The Holiday Season

[Genghis Cohen]

For my sins I live in a popular holiday destination. I've seen reports in the media that visitor numbers are down this year. Yet we seem to be busier than ever. What is very apparent is that there are many fewer British voices to be heard. Either things are getting tight at home or large numbers have stayed back to watch the Olympics. If the latter is the case then we should hear much more of the language of the Bard next week. I would not be surprised if spending on non-essentials (like restaurants and bars) is down.

What I totally fail to understand is how anybody would want to spend their holidays parked up in a supermarket car park or at the side of a busy highway. Yet this is how many people in campervans choose to spend their time. I used to have a camper myself. One night we returned to our other house in a quiet village in the Herault, well away from the main road. It was midnight and our key jammed in the lock so we decided to pass the night in the van. When we awoke in the morning we had company. Amazing! Believe it or not there are scroungers who set out to find free overnight opportunities under cover of darkness. They work on the basis that nobody will interfere with them if they set up late into the evening.

Genghis Cohen

[hesfordj]

I've made several comments about this on t'other side. http://forum.anglophone-direct.com/ftopic11129.php

Visitors from Britain are definitely down. It's not just recession it's also the Olympics and the related rise in airfares to and from London and SE airports. Combine that with Ryanair squabbling with the airports here and it makes it difficult for people to get here, so they go elsewhere if they do go abroad. There's also been a push in the British media to encourage holidaying in the UK.

I've done three days wine tasting at Caves Byrrh in Thuir. It's allegedly the most visited tourist attraction in the Roussillon and in all that time I only came across one British visitor and he lived in the Dordogne.

I'm not sure I understand the mindset of the campervanners. I can get the concept of the freedom it provides but like GC, I can't see the attraction of spending the night in an ugly location. Is it to save money or just bad planning?

My friends who have a winery have joined an organisation that offers free pitches to campervans on the understanding that they will buy some wine. Sounds nice but the sight of people sitting in their underwear on plastic chairs outside decrepit vans doesn't really set the tone of a winery worth visiting.

[Genghis Cohen]

The reference to the scheme for free pitches on the understanding that campervanners will buy farm produce rings a bell. We have recently met up with friends who are touring France using this type of site. Their reactions are, to put it mildly, muted. It seems that many of them are not all they are cracked up to be. The night before they called on us they had purchased some sort of home brewed peach cordial. It was so foul we poured it straight down the sink!

Unfortunately they are uncureable romantics who find even a simple camping municipal just too organised.

Just an afterthought. The friends I mentioned have a very modern VW conversion. The winner of the title of king of the scroungers goes to the couple who spent a week on the side of the main road. Taking up five car parking spaces, in a brand new rig towing a bespoke trailer. Not much change out of Euros100K for that lot!

Genghis Cohen

[catalanglais]

Lol - there was one of the biggest motorhomes I have ever seen parked on the car park near the Stadium in Amelie for three days last week. Grotty gravelly stuff - no grass to be seen!

I would also like to know why it is that motorhome drivers cannot drive.? And why they manufacture motorhomes to drive at reasonable speeds when the drivers only wish to drive at 30 kph and b******s to anyone who lives in the vicinity and has to try to live a normal life.

I find this year that there are more tourists inland than normal, although am reliably informed that tourist numbers were down in July at the coast. At work, we have less British tourists than normal, but a fair few Danes and Dutch are about.

[alex hampshire]

The Dutch had a poor reputation near us in Gard.

My French doctor once said to me that they drive to Holland (presumably for other reasons) and bring back potatoes.

How true that is I'm not sure but others have made similar remarks.

[catalanglais]

I have heard that they spend very little money on food, preferring to bring most things with them. Fortunately, I sell wine for a living and they don't have a lot of that in Holland so they do tend to spend money where I work.

[Genghis Cohen]

I used to think the stuff about Belgians being stingy was just folklore. But it ain't. We have a Belgian neighbour who arrives in France at her res sec with enough food to last six weeks. She even brings UHT milk. She comes via Luxembourg, where diesel is cheaper, and not only fills her van but five bidons so she does not even have to buy fuel in France. She only uses free sections of autoroute and will endure hours stuck in traffic rather than pay a couple of euros to,say, bypass Nimes.

Another Belgian couple refurbished the interior of their house and brought all the materials down from Belgium. They even sent paint by carrier and then got one of their neighbours to collect it from the depot in Perpignan!

Trust me, it's all true.

Genghis Cohen

[catalanglais]

Lol - you couldn't make THAT up!

[Christopher]

I once met a Dutch couple who'd brought the topsoil for their garden just outside Anduze from Holland, just loaded down their camper van with the muck.
Mind you, there are also English people who buy Andrex toilet paper and Fairy Liquid washing up liquid down here...

[hesfordj]

I'm sure there is a Belgian forum somewhere saying exactly the same about the Brits.

How many times have there been posts on here about English Paint?

[pennycsf66]

It seems to us that visitors from Britain are down, this is the first year we have let our flat to mainly non-English speaking people, the majority French.

On the unpopularity of various nations (and I accept, they must be moaning about us too), here in the sticks of the P-O a Dutch family are already daggers drawn with the locals for building their new house with materials brought from Holland, but worse, they brought the labour too. Not the best way to win friends.

[catalanglais]

Not the best way to win friends.

Gosh, no, that seems a bit short sighted doesn't it?

[Genghis Cohen]

Interesting article in Le Figaro today suggesting that the high end hotellerie de plein air market is growing exponentially. Talks about the BMW and Audi end of the market. People who used to go to hotels and gites.

Genghis Cohen

[hesfordj]

I'm picturing a campsite populated by Audi-drivers. With everyone's tent being too big and too close to their neighbours and everyone driving over each-others guy ropes, cos they can.

All in jest, some of my best friends drive Audis

[Sandra]

Mind you, there are also English people who buy Andrex toilet paper and Fairy Liquid washing up liquid down here...

I have to admit it is one of the things that i buy in Spain, you can't beat Fairy and I have tried all the french equivalents !

[peter]

... and Sandra has hands "that are as soft as your face" allegedly