Our French camping holiday

Posted by Andy on Jul 19, 2010

We’ve had a great camping holiday in Normandy, northern France. We travelled by car, and it took us about 7 hours to get to the Cote De Nacre campsite, in Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. And wow, what a campsite, it was amazing with friendly staff who speak English well, a lot better than my French. Nearly everything on the campsite was free, from the bouncy castles, ice rink, to the incredible swimming pool complex. The pools were out of this world, with both indoor and outdoor sections, which included a lazy river, Jacuzzis, slides, water shoots, waterfalls, fountains, and a beach area.

Our tent pitch, was a huge 100m² with full electrical supply, and surrounded by hedges, giving you just enough privacy. This was a great as our Royal Biarritz tent is a massive 8.5m by 7.5m and left enough space to park the car. We arrived early and had the tent up in 45 mins, and quickly headed off for a much earned swim.The amenities on the site are second to none, and you can forget any horror stories you may have heard about French toilets, as the shower and toilet block was like hotel facilities, very clean, bright, and welcoming. Our plot was fairly close, so getting up early and taking a shower was a real pleasure.

Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer is located at the eastern end of Juno Beach, one of the landing sites on D-Day, and has a beautiful sandy beach, and rock pools. I can’t remember going anywhere so clean, in fact everywhere we went in France was clean. Along the seawall is a fully preserved German bunker complete with its original 50-mm anti-tank gun inside, which is eerie as it now overlooks the beautiful and calm beach.

Being in Normandy we visited a lot of the historic D-Day be aches and museums. Over the years Id watched lots of films about the war such as Saving Private Ryan, and the Longest day, so quite interesting to see the places that these events to place in. As there’s so much to right about I’ve created separate posts about D-Day, so have a read if you get time.

The town of Bayeux was nearby, so a visit to see the famous Bayeux Tapestry was in order. It is an amazing record of the Battle of Hastings, and the conflict between Harold, the Saxon and William of Normandy for the throne of England. The embroidery and detail of the tapestry is exquisite and the presentation of the whole thing makes this one of the most amazing history lessons ever! At 70 feet long it’s hard to take it all in.

We spent most evenings strolling along the prom with the local towns folk, and one evening we they had a town march, lead by Majorettes. As the parade snaked its way around the town, more and more people joined, and tossed multicoloured confetti over each other. Eventually we all ended up in the local park in front of the bandstand with a live band, where everybody danced the night away.

In fact there was so much to see and do, a week was just not enough, so a return visit is on the cards. I’ve fallen in love with France, its culture, its people, its language, and can see Helen and I living there one day. All in all we’ve had a great time camping, we are going to get a few bits to make it a little easier for next time such as a cooking stand, cooking on your hands and knees is not a good look. We’ll also get some popup storage so we can put things away in the tent. Finally I think we’ll treat ourselves to a proper camping fridge rather than a coolbox.

Here’s a small selection of the hundreds of photographs we took.

Cote De Nacre - Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer - Yelloh - Normandy France