Camping in France is a full-on bargain
WE’RE sloshing about in the river and somehow I’ve managed to catch a frog. My seven-year- old daughter is furious with me. ‘You can’t throw it back in,’ she yells. ‘we’re supposed to eat that!’
daisy has heard about French food, and if she can munch on fish fingers, why not frogs’ legs? Three hours later, in daisy’s greasy hands is a piece of amphibian cooked in parsley, garlic, breadcrumbs and butter.
our family of four has come to the Ardeche in southern France, staying for four days at les Ranchisses, a family-owned campsite that’s part of the French Sunelia chain. It’s about 100 miles north-west of Marseille in the middle of a national park.
The campsite has a pretty river flowing through it, and that frog- catching escapade happened about 50 yards from the front door of our chalet.
Yes — chalet, not tent. Though I tell my friends we have ‘ gone camping’, we’re staying in a static mobile home with a plumbed-in loo and a dishwasher.
There’s plenty to do on site — two big swimming pools, a spa and a good restaurant.
Most of the guests are French or German, and I can find no good reason why, given that it’s the school holidays, there are so few Brits. They’re missing out.
The weather’s warm, the countryside is gorgeous, the food exceptional — and the price is right.
The rivers are the reason you come to this part of the world. The valleys are steep and formed out of an orangey-grey rock caked in willow trees, oaks and forests of pine.
The water, warm enough for swimming, bubbles its way downhill with the reassurance of a soup simmering on Raymond Blanc’s stove.
Swallows and herons fly overhead, and kingfishers swoop down.
The campsite provides free kayaks, so we use the e stretch of river near our r chalet as a practice area — then we want to try the sport properly.
Twenty miles away is the famous Pont d’Arc, a 200fthigh rock formation in the shape of a bridge spanning the River Ardeche. we book a trip.
we take out two boats, each carrying one parent and one child — and a third sailed by a bloke from the boating company who navigates and tells us how to negotiate the rapids on our five-mile trip.
OuR journey downstream is quiet and graceful, then fast and exhilarating. The mental image I’ll take away is one of the four of us sunbathing beneath the staggering Pont d’Arc, proud of our achievement in getting there.
our other day trip is less successful. An hour from the campsite, we find a crocodile farm that sounds fascinating — 400 of the deadly beasts in one place.
A great idea, were it not for the fact that crocodiles spend their day lying still (it’s how they catch their prey).
As my son, George, 11, points out: after you’ve seen five or ten statue- still reptiles, you don’t feel any great urge to watch 390 more of them.
This isn’t a place to stop and stare, it’s a place to dive in and devour. Four days isn’t enough. You can keep the crocs (and maybe even the frogs), but I’ll be back for more kayaking.