Please give me some ideas for a decent 2 week summer holiday. Got some quite specific (and possibly mutually exclusive requirements):
Lots of exercise, can be rock climbing or biking.
Kid friendly, ie swimming pools, perhaps easy cycling
Reasonable weather.
Lots of exercise.
Not too expensive
Not too far away.
Lots of exercise.

Transport can be either flying and hire a car or drive our camper van there with the bikes and all the other junk on the back.
BUT: We’ve driven to the south of France numerous times and it’s just too much like hard work to be fun any more. The thought of the 2 day journey back hangs over the holiday like a cloud.
So we’re looking for something nearer, but there doesn’t appear to be anything that good. Done the massif Central, Ardeche, Briancon, Provence, Frankische Schweiz etc but they all appear to be around 800km plus from Calais.

To be honest it does look like we’d have to suck it up and do the big drive, in which case can anyone recommend good areas to get some good biking/climbing but that also have nice campsite and kid friendly infrastructure.

We’ve been considering Neilson Beachclubs with mountain biking but they just work out too expensive.

Basque country?
Try surfing.
The biking is great.
There’s places for climbing.
Weather is good.
Campsites by the coast.
Nice cities to visit.
Fly into Bilbao.
Have a look at places like Plentzia / Gorliz

http://www.adventuresportsbasquecountry.com/paginas/empresa.php?id_empresa=17

Les angles/font romeau (pyranees) is perfect if quite a drive.

You have a lake and swimming at lac Matamale, decent easy XC and some not too difficult uplifted stuff. there is climbing near by and there is excellent bouldering at Targasonne (near Font Romeau). lac Bouillouse is a really cool area to walk around and fish and there are bothy type refuges to stay at for free.

Excellent campsites (camping du lac @ les angles, la Griole @ targasonne and municipal camping @ la lagonne (really beautiful site by a river))

Riding, les angles

014 by ianvincent, on Flickr

Mountain zoo, les angles

011 by ianvincent, on Flickr

Bothy, les angles

041 by ianvincent, on Flickr

034 by ianvincent, on Flickr

Bouldering, targasonne

Lac Bouillouse

028 by ianvincent, on Flickr

Awesome area 😀

Stop off in font on the way back to break the journey. Rocher du sabot is great for kids.

But by the time you’ve stopped in bleau on the way there and back, you only have just over a week at the actual destination.

Neilson – Worth every penny, apart from the atrocious flights. Apart from that, Neilson are superb, utterly superb.

Drive down without stopping (1 day from Calais if you gas it), stop off on the way back for a day to break the journey.

If you don’t want to drive as far as the pyranees, look at the Auvergne.

Neilson is expensive and a bit crap ime, way better to do your own thing.

Mmmm Neilson are definitely in my good books currently. Just returned yesterday from an amazing week skiing with the kids in Arabba. Really good and unbelievably cheap at a smidgen over 600 pounds per person all in.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for more special offers from them.

do what mackem says but get the ferry to bilbao