South of France Family Tour: Motor-homing

The decision to hire a motorhome was made for us – I’d been commissioned to write a book on France and my husband to take the photos, and we had a certain amount of ground we needed to cover. Our life being what it is, we had to combine this research trip with a family holiday – there was no question of going away for more than a couple of days without our older boys (aged five and four).  But hiring a car and staying in a different hotel each night with three kids, including a baby, would require a vast budget, military-style planning and no leeway for anything to go wrong. In short, we needed freedom and a relatively economic option, and a motorhome promised exactly that.

Selling the idea to the boys was child’s play: ‘We’re going on holiday in a motorhome,’ I told them, ‘just like Ben 10!’There was a flurry of excitement, followed by earnest discussions on whether we were going to live in one forever. ‘Ben 10 does,’ asserted my oldest. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I retorted. ‘He just stays in it in the summer holidays.’ A few days later, when I proudly showed the boys pictures and layouts of our six-berth beast on the hire-firm website (Aviscaraway), they complained that it didn’t actually look exactly like Grandpa Max’s from the TV series. This time I didn’t bother to reply.

We flew into Marseille on the Sunday, spent a wonderful day there, and took a taxi out to the suburbs to pick up our Fiat Pilote after lunch on Monday. As motorhome virgins, we were shown a video in English of how to manage the clean and dirty water and sewage tanks, hook up to electricity, and so on. Then one of the staff talked us through the whole shebang, in French, from lighting the gas and operating the fridge to magically transforming the dining table into a double bed. There was a great deal to take in a short space of time, but we were given a manual and various leaflets to remind us what we’d been shown.

We left the hire place – slowly and with expressions of severe unease on our faces – at about 5pm, stopped at a supermarket for basics, and at 8.30pm pulled up beside an alluring and deserted beach in the pretty seaside town of Fréjus. The boys leapt out and ran about wildly on the golden sands while we cracked open some beers and watched the sun go down. This was the life, we decided, and over dinner in a seafront pizzeria within view of our motorhome we found ourselves discussing buying one and fantasising about the freedom it would afford us to explore the UK – Scotland, Wales, the Lake District… It would pay for itself in no time, we decided, in savings on accommodation.

Day 2 brought us back down to earth: we drove along the coast to Antibes to hook up with some British friends renting a flat there for the week and soon found ourselves snared in the labyrinth of narrow streets that constitute its picturesque old town, unable to find a place to park our monster. It all culminated in a close encounter with another vehicle – nothing too serious, but one that required a hour’s form-filling with the other driver by the roadside as impatient French drivers bashed their horns and swung their fists around us.

Having found a peaceful spot to park by a beach on the other side of town and downed a few beers, we put the incident down to experience and resolved to get on with our holiday, which was largely enjoyable. Just don’t remind my husband of the series of hairpin bends that we got tangled up with on a hill in the Arrière-Pays – the scenic hinterland of the Riviera – or of the campsite we stayed in just outside Antibes, full of Brits clamouring for the nearest ‘caff’ serving Full English.

Highpoints, on the other hand, were the stunning wooded campsite we chanced upon in the Arrière-Pays near Vence, the Domaine de la Bergerie, and the marshy Camargue region, famous for its white horses and wild flamingos, where we stayed in a seaside site, La Brise, and enjoyed three pristine swimming pools to ourselves (I’ll admit we were playing hookie, having taken an extra week’s holiday after half-term).

We learnt our lesson about trying to leave the motorhome outside towns and catching the bus in to sightsee, although after returning to the UK and talking to other people about their motorhoming holidays, we heard endless stories about dramatic crashes everywhere from Wales to New Zealand (with its more open spaces). They certainly take some getting used to driving, and though we haven’t ruled out buying one in the future, we’d need to have another trial run in order to convince ourselves that they are worth the stresses involved.

And the kids? They had no reservations whatsoever. In fact, the one night we did break the holiday in a swanky hotel (and I mean swanky), my oldest asked on the way out, ‘Why did we have to stay in a hotel, Mummy? I wanted to stay in the motorhome.’ They adored the adventure of it all, from sleeping on their double bunk above the driver’s seat (complete with net to stop them falling) to parking by the beach or in lovely tranquil campsites with pools and playgrounds. The proof of the pudding is in the number of other mums who have come up to me in the schoolyard to tell them how jealous their kids have been after hearing Ethan and Ripley talk about their holidays.

Practical Matters

Count on paying about 170 euros per day for a motorhome in the south of France. Extras range from travel assistance and collision damage waiver (CDW – don’t even consider NOT buying this, as it will dramatically reduce your liability/bill if you do have an accident). 

It costs about 20–20 euros a night to stay on a campsite, where you can fill up with clean water, empty waste and hook up to an electricity supply, as well as use facilities such as swimming pools and laundrettes. Campsites do vary dramatically, and the free map given out by the hire firm makes no distinction between good and bad – a better source is the FNHPA’s Camping Qualité map of approved sites. The hire-firm map does, however, also include aires (special spaces where you can park up and service your vehicle, some free), plus other places to stay, such as farms.

Pros

The freedom to stay more or less where you like, including next to the beach.

The freedom from travelling to an itinerary– this is one form of holiday that allows for total spontaneity.

The relative cheapness of such a holiday, when you consider what you save on eating out, accommodation, car-hire and so on. (However, the current strength of the Euro means motorhoming in France is not as good value as it could be.)

Cons

The animosity of some locals if you park by the beach, from residents claiming you are spoiling their view to refreshment-stall owners claiming you are driving away custom. Park sensitively. A few towns ban motorhomes from the seafront; in others the police might ask you to move even when there are no signs about local laws (this is supposed to be wrong, but it’s best to move on rather than argue with les flics!).

The unwieldiness of the vehicles: at least one of you needs to be a confident driver (remember you’ll be in a right-hand drive, too). Avoiding small roads is not always easy if you need to get to a particular place, or if the navigator is distracted by the needs of small children in the back!

Motorhomes can be quite hard to keep clean, especially if you park by the beach – it’s impossible not to get sand on the floors, which in turn gets into the beds…

If you’re travelling with a baby who’s becoming active and wants to move around, there’s very little space to put them (not much floor, and only sofas that they can roll off and plummet to the ground…). Those with younger children might have a problem with the absence of a bath (there is a shower).

Motorhomes can be noisy. That peaceful campsite in the middle of nowhere turns out not to be so tranquil when the heavens open in the middle of the night, bashing the living daylights out of the metal roof above your head. Mopeds can be a bane beside small-town beaches, while deserted beaches in the middle of nowhere may attract other visitors – in a tranquil spot on the Cap d’Antibes we were joined at 2am by a gang of youths playing ear-splitting rap, drinking and kicking a football around. Lesson: invest in earplugs for all the family.

Even when you’re hooked up to the electricity supply, you probably won’t be able to recharge your mobile phone because of the shape of the charger plug. Take two fully charged mobiles and keep them off except when needed. If you spend a night in a hotel, make sure to charge up.

Fridges in motorhomes aren’t super-cold except when you are hooked up to the electrics, so don’t do a week’s shopping and expect it to keep fresh.

Take a look at posts on our Forum recommending family-friendly campervan and camping sites.

Family-friendly UK campsites

France family camping