Camping it up in France
You can’t beat a French campsite for a family holiday. Just watch out for the German fire-raisers.
Holidays provide a great opportunity to sit back and people-watch, enjoy the crazy antics of our European counterparts, like the pyromaniac German in the next-door mobile home.
The Über-camper, let’s call him Herr Idiot, decided to place his barbecue on the table of his wooden terrace, underneath a fully-opened, and highly flammable, sun parasol.
For good measure, Herr Idiot positioned his three young children around the table while a fourth child, a playful toddler, merrily bounced around on the floor, all of them poised to get a ringside seat of daddy burning down the holiday accommodation, exploding the car in a fireball and setting off a wildfire that would wreak havoc throughout the Languedoc.
I decided to step in and did what any self-respecting Brit would do – I panicked and looked for someone else to give him a stern dressing down.
Fortunately, Adam, a Eurocamp courier, was only a minute’s dash away, along dusty paths in 30°C heat. The reps’ face turned pale when I told him of the unfolding disaster. Adam jumped on his bike, pedalled to the scene, pointed out to Herr Idiot that it wasn’t wise to light a barbecue under a flammable umbrella, still less within inches of a combustible mobile home, and the day was saved.
I recount this story for two reasons: firstly, it shows how dim German holidaymakers can be; and secondly, it illustrates how well-run our campsite was at Serignan Plage, 20 minutes’ drive south of Béziers.
In terms of cleanliness – always an issue when you are living semi-outdoors on a campsite (sorry, parc) – the place was faultless. Rarely have I seen such regimented tidiness. Litter patrols and hedge-trimming teams are hard at work by the time you stroll to the on-site bakery for croissants.
Serignan Plage boasts, like many of these places do, that there is no need to leave the place because of the diversity of its facilities; and although you’d be daft not to trek off site to sample the local ambience, there really is a lot to do, and buy, at the parc. The mini supermarket is very well-stocked, a quantum leap from the campsite shops of my youth that used to sell out-of-date suncream, stale cheese and iffy snorkel sets.
There is a separate bakery, a terrific butcher’s (the merguez sausage is highly recommended) and a fresh fish shop. There is also good take-away food (bubbling home-made paella, curried prawns, Provençal tuna dishes, ubiquitous but irresistible pizzas) and two restaurants.
The main swimming pool complex was rammed when we visited, but then so is everywhere along the Med at this time of year. We got in early in the morning, bagsied some sun loungers, got our towels down and watched the children fly down the waterslides like penguins.
There is a second water complex on site, the Balneo water spa centre, which must rate as one of the most outstanding, and unusual, to be found a European campsite-parc thing. It includes a giant hydromassage whirlpool and underwater massage footpath as well as a beautifully simple pool for plunging out of the heat. An over-16’s only rule applies, which ensures the place stays free of yelping, dive-bombing children. Rowdiness is not tolerated.
Mornings at the Balneo are reserved for nude bathing, which appears to be curiously popular with the Dutch, Germans and usually bashful Home Counties types. Needless to say I popped along, and very refreshing it was, too.
We took a day-trip off the site, in the hope of irritating the kids with sight-seeing, a plan which irritatingly failed to annoy them. We walked around Béziers for a pleasant half-day, taking in the pretty Friday flower market, the cathedral (which could do with a lick of ecclesiastical paint), and the famous nine locks, Les Neuf Ecluses, of the Canal du Midi. The latter affords a fantastically sadistic opportunity to watch novice boaters struggle with intricate manoeuvres under the glare of the sun and scores of tourists’ eyes.
A must-see is the Hôtel Fabregat, which isn’t a hotel at all but an art gallery, part of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Béziers.
After a blast of culture, what better way to relax than pop into the local wine cooperative back in Serignan ville and stock up on some splendid rosé, enthused as it is with the spicy freshness of the balmy, maritime location.
We loved the Vignerons de Serignan Cave Cooperative, in Avenue Roger Audoux, and they loved me when I asked to try their priciest wine. People often say the local wine never tastes the same when you drink it back in rain-swept Blighty. So to avoid any risk of disappointment, we drank our entire consignment before departure.
Our week at Serignan Plage was terrific fun and the experience offered by Eurocamp was memorable for all the right reasons.
A seven-night stay at Eurocamp’s Serignan Plage parc on July 17 costs from £928, staying in a two-bedroom Comfort Mobile Home (accommodation only).
* For more info visit www.eurocamp.co.uk or telephone 0844 406 0402.
* Get off to a flying start
Early morning flights mean only one thing – that the preceding night will be sleepless, restless and, on the whole, nightmarish.
Our holiday in the Languedoc involved a pleasant diversion to the Pyrenees, to visit relatives, and for this reason we flew from Stansted to Pau, in south-west France, where we hired a car.
Now, to get to Stansted for a dawn flight ordinarily would require us to leave Birmingham sometime around 1am, factoring in time for a carjacking on the inner ring road and a puncture on the M6.
So the prospect of driving down at a leisurely pace the previous afternoon and spending the night at the Radisson SAS Hotel, just a two-minute walk from the airport terminal, was an altogether more attractive proposal. They will even arrange for your car to be whisked away while you head out to the sun, with no worries about parking and bus transfers.
The 500-bedroom hotel, which was busy but gratifyingly quiet, has a health club and spa, but we opted to lounge about in our lovely rooms until dinner.
The hotel has three themed restaurants and bars. There is the Italian-inspired Filini, where we had an enjoyable mountain of antipasti, fillet steaks, pasta with veal meatballs, ice creams and sorbets; the TaPaell’Ya, serving tapas and paella; and the New York Grill Bar.
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