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We have spent most of our holidays on the west coast or in the Loire and are looking for a change.

We have kids who will be 11 and 7 who want some english speaking kids to play with but have always mixed well with other nationalities, they want a great pool and animations.

We have found La Pergola in the Jura and Le Val de Bonnal near Besancon on the web and wondered if people had had any good experiences for a two week stay up to 6 hours away from Calais?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Hi Joga,

We have spent a week at Le Pergola in August when our kids were about 13 and 15 years old. It is a beautiful part of France and the area is quiet and very unspoilt. The kids really enjoyed themselves and found plenty of Dutch and English to mix with. My memories however are that it rained almost everyday and was very cold at night, which I'm afraid I don't like. I prefere to sit outside until late in the evening with a glass of wine, but it become cold very quickly. It depends if that bothers you! A lovely area though, but I prefer the warmth of the Ardeche or the Cevennes area.

Hope this helps.

Regards Mick

Hi - see below for more La Pergola thoughts (mine being the least helpful!) and definitely some commonality with mentions of rain:

http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/chatter/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=7&TopicID=134521&get=last#2101123

Hi 5joga,

From reading various reviews that last years weather seemed to be bad all over France. Several people (us included) were considering upping sticks and looking for somewhere drier, but all the weather forcasts seemed to show most of the northern half of France was experiencing similar patterns of heavy rain and sunny spells. So we decided to stay put and it worked out quite well. After the first few days it got very hot and sunny with only a couple of smaller showers for the rest of the holiday. We certainly managed to spend a lot of time in the outdoor pool.

We were lucky, too, on both our holidays last year.  First one, last week in May, first in June, was two weeks in the Ardeche, because of car problems, but we only had one cloudy day - and it was still very warm.

Second was from 11th September for a little over two weeks, in the Cevennes, on the mediterranean, and in the Lot, and we just had fantastic weather in all these areas, with the exception of one absolute belter of a storm on the med, which lasted just an hour - but flooded the campsite restaurant to a depth of a couple of inches! 

There are some weather websites where you can look at weather patterns for several years.  Maybe someone knows the web addresses.  This can be very reassuring if you know that the storms one year are not normal for the area you're looking at.