What is it about french caravanners?

The Caravan Club Magazine devotes much editorial space to reassure us Brits that we should take to the roads and camp-sites in France… but doesn’t comment much on French campers.  They do have some inexplicable behaviour.

Let’s get the basics out of the way.  I’m a Francophile, speak a bit of the language and a member of my local twinning committee. I get to France at least once per year (normally cattle class on bucket-shop airlines) and I regularly entertain French friends in my home. 

I have 3 times been a caravanner.  I currently own an 8-year-old Ace Aristocrat with which I am very happy.  Nothing particularly flash but ticks all of the home-from-home boxes.  In 1978 I owned a “G” plate type II VW camper and took it all over the UK with my growing family.  In 1988 a bought a “leaky lunar” in which I lived for 9 months whilst building my home; I vowed to keep the ’van as a tourer when the house was completed… but after 278 days in a beige box with 2 children (8 and 11) and a cat of indeterminate age I could not get it to the auction fast enough when the last slate went on the roof!

In my current re-generation as a caravanner (no kids, no cat) I have driven the length and breadth of the UK to festivals, university re-unions, historic cities and family gatherings.  I never thought much about visiting France…  but the drip drip message of the Caravan Club seemed tempting so, aided and abetted by some incredibly cheap crossings with DFDS (acquired at the NEC last October) I took to the French (and Belgian) roads in June and headed for the Rouen Maritime Festival for a couple of weeks.  Yeah, yeah all that easy-peasy stuff is true.  The roads are better than ours, less crowded than ours, the auto-route drivers are better than our motorway drivers, the urban drivers are more courteous than in the UK, the weather is better… I could go on.

What took me completely by surprise was the behaviour of French campers.  I used 3 sites in total: Camping Le Rivage at Yport, Camping Les Nenuphars at Roumare and Camping Jeugdstadion at Ypres in Belgium. At Roumare, about 20 minutes from Rouen, my rig was the only British van on the site and all of the other visitors were French.  I had a corner plot close to the admin/washroom area with a birds-eye view of the French coming and goings.  The pitch was at a utility hub with a tap, grey water drain and electricity distribution board for 6.

Once the van was level (some feat!) I began the usual tasks of filling the aquaroll, toilet flush tank etc. The French use presto taps at their water points and you may be interested to know that it takes 31 pushes of a presto tap (11 seconds of water per push) to fill an aquaroll.  This did not surprise me as much as the comments from my fellow campers.  I was interrupted in mid-fill a couple of times by my compatriots who wanted to have a jug-full of water or a litre or two in a cooking pot.  They were puzzled as to why I wanted 40 litres in one go.  I asked if there was a drought in Normandy or a hose-pipe ban…  and those of you who visit Normandy will know that my question was ironic. The campers at Roumare clearly thought I had just landed from Mars… and not from Wales.

By early evening the comings and goings from the tap and to the toilet block was in full flow.  Interesting to note that this traffic was 100% male.  Their mission…?  To do the washing up.  The plysu bowl held firmly in a two-handed grip and a tea-towel draped over the forearm; the ensemble was completed by a washing-up brush protruding from a glass or clenched in plysu-grasping fist.  Sure enough, after about 20 minutes, the plysu warriors made their way home. 

Within an hour the character of the traffic had changed markedly.  The second migration comprised men and women in equal numbers.  The plysu bowl was no longer in evidence – and had been replaced by the soap bag and the toilet roll.  By this time I was very puzzled and I vowed to visit the furthermost end of the camp site in the expectation of seeing an army of multi-coloured tents.

The next morning I woke to the pedestrian traffic (both sexes) trolling to and from the toilet block.  I greeted a few of them as I re-filled the aquaroll that had served my flushing toilet, shower, wash-basin and everything else… including the kitchen sink.  I admired their candlewick dressing gowns, their fluffy slippers, their extra-large bath towels and their coloured toilet rolls as they moved lemming-like to the formica cubicles and the squattie-bottie lavatories.  They looked at me incredulously as I “stole” another 40 litres of water.  I exchanged pleasantries with a woman who came to the tap for 500ml of water that she put into her coffee maker.

By mid morning the procession of men with the Plysu bowls was again in evidence.  I managed a couple of waves at familiar faces and watched in amusement as they tried to wave back without spilling crockery and cutlery all over the path. 

My curiosity had, by this time, got the better of me.  Freshly showered (10 litres of hot water) and shaved (1.5 litres) I competed my washing up (6 litres) and, leaving the cereal bowls and mugs to drain, I set off up the camp site.  I made my way along a double row of Pilote and Chausson motor homes (they’re very patriotic are the French) in search of the tented city.  By the time I got to the hedge that marked the camp-site boundary there was no sign of any canvas… not one tent peg in sight.  I looked back along the length of camp-site at about 50 vehicles (none of which would have cost less than €50k) and realised to my amazement that the occupants would rather walk 50 metres to the tap, toilet, shower and wash-up area than use the facilities in their fantastically equipped vans.

By this time my imagination was running wild.  What would attract 30 or 40 middle aged men to the washing up area?  Sky sport on TV… free beer… topless cleaners (sorry ladies)… the camaraderie of men on a joint mission?  I put my nose around the kitchen door.  Four men with suds up to their arm-pits looked up from their drudgery, said “b’jour” and carried on with their chores.  The men waiting to use the sinks shuffled forwards a bit to ensure that the crazy Welshman could not push in the queue. I muttered “b’jour” in response and left. 

Thinking that the attraction must be in the toilet/shower area, I popped in for a pee.  It’s a little disconcerting using a urinal whilst a mixture of men and women pass behind on their way to the formica cubicles.  But after exchanging a few “ça va’s” with adjacent men I was not surprised to see that the facilities were up to the expected standard: primitive toilets, a squadron of flies, public wash basins and a couple of showers.  To the credit of the site, everything was spotlessly clean and there appeared to be plenty of hot water.

And so I returned to my caravan, easily the oldest vehicle on the site, and began to contemplate what I had witnessed.  As I put away my crockery, I tried to work out why the French would spend thousands of Euros on beautiful vehicles with wash-rooms, showers and plumbing…but choose to use facilities that are basic, public and 50 metres away.  In 14 days I never saw a single French man or woman collect more than 2 litres of water from a presto tap.

At my next twinning visit to France I will be asking my French friends to explain this rather odd behaviour.  I will also congratulate them on having a toilet emptying system that (surprisingly) makes the standard camping club “inverted pyramid” look very primitive indeed.

Vernon Jenkins

Holywell, Flintshire.