Esterel Camping and Caravaning site, St. Raphael, France

[CaliGreg]

We've just come back from a fantasic 2 weeks (and 2000 miles) in the South of France, doing the normal tourist days out along the coast to Cannes, Monaco and so on.

We stayed at the Esterel Cavavaning site in Agay, near Saint Raphael, which rates itself as a '5 star camping experience'. We were left a little disapointed......so a word of caution.

We booked on to one of the 'Luxe' pitches, which on the face of it was great, hedged on two sides, room for the Cali and a drive away awning, electric, water, a dishwasher and - best of all - your own en-suite bathroom for every 'Luxe' pitch, with a shower, loo and sink. All nicely tiled and clean. All good so far.

However, the pitches are right by the pool, resturant and bar area - which has a show on every evening - from 8ish until midnight. Which means, when you a have a 5 year old daughter, they also don't get to sleep until midnight because of booming bass and an extermely loud PA system.....

It got really annoying. It wasn't a dead loss (if you had a normal pitch away from the pool area), but we won't be going back there again........not 5 star experience I'm afraid.

 

[Ewan]

Interesting. Last year we stayed at France's only 5* campsite near Montpellier (or at least it was at that time). We were also a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice site and ticked all the boxes in terms of facilities, but we rated many 4* sites higher for the overall experience.

Last year we booked into a site near St Tropez which was just awful, so we left after one night. That meant we had nowhere to stay on the coast and everywhere booked up (inc. the Esterel). However we managed to get into Agay Soleil, a fantastic small 3* site in Agay. What it lacked in facilities it more than made up for in the location - direct access to the beach and an easy walk to the train (for. Cannes etc).

I think it goes to show sometimes location and overall 'atmosphere' can easily trump the facilities.

 

[Martin]

We have also just come back from a so-called 5 star campsite aswell also near Montpellier http://www.massereau.com/ in Sommieres, possibly the same one as you Ewan? Anyway we were also quite disappointed, the only thing 5 stars about this site were the prices, the pitches and shower blocks were nothing special and were comparable to a 3 star, I can only think they got their 5 stars for their lodges as they all had air con etc.. The problem with many campsites in France now is lodges and static caravans are now over taking the amount of touring pitches as site owners realise they can make a hell of a lot more money from them as some of these were going for nearly 2,000 Euro per week whereas if they had a caravan on that pitch they would only make around 400 euro. This site you could clearly see the lodges were actually on old touring pitches and we ended up very close to all our neighbours as we were really packed in, luckily we only stayed three nights.

We tend to use use Zoover reviews when deciding on a campsite rather than how many stars it has as most reviews are by Dutch and they are very critical, we have stayed in some great 2 star family owned campsites for a fraction of what we paid for a 5 star ... lesson learnt!