We’ve just recently returned from a fantastic four week Motorhome holiday in France where we travelled down to the South, staying at a number of sites en route. Unfortunately  this also included a breakdown just south of Lyon which meant us staying the night in the garage yard – we get all the fun : )

I’ll give you a quick summary of the trip and then over the next few weeks I’ll talk through the sites and journey in detail.  We’d  pre booked some of the sites where we didn’t have to pay a booking fee and for the rest we were using Camping Cheques which we’d never used before so we weren’t sure how that was going to work out.  I’ve always worried about sites being full when we arrived and not being able to get a place to stay and although I was still a bit concerned we went for it.

We started the trip catching the Norfolkline ferry from Dover to Dunkerque.  This was the first time we’d used them and actually we don’t usually go by ferry but the £48 return was too good to miss.  The crossing went very well and I felt fine ( I’m the ‘if we were meant to take a ferry we’d all have gills’ type ) although I usually feel pretty bad by the time it’s over.  Not this time.  It takes around 2 hours so you’ve got plenty of time to shop and eat.

We then drove down to our first camp site, ‘Camping de Sorel’ at Orvillers Sorel on the E15 towards Paris for an overnight stay.  Campsites in the north of France are few and far between and in the end this one proved too far off our route although it was very busy, probably full, so obviously very popular.

Following that we headed south east towards Macon and stayed at ‘Camping du Pont de Bourgogne’ which was beautifully situated next to the river Saone and opposite the town of Chalon sur Soane.

We then set off to stay at a site just across the river from Avignon but never made it due to our water pump packing up just south of Lyon.  We then spent 3 unplanned nights there and had to miss Avignon out because we had booked into ‘Domaine des Naiades’ at Port Grimaud (adjacent to St Tropez) for just short of a couple of weeks.

This part of the journey down to the South was special for one reason only, it rained so hard that traffic on the motorway had to stop, you just couldn’t see where you were going.  We’ve never experienced anything like it before.

When we left the south we went straight up the motorway to stay at ‘Domaine du Chateau de L’Eperviere’ for a week which was fantastic except for the World Cup debacle that took place while we were there.

From there we drove up to Dunkerque and took the ferry home.

A great trip all round with lot’s happening to us and around us and in the end we were very sad to get home, we really wanted to stay.  France is a wonderful place for a holiday, especially in the motorhome, and the whole trip worked wonderfully well, even the breakdown had its upside.

I’ll post more details over the next few weeks.