French 'Aire of the month'

[Itsmcb]

Thought I would share this from the excellent Motorhoming France monthly newsletter. This month's aire of the month is a 'Camping carpark' site, looks fab and only 10 euro's including ehu. https://www.motorhomingfrance.co.uk/aire-of-the-month

 

[Just smiffy]

I kept trying to clean my screen on that website....

 

[Itsmcb]

Ummm ?

 

[Manic]

They seem to favour paying Aires.

 

[SpeedyDux]

Funny how their Aires of the Month are mostly former municipal campsites. Better ambience in exchange for your money I suppose. Big business now piggy-backing on the investments made many years ago by the local communes to provide affordable camping facilities for everyone.

At least there are still some free Aires and proper minicipals left, but for how long.

And now we read that the Macron government is considering allowing the Autoroute private operators to take over some Route Nationales which presumably means they will become toll roads.

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[maison]

We use Aires a lot when in France, usually free ones, but we don’t begrudge paying when necessary. 10 euros per night including EHU and WiFi is good value. The sites, sometimes ex-Municipal, are always good standard. The alternative to paying the private company was paying the Municipality. I suppose the Municipality did their sums and decided that selling to them was the best option. If the site was losing money the only alternative would have been closure.

The C&MC charge through the nose for WiFi, on top of their site fees, so we refuse to use it and always comment on feed back forms.

 

[nicholsong]

Funny how their Aires of the Month are mostly former municipal campsites. Better ambience in exchange for your money I suppose. Big business now piggy-backing on the investments made many years ago by the local communes to provide affordable camping facilities for everyone.

At least there are still some free Aires and proper minicipals left, but for how long.

And now we read that the Macron government is considering allowing the Autoroute private operators to take over some Route Nationales which presumably means they will become toll roads.

My thoughts on the take-over if sites by commercial organisations have been following he same lines.

The news about RNs is new to me.

Geoff

 

[SpeedyDux]

We use Aires a lot when in France, usually free ones, but we don’t begrudge paying when necessary. 10 euros per night including EHU and WiFi is good value. The sites, sometimes ex-Municipal, are always good standard. The alternative to paying the private company was paying the Municipality. I suppose the Municipality did their sums and decided that selling to them was the best option. If the site was losing money the only alternative would have been closure.

The C&MC charge through the nose for WiFi, on top of their site fees, so we refuse to use it and always comment on feed back forms.

One municipal site we have stayed on was leased for the season to a young French couple. They also provided a takeaway food service. Another municipal was staffed by employees of the commune so presumably it was popular and financially viable too. I prefer to have a chat with the site staff and practice my French, than deal with a soulless machine at the entrance.

Luddite, moi?

 

[SpeedyDux]

The news about RNs is new to me.

Geoff

I read about that on the Camping-Cars Info forum. It is disturbing because I prefer driving along the RNs.

 

[Just smiffy]

We use Aires a lot when in France, usually free ones, but we don’t begrudge paying when necessary. 10 euros per night including EHU and WiFi is good value. The sites, sometimes ex-Municipal, are always good standard. The alternative to paying the private company was paying the Municipality. I suppose the Municipality did their sums and decided that selling to them was the best option. If the site was losing money the only alternative would have been closure.

The C&MC charge through the nose for WiFi, on top of their site fees, so we refuse to use it and always comment on feed back forms.

Ditto...

if it’s where you want to be you know you can usually get a good Aire and stay the night for the price of a daytime parking ticket in the U.K. .. there’s still a lot of free parking and free services at Aires in France but I do not mind paying €10 for a safe and usually lovely place to stay..

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[nicholsong]

I read about that on the Camping-Cars Info forum. It is disturbing because I prefer driving along the RNs.

Thinking about it a bit more - the RNs have lots of junctions and are also used by a lot of local traffic, so I cannot see how they could practically introduce tolls on many of them.

Geoff