Burgled while we slept
This story happened on: 03/05/2016
We are currently caravanning in France our first time for 26 years. A few days after our arrival at a very pleasant Loire valley site (from the camping cheques book) we were robbed in our sleep along with 3 other outfits, 2 British and 1 Dutch. The perpetrators moved our caravan steps to a window and opened this from the outside and were able to reach in and help themselves to whatever they could find. Unfortunately for us this included my handbag and all the spending money for our holiday. We thought they had also taken my debit and credit cards but we later found these in my abandoned handbag amongst the bushes. We were lucky as they didn't enter our van to take anything else. Others were not so lucky as they broke into windows next to the door and were able to get in and escape with ipads and iphones. They also removed trousers from all the vans in order to search the pockets. We were woken when they broke a window in the car to steel our day bag, and the alarm went off. This only contained sunhats, water and raincoats and so was left abandoned in their escape.
When we return to the Uk we will be fitting our windows with some security locks or alarms as this has been quite a trauma and has manged to waste several days in our valuable holiday. The camp site manager and the police were very helpful and this side was dealt with within hours, but we have spent hours on phones getting repairs organised and cards cancelled etc and are still waiting for the car window to be replaced 3 days later.
Seemingly this sort of thing is happening more and more as the populations across Europe change, and so it should be taken as a warning to take preventative action as we wish we had realised was required.
David Stringer