Cycling UK Forum

bretonbikes wrote: ↑12 Sep 2023, 11:36am ... and unless someone is employed full time to do the sort of publicity and events that a campsite needs they just whither away and then the municipality has the excuse to close them and one more drain on their resources has gone....

Even on popular routes the number of touring cyclists seem low. This year in July on EV6/Loire a Velo I was often the only touring cyclist. There were a few other bikes and people doing local day rides but they were arriving with bikes bolted to the back of the Camping Car, spent the week based in their Camping Car, etc.

Ian

Maybe another reason is that the hardcore of these sites, the French long stay campers have died out (in some cases, literally).

Years ago I remember a couple of Municipal sites that had near permanent encampments of French people. No idea how far they had come, but they looked like they had set up camp for the whole summer. Presumably coming for weekend and longer public holidays, then longer stay in August.

My local little site in Essex, used to have a group of relative locals who were there almost every weekend in their caravans. Slowly they got too old to want to camp anymore, or one of them died. Now, hardly anybody camps there and it will soon be a new housing development. I'm sure France is not so different in this respect.

That age group now drive camper vans and many just drive from free parking to free parking. As they make up about 70-80% of the business for a small site that's a big loss. Opposite us is a lovely free 'Aire' with 12 campervan capacity - it's only when it's full that they start coming over to the campsite. We can cope with that loss but many campsites can't.