Product Description

The brand new addition to the best-selling "Cool Camping" series for 2008 is "Cool Camping: France" and it's the most stunning camping guidebook yet. It features a hand-picked selection of the very best campsites and camping experiences to be found across the country, with in-depth reviews, and practical info and hundreds of inspiring colour photos. Written by a team of travel writers including co-ordinating author, Nicola Williams (author of "Lonely Planet France"), the book uncovers those hard-to-find countryside camping gems, well away from the Eurocamp crowds. Featuring spectacular mountain sites in the Alps and Pyrenees, lazy, shady riverside hang-outs in the Loire and Dordogne, smart chateau camping in Brittany and balmy outdoor treats on the C te D'Azure, this is the essential new guidebook for connoisseurs of continental camping.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17032 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

The Times
"must have"

Time Out
"fabulous"

From the Publisher
Cool Camping France uncovers those hard-to-find countryside camping gems, well away from the Europark crowds. Featuring spectacular mountain sites in the Alps and Pyrenees, lazy shady riverside hang-outs in the Loire and Dordogne, smart chateau camping in Brittany and balmy outdoor treats on the Cote d'Azur, this is the essential new guidebook for connoisseurs of continental camping.

Customer Reviews

Cool Camping: France
I love this book!

It's full of variety, from staying in tipis in central france, to lush open spaces where you can pitch your tent by the sea. There are loads of gorgeous photos that make you want to be outside, and the reviews are personal and funny which is a refreshing change from the soulless camping / carvanning guides out there. There's also extra practical info like 'food and drink' recommendations and options of other places to stay 'if it's full', really handy if you've not done much research before heading off.

Would definitely recommend this book to anyone. I was a hotel comforts girl, but now I'm a camping convert, and off to France this summer!

Good, but limited
The campsites featured in this book are, or at least appear to be, very good. The presentation style is easy to follow and all the necessary info is given. BUT... The campsites are spaced out and large areas of the country are left unrepresented. For example, the north coast of Brittany and the Cherbourg penninsula.

If you have a lot of flexibility in your destination, then this may be the book for you. If you have a good idea where you want to be staying, then this book may not actually help at all.

Limited, exclusive and useless.
After reading some of the glowing reviews of this guide, I thought it would be a useful start to discovering some nice camping choices for our upcoming trip to France.

Unfortunately, the reviews are quirky to the point of uninformative, the choices of camp-site tend to focus on stupidly expensive novelty sites with tipis, Airstream caravans, tree-houses or sites owned by retired English couples. There's hardly any information regarding how to find these places, the extra tables of info after each site are brutally lacking in detail, and the book is rammed with artful photographs that reveal little about what to expect from the sites themselves.

The biggest problem is that in 256 pages it only manages to list 60 camp-sites. Considering France boasts roughly 11,000 municipal campsites dotted around the country, this is an epic fail in terms of coverage.

On the whole, it reads like a collection of magazine articles suitable for armchair travellers with no intention of ever visiting France on a camping trip. My mind boggles as to how anyone could find this useful.