After I finally bought my own VW California Beach it was more or less set that our summer holidays will be on the road again :-).
The Covid-19 circumstances strengthened this decision we made before traveling became harder this year. The plan to travel in August was made by our jobs where we had most of our free time together.
The days before the start we of course looked at the Covid developments in the different European countries which we could reach by car in a 2.5 weeks holiday. First we wanted to travel to Spain and maybe further to Portugal. But that idea was cancelled by the latest Covid news before our start beginning of August that the Basque area of Spain became a risk area announce by the RKI. That’s why we finally decided to do a road trip through France again.
This time we wanted to see some different areas of France and started our trip in the Normandy where we made our first stop at Mont Saint-Michel which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
We stayed at a campsite 10 k south of the Island named Camping Haliotis. The campsite was small but with clean facilities.
After visiting the Bay Area of Mont Saint-Michel we moved on to Brittany and drove to Crozon on the Crozon Peninsula.
I heard of some good surf spots on the peninsula which should become true. First we had to find a campsite which was not to hard in that area. We ended up at Camping les Pins which is a nice small campsite between the town and the ocean. A good place if you want to decide shortly which surf spot you wanna take or where you wanna go for a hike.
Thats exactly what we did there. I went for a surf in the morning at La Palue and from there we went for a hike to Cap de la Chèvre and l’île Vierge.
La Palue is good to surf around low to mid tide. I went back in at high tide where the waves were really a mess. The area of l’île Vierge is awesome. The view of Virgin Island’s Beach is wonderful. See some of the pictures below.
The weather forecast for the next days did not seem to be that good up in Brittany so we drove further down to the Pays de la Loire. We found one of the last free spots on the campsite Camping les Dunes in Brem Sur Mer. Here more south of the Atlantic coast the campsites were more busy than up north. But we decided for that one because we could walk to the beach. In Addition to that the surf at Les Dunes was also not too bad.
After chilling a few days at the beach and surfing every day we wanted to head further south and leave the busy campsite. But we had one big problem: No campsite had free spots! When we called one campsite close to Les Conches the communication was very hard because I can’t speak French and the woman at the campsite could not speak English. So we got help by our campsite neighbor and he managed the reservation for us. And it was a perfect place. Walking distance to the beach and a quiet campsite with old but clean facilities and friendly staff. By the end of our stay I was able to order our breakfast and manage the payment with a few French words I remembered during the time ;-).
The campsite is called Le Sous-Bois and was located between Les Conches in the south and Le Rocher in the north. The surf spot Les Conches was 15 min walking distance. Le Rocher was also in walking distance of 45 min. Mostly through a very nice wood of pine trees.
During our stay at Le Sous-Bois we were making our plans for the last days of our vacation – wether to go further south in the area of Les Landes or up again to Brittany. In the end we decided to move further south because of the warmer temperatures and hopefully better waves.
We ended up at Camping Municipal du Cap de l’Homy which we spotted at google maps because of the walking distance to the beach. Due to the fact that it is a Municipal campsite it was not possible to make a reservation. So we drove all the way hoping to get a pitch. And we were sooo lucky! We arrived at 1 pm and could choose between 3 left over pitches. We directly booked for 4 nights. Although it was a very big campsite with a surf camp you could always find your spot at the beach and also showering in the evening was possible without queuing if you were flexible with the time.
Just behind the big dune there was a surf spot which delivered good waves between low to mid tide mostly in the mornings when there was less wind.
The campsite was located next to the town Lit-et-Mixe which was 20 min south of Mimizan. One day where the weather was not so good we drove there just to see some bigger towns in that area. But we skipped the part walking through the shopping street because it was too busy. Having in mind that we still deal with the Covid virus we took a bypass to the beach and walked a little bit along the promenade.
In the end we have to say that despite bigger supermarkets Mimizan is not worth to see because the beach area was pretty much rocked down and from our perspective there were too many people in that small city.
As I said we decided for the Aquitaine area because of the weather. During the days we were most of the time lucky and had no rain and only some cloudy days. During the nights it was the total opposite. Nearly every night we had thunderstorms and a lot of rain. But luckily after we finished dinner 🙂
Finally we have to say that we took the right decision to buy a camper van and go on a van trip again. It is so much freedom to decide short notice where to go or where to stop. We saw so many beautiful places.
The only thing we would try to avoid is traveling during the holiday season in France because you can’t just stop by the campsites because most of them are full and also some beaches and cities are too packed. But honestly that’s something you know beforehand.
Hope you enjoyed the short travel report. Feel free to leave some comments or your experiences traveling through France.