Semantic Werks

We camped (tent camping, aka ‘real’ camping, albeit car supported) in France (SW, central, and NW) in late September 2007. Here are a few lessons learned.

First, brush up on driving stick. I had a few problems early on that resulted in a smell of burned transmission fluid lingering for a few days. At the same time a ‘how to drive roundabouts’ refresher might be useful too. A useful post I read after the trip mentioned you should factor in paying the same in tolls as you do in gas, which seems about right. We had a diesel Opel, and a litre of diesel was approximately 1.20E.

The time of year was pretty great. We encountered patchy periods of rain and sun, but no lengthy rainy periods. Most flowers were finished, so we drove past fields of zombie-like dead sunflowers and bare fields, but they had a certain charm.

In general, we did too much driving: from Paris, to Vimy Ridge, to Normandy, to Bordeaux, to Lascaux/Vezere, to the Loire, and back to Paris. Next time, I would consider taking a train to a major hub, such as Nice, and then renting a car for a few days to explore. It’s nice to return to a pitched tent at the end of the day.

Campsites in France are plentiful and cheap. Sites are generally a grassy parking spot, as seen above, and I can imagine at peak times the campgrounds could get quite noisy. At this time of year, while a few were closed, the campgrounds were largely empty and quiet. Costs are from 10-12 E for two people with a car. We basically winged it, just picking towns with a certain size (based on the font size on our map!) and looking for camping signs. We were only burned this way once, and that’s because the town was pretty tiny. Luckily they hadn’t locked the entrance, so we pitched the tent on the grass anyway. Here are the places we stayed:

• Municipal camping in Cambrai, west of the main river through town. Generally the municipal campgrounds seemed to be near industrial parks where land is cheap. Non-municipal sites are more like resorts for vacationing Europeans with campers. HQ for visit to Vimy Ridge.
• Municipal, closed camping in Tremblay. After visiting Mt St Michel/Normandy.
• Municipal site in Mirambeau, for three nights. Very central for Bordeaux, Cognac, Blaye, etc.
• Municipal site in Uzerche. Very pretty site on a river.
• Municipal site in Amboise. We only spent a short time here, but it would be a great HQ for exploring the Loire. Beautiful, too, right across from a gorgeous chateau (below).

Cooking: MSR stoves, or any stove which burns white gas or naptha, is pretty much impossible to fuel in France (since bringing fuel on the airplane is a big no-no). All the Euros use the ‘Gaz’ brand stoves, and the canisters seemed relatively easy to find in larger shopping stores — ‘Super U’ or outdoors/garden centres. Next time I would just bring a cheap Gaz model from Canada. Generally I dislike the butane stoves, they don’t burn as nicely, and the containers are typically not recyclable.

Although I tracked down ‘naptha’ in a grocery store, it must have been diluted for cleaning only, as it didn’t burn, just evaporated. In the end I begged a gas station attendant to allow me to fill my fuel bottle from the pump with the unleaded gas the MSR Whisperlite can burn. This site also suggests looking for dry cleaning fluid (?). Unleaded gas is cheap but quite dirty. However, in six or so uses, I never had to clean the fuel line, so it was perfectly workable. You may run into trouble buying so little gas - I tried late at night at an empty station.

Camping was a great way to see a bit of the less-touristed parts of the country, and very affordable (allowing us to spend more on the meals!). Contact me if you would like more details.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 13:28 and is filed under General.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.