Doing a bit of a road trip down to my sisters in the pyrenees this summer via the Alps and the Gorge du Verdon and then a few days camping on the med coast?

Loads of camp sites along the coast but as it’s August when we go a lot don’t bookings for less than a week. Ideally we’d like to be able to walk to the beach with two small kids, and/or have a camp site with a pool.

Any one know of any gems that would take bookings for a Thursday – Sunday trip??

Anywhere between Marseilles and Spain is good.

Can’t vouch for any particular site as we wild camped off season but leucate may be worth a look.

We stayed in some Yelloh villages camp sites. The one in Vias plage was good.

You mean the shamble of windsurfers squatting the lake shore in Leucate, Stoner? 😉

Sorry, OP, I can’t really help as I’m not a fan of that part of the Med in Summer. Infested with mosquitoes, low-class tourists and scavengers feeding off the tourists. I wouldn’t recommend any of the sites we’ve stayed and you’d have to pay Madame a substantial sum to waste her holiday there. How about stopping on a river instead? The Ardeche and Tarn aren’t far of your route.

Leucate looks a nice place, I’ll check that out, cheers Stoner.

Yelloh village sites are on the radar, think i might have looked at the Vias one. Will check again. Cheers.

Edukator, We’re already camping next to river at the Gorde du Verdon, but this leg of the journey is about the beach.

I’ve stayed in Argeles before so know it’ll be busy at that time (understatement!!) but the sea’s nice and the kids enjoy it. after this bit it’s up into the mountains of the Ariege, Pyrenees.

We stayed at Camping du Stade in Argeles a year or two back – Argeles itself is a bit Blackpool-by-the-Med, lots of tourist tat shops and alleys but it has a nice beach and is close to the lovely Collioure, it’s just on the French side of the Pyrenees. The campsite is very French (no bad thing IMHO), don’t think it has a pool but it’s about 800m from the beach so away from the noise and bustle of the town centre, it’s within town but lovely and leafy, got a Lidl a few hundred yards up the road for supplies. It’s not the best campsite we’ve been on, but if we were back in the area we’d be happy to stay.

Edit to say, that makes it sound like it’s not a nice campsite – it IS nice, it’s more that the area is a bit busier than we like (big fans of Atlantic coast islands with nice cycle paths for Mrs Pondo – we did a load of cycling around Argele but the roads were busier than we prefer)

But as you said, it will be hard to find somewhere for less than 7 days.

Last September we spent a few days camping in the Verdon followed by a week in an apartment in Bormes (being low-class tourists and generally annoying the local trolls).

I would highly recommend staying in the Verdon for another few days. Fantastic scenery, relatively quiet. Thoroughly recommend Camping de l’Aigle in Aiguines, absolutely beautiful site, and not the usual Disneyland-style Euro campsite. View from our pitch:

Edit: Wrote this before your beach post, but I’ll leave it here. Still, nice beach down by the lake! Med beaches aren’t that great (or are private).

V nice!

The beach is always public in France but access may be a long walk along the shore. Med beaches in the popular resorts are often excellent – long wide and sandy, that’s why they are popular. Some places have both a nice beach and pleasant town, St Jean de Luz on the Atlantic for example (feel free to differ), a combination it’s harder to find on the Med west of Marseille in high season.

Don’t let me put you off, OP. We all have different ideas of the perfect holiday destination, the millions who visit the region often return year after year. A good beach isn’t enough to sell a place to me.

Don’t get me wrong Edukator, it’s far from my perfect holiday destination. But I’ve done plenty of those before the kids came along. This bit of the trip is just about an easy trip to the beach with the kids in between interesting bits.

Crique de Portails between Argeles and Collioure is ace. Might be a struggle for less than a week though.

Leucate has v strong winds, up to 24 knots this Sunday. I know people who have a place there who need twice as many pegs on the line. Watching the windsurfing is fun but rough sand in your face less so.

And the jelly fish in the lagoon, aghhhh!

ah, but the Fitou! Barrels and barrels of Fitou! 🙂

Collioure would be hell mid-season.

Much as above, I really wouldnt want to be on the south coast in August.