well folks, just got back from 17 days in france , 11 of them at argeles sur mer . nice place but wouldnt go again in peak time , it was soooooooo busy , never seen supermarkets so packed anywhere , ever.the drive down was ok, no delays at all, what on earth happened to `black saturday` ? but the roads round argeles were always queued and the n9 france/spain border road was nose to tail in both directions for miles and that was at 11pm !!
weather great apart from 2 wet ones early last week but the drive back north through most of france was grey and cold until rouen when the sun shone from there home.
nice to pay about 75p a litre for diesel , tanked it at calais and got home on just over half a tank , not bad going , makes a BIG difference not having the headwind we had going south when mpg dropped to a disapointing 26 .
so thats it for another year , despite the long drive and the place being packed it still wants to drag us back next year.........
will put some site reviews on over the coming days.
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We arrive at Le Soleil on Saturday
2nd year in 3rd week of Aug - Having experienced the empty road further North in France we wondered where all the cars were - Argeles is the answer. Still, Le Soleil has direct beach access and I can get up early to hit the Hypers - We liked it enough to go back.
Just one week can make such a difference - we've been in late May to take our son down, when he was working and the first week was lovely. Second week, early June, it became manic. My advice to anyone going to busy and popular places is to go in May or the last two weeks in August, after the French return home. It really does make such a difference.
If we had anywhere to go or anything to do whilst in Argeles, we just made sure that we got away early and had not problems with traffic. Any evening that we went out, we just caught the train which seemed to go round most the sites in Argeles. Did walk into town one night along the beach which wasn't too hard...... Did try to go to Le Perthus one cloudy mid morning and hit a massive traffic jam so just did a u turn and back to the site. We were warned to go very early to Perthus so it was our fault anyway.
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We had a lot of fun in the mini trying to navigate through residential streets to get in and out of town and to the beach! Made it much quicker as the roads were awfull! We took the coastal road to Spain which was a fantastic drive and had no jams at all even at peak times of day, drive of my life that one!
Our site Camping Du Stade was just close enough to be able to walk to the beach for the bars/restaurants in the evenings which was good as even then the traffic was bad!
I know what you mean about the supermarkets, we popped into a local Liddle of all places in the hope we could shoot in and out quickly... I have never seen anything like it you just couldn't move! (and I'm a retail manager that has worked in central London in the past!!)
gotta agree, the coast road to spain is awesome, did it a few times but were late coming out of spain one night so sat nav took us a different way.whoops, nose to tail took 3 hours to get over border, manic.
sounds like the same lidl we went in. on a monday morning, never seen anything like it.lovely area just toooooo busy but guess anywhere like that during school hols will be the same.
top marks to the french folk again though, always polite, always talked even though our french is poor, 99.9% of their kids were totally well behaved, courteous and quiet.
gotta agree, the coast road to spain is awesome, did it a few times but were late coming out of spain one night so sat nav took us a different way.whoops, nose to tail took 3 hours to get over border, manic.
sounds like the same lidl we went in. on a monday morning, never seen anything like it.lovely area just toooooo busy but guess anywhere like that during school hols will be the same.
top marks to the french folk again though, always polite, always talked even though our french is poor, 99.9% of their kids were totally well behaved, courteous and quiet.
Totally agree.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
Explanation of all the crowds in the South of France is that EVERYONE is going south because of the dreadful weather further North - very unpredicable summer this year
Our friends are just back from France - we spent last night drinking some of the French wine lake!
They found horrendous traffic around the Agde area and along that part of the coast - much heavier than normal, apparently, and the bad weather further north is obviously the explanation. They couldn't find a pitch either, so headed back inland again and stayed near the Lac du Salagou.
just back from france 1 week camp site crap 2 week brill first site had four stars dont no why it was a old french person static caravan site 6ft high hedge a round your pitch
Please can you give us the names of the good and bad sites so we know what to avoid.
We arrived back yesterday from Domaine de la Foret in the Vendee. Had a really lovely holiday and would highly recommend the site for people that like to be away from the crowds. May well go back next year - in fact I think most of the people there had been coming back to the same site for years. Spacious, well defined pitches and bar, kids amusement area, pool room and ping pong are housed in the old stables. Fantastic to lie by the pool and look up at the chateau. Good mix of nationalities too. Would highly recommend it.
Susie
------------- Live every day as if it's your last - don't waste it
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
Please can you give us the names of the good and bad sites so we know what to avoid.
We arrived back yesterday from Domaine de la Foret in the Vendee. Had a really lovely holiday and would highly recommend the site for people that like to be away from the crowds. May well go back next year - in fact I think most of the people there had been coming back to the same site for years. Spacious, well defined pitches and bar, kids amusement area, pool room and ping pong are housed in the old stables. Fantastic to lie by the pool and look up at the chateau. Good mix of nationalities too. Would highly recommend it.
Susie
hi, just look in the reviews for reccomendations, i put a few on last week, dont know if they are `live` yet. alot depends on the time you visit a site, for instance we went to a site in the vendee in late June and it was quiet , clean and we had the pool to ourselves and gave it a glowing review. then someone went in august and it was a noisy nightmare.
we like the municipal sites , always quiet and the only thing i have against them is most have no pool but there you go.
Amazing family weekend with old steam engines, classic car displays, market stalls, and full catering and bar. And camping on site - Save £25 by booking in advance.
Topic: just home
