Message Forums

French holidays are usually mid July to mid August so all sites will be busier than normal although it will depend where you go.

David

The larger, busier sites by the beaches may well be booked up already for those periods.  That's the busiest time for French campsites.  If you're holidays are fixed to those dates, then I'd start looking at sites as soon as possible.  If you can be flexible then later in August is the quieter time.

France is such a big place, with such varied campsites, that without knowing more about what you're expecting then it's hard to give advice about areas.  You want good weather (never guaranteed) so the further south you go the better the likelihood of sunshine.

Are you a couple, or do you have children with you?  Do you want beaches, a river, a lake, mountains, canals, mediaeval villages, markets, wildlife, the sea, and what do you want to be able to do when you get there?  Do you want a site with everything available, so you rarely have to leave, or do you want a 'base' you can use just for sleeping, and go off site each day?  Do you want an activity holiday or just to relax?  One site, or touring?   It would help to know just a bit more, and then you'll get lots of advice.

Hi Scooby.

                That's the exact same time, that we will be in France, and we have always found it to be very busy at that time.

Our experience has been that it is relativley quiet up until the end of the first week of July, after that you get the Dutch arriving on mass, along with the French.

We did wing it when we first went in 1978!, down on the Cote d Azur, although we had a good time, getting on a campsite was a challenge, and we had to move on 3 or 4 times, so we ended up using the backpacking tent, instead of the large frame tent we had.

As for the Sun, well we always head for the South East, and more recently the Ardeche, were you can almost guarantee wall to wall sunshine, and temps around +40Deg C.

So for us, anywhere South of Lyon, does the trick, of course the rub is, the two day drive to get there, so we tend to take 3 weeks, for our fortnight campings.

Yes, it depends completely on where you go and what type of sites you go to. We were in France with a caravan for the whole of July last year going down around Albi, and Toulouse,  and people can't believe some of our photos of empty camp sites. But we were avoiding "holiday camp" sites with water slides and entertainments.

 The year before we were nearer the coast around Perpignan and Le Boulou at the same time, and it was absolutely impossible to get any sort of site at all. That's a hugely busy area. We think that a few years bad weather on the Atlantic coast had sent everyone  to the far south.

The "honeypots" where everyone goes, such as the Dordogne and the Ardeche, will be very busy in the second half of July, other parts of southern France won't be. But as for the Coite d'Azur at that time... I'd give it a miss.