‘You might well wonder what we are doing here’

In St Tropez, Tracey Davies and family taste the champagne lifestyle on a cider budget with a stay in ‘a slightly less than glamorous mobile home’

Iam floating in the tepid, briny shallows of the Mediterranean Sea when the black silhouette of a helicopter passes overhead and lands on a yacht shimmering in the distance. It causes an excited squeal from my 12-year-old twins, Nancy and Lola. We pad along the bleached, palm-lined boardwalk back to base after our early morning swim. Squint and it could be Bali or Phuket, but as you can tell from the GB sticker on our battered old Mazda, we are slightly closer to home.

The helicopter belongs to Roman Abramovich, who often flies out to his superyacht moored in the Bay of St Tropez – a honeypot for the rich and famous. The Beckhams have summered here with Elton John, and Kate Moss, Leo DiCaprio and the Clooney clan are all regular fixtures – and it’s easy to see why. Its powdery blonde sands and ginclear waters easily rival those of the Caribbean, and there are superyachts, designer shops and a slew of hip beach clubs that give it a laid-back Ibiza vibe.

So you might well wonder what we are doing here. We are not nouveau riche lottery winners, but we have taken advantage of eased travel restrictions to bag ourselves a champagne lifestyle on a cider budget by staying at Prairies de la Mer, a beautiful beachfront campsite just outside St Tropez.

Our slightly less than glamorous mobile home is shaded by trees; it is clean, functional and comfortable for six of us. It has three bedrooms, a private deck and a gas barbecue, so we can knock up grilled fish and steaks, or even lobster, to emulate the Clooneys.

And it is our most successful family holiday to date. With three children, most of our summer holidays have been of the European camping type – cheap, cheerful and easy with a young tribe in tow. Now they are older, the kids are more discerning and splash pools, mini discos and kids’ clubs don’t cut it. But thanks to the camp’s glitzy A-list location and beachfront Bali-esque setting, Prairies de la Mer has wooed even my 16-year-old son Angus, who has brought along his best friend Ollie. They hire bikes and go-karts to dart around the campsite, go kayaking and windsurfing, all while mooning over the designer shops and mega-yachts in St Tropez. The twins are just as happy. They attend their first foam party with other preteens at the camp clubhouse, so my husband Antony and I are free to play lazy games of tennis, sunbathe around the resort-style pool and enjoy quiet sundowners at one of the beach bars.

I had plans for day trips to Nice and Cannes but the kids are so happy flipping between the pool and the beach, we hire electric boats and buzz around Port Grimaud, have lunch in St Tropez and pose on Pampelonne Beach, where Brigitte Bardot went topless in 1958.

Today, the beach is just as glamorous as it was in its 1960s heyday. With our budget not quite stretching to €100 (£89) a head for lunch, we bring a picnic and settle in next to Le Club 55, the Riviera’s most famous beach club, featured in Bardot’s And God Created Woman. It has a private jetty with a speedboat taxi service for bobbing mega-yachts in the distance and in an attempt to mingle with the elite, we hire our own boat for the afternoon. OK, so it’s a pedalo, but watching the kids dive happily off the back, for €20 an hour, it does the job.

St Tropez is a small, busy but charming port town with designer shrines from Chanel’s chichi mansion to a Dior store set in lush palm-lined gardens. It is still the domain of red-shorted yachties, coiffured women in Pucci kaftans and eccentric pensioners in bandanas driving Harley Davidsons and Mini Mokes. On Wednesday and Saturday mornings, a market takes over the town square where you can pick up throws, linen shirts and Provençal pottery. We nip into the Gendarmerie Nationale museum (€4 for adults), a former police HQ-turnedFrench cinematic museum, where the girls were enamoured with a mock-up of Bardot’s dressing room.

On our last night, we head over to one of the beach bars playing live music so the children can have a sunset dip and watch as a flock of pink flamingoes takes off and flies towards the sunset. And that is St Tropez all over: it is far too cool for seagulls.

Overseas holidays and UK travel are subject to restrictions. See Page 3.

The Davies clan in St Tropez, where they had their ‘most successful family holiday to date’ Try counting the yachts and superyachts in the harbour. No, don’t…

Brigitte Bardot plays a maraca in St Tropez during its 1960s heyday