, in 2006. It is now in its 15th season. Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays Sylvie in Emily in Paris, even had a role in it.

Before having children myself, I was blissfully unaware of the importance of the word camping in my adopted country’s vacation vocabulary. But, with my kids now eight and six, I now have about a dozen camping holidays under my belt and I’ll admit that I’m hooked.

First, there’s the price; although more and more luxury options are creeping into the mix, camping in its purest form should work out more wallet-friendly than the equivalent stay in a hotel for a family.

Another benefit is the luxury of space. Rather than being cramped into a single hotel room, you have multiple bedrooms, a living area with kitchen, and a covered verandah, so the adults can still be awake and outside with a glass of wine, rather than trying to read by torchlight or watch TV on silent after putting their young kids to bed at 8.30pm.

There’s usually at least one restaurant (casual, open-air style), along with the aforementioned superette, so you can cook your own meals in your mobile home, or eat out, or do a mix of both. The kids are happy and, between the pool, scheduled activities and new friends, busy, so my husband and I end up feeling more rested and like we’ve actually had a holiday. It’s a win-win all around.

It is a sector that is booming, too – campsite stays have risen 7.5 per cent in France since 2019. And we’re spoilt for choice: France has 7406 campsites, the most of any European country. While it’s not obligatory, many choose to be classified on a one- to five-star rating similar to hotels: criteria for three-star campsites includes a children’s play area and drinks for sale, while four- and five-star properties are required to have a restaurant and bar as well as a fitness area. Anything five-star must have somewhere to swim, likely a pool or a lake. Bonus points, but not stars, for a spa or a gym.

Esterel Caravaning: anything five-star must have somewhere to swim, likely a pool or a lake.

Some people are so die-hard in their loyalty to one particular campsite that they have been booking the same plot during the same month with friends or family every year for decades. We, on the other hand, have no such affiliation. Over the years, the four of us have tested out an array of locations, particularly along the Mediterranean coast near our home in Nice.

We do have a definite favourite: Kon Tiki in Saint-Tropez. A cluster of Polynesian-style Tiki huts on one of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful beaches, the moment you park up, you feel instantly transported to tropical shores. There’s rum punch as a welcome drink and each bungalow opens out onto a sandy communal area shaded by tall palm trees, where my daughters build sand castles before breakfast.

Kon Tiki definitely falls at the luxury end of the market, and I’ll admit that in summer the prices veer towards eye-watering: a two-bedroom hut for seven nights in July, for instance, will set you back over €3700 ($6100), compared with €1000 ($1600) for the same stay in April. That’s because it occupies a slice of prime European holiday real estate and counts beach bars such as Brigitte Bardot’s favourite hangout, Club 55, as neighbours.

We’ve never been during summer; instead, we often find a good deal, usually about €120 ($200) a night over the weekend out of season in late September. It’s still warm enough to swim but you also don’t have to turn up at 7am to score a patch of sand on the beach for the day.

As a general rule, the camping season runs from April to October. In July and August, when most of Europe is on holiday, a minimum booking of a week is standard. But outside the high season, a minimum stay of two nights usually applies.

Opening onto the hiking trails of the majestic ochre-red rocks of the Massif de l’Esterel, a mountain range that carves a craggy course from Saint Raphaël to Cannes on the Cote d’Azur, Esterel Caravaning is one that we also like for short two-night stays, often travelling with groups of friends. The bungalows are set among eucalypts that remind me of home in Sydney, and we’ve never faced sun-lounger wars around any of the five swimming pools. There’s a posh restaurant we have yet to try because we can’t go past the takeaway pizzas made fresh on-site for a third of the price.

Try to find something not so small it lacks facilities, but not so large you have to walk 20 minutes across the property to get to the pool.

The other thing that Esterel Caravaning has going for it is size: it’s not so small it lacks facilities, but it’s not so large that you have to walk 20 minutes across the property to get to the pool. That’s what we found when we stayed at Les Prairies de La Mer, a 20-hectare campsite on the beach in Port Grimaud which is owned by the same people as nearby Kon Tiki.

While we couldn’t fault the feet-in-the-sand setting, the traffic inside the campsite became a bit of a drag: because of its size, people chose to drive around it over walking. What the property excelled at, however, were evening shows, particularly the Elvis tribute band, a lively night market and the gentle ponies that my youngest daughter still asks to go and see, four years after we stayed.

Larger campsites, like Prairies de La Mer, often have plots that are sublet to third-party operators. We booked our stay there through Eurocamp, which angles towards British and Irish holidaymakers and offers early-bird booking deals among other promotions for its campsites across Europe.

There is something about the small, family-run campings with a charm that some of the bigger, flashier campsites lack. At Domaine Sainte Madeleine in Sospel, a small village close to the Italian border in the alpine hinterland of the Cote d’Azur, the wooden chalets on a terraced hillside are simple yet endearing.

We chat with families from the north of the country around the swimming pool, collect our bakery-fresh croissants every morning from reception and eat meals under the olive trees outside our chalet-style wooden cabin. We are less than an hour from the beaches of Nice, but feel completely immersed in nature.

One last thing I’ve learnt since embracing the French camping holiday is to look out for the added extras: some campsites charge for bed linen and towels, although you can bring your own, and for the hire of barbecues and baby equipment. The expectation is also that you will leave your mobile home in the same condition as you found it, or pay a cleaning fee.

The details

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See campingfrance.com/uk

The writer, who travelled at her own expense, is an expat Australian who lives in France.