Eurocamp family holidays > Reviews (16)

I've been Eurocamping for a long time, using both tents and mobile homes, in France and Italy, and have found that, providing you shop carefully, you can get a great holiday at a good price.

WHAT IS IT?

Eurocamp basically hire out tents and mobiles homes all set up ready for use for you on a variety of camp sites across France, Spain, Germany, Italy and possible a few other places.

They provide not just the tent or mobile but also all the basic equipment you need - a fridge (fridge/freezer in a mobile home), cooking facilities, barbeque where sites permit, plates and cutlery, pots and pans, blankets and you can hire sheets and towels, sun loungers, beds and table and chairs, and in the mobile homes also a mircowave. Some mobiles have air conditioning and most hve some form of heating.

You get on site couriers who speak excellent English and have local knowledge and a cheap rate on ferry crossings if you decide to drive across the channel.

Tents sleep six and mobiles sleep between 5 and 8, depending on the one you pick, and costs vary considerably depending on time of travel, type of accommodation and disocunts available.

OUR 2008 TRIP

We went to Pesciera del Garda on the southern part of Lake Garda for ten days in early July. We booked a mobile home which was designed to sleep 7 - one double bedroom, one triple room (using bunk beds so the room was really suitable for children) and two on a sofa bed in the living room - though there would have been limited privacy for anyone sleeping there. We were four - two adults and two children and it was the right size for us.

We hired a cot and a high chair for our little one, at what I thought was a fairly steep cost of £18 each, but the overall cost was good as we paid around £800 for the mobile home, linen and towel hire, cot and highchair for nine nights on a site which offered good facilites - a big site with animation, access directly to the lake beach, four swimming pools with slides etc, a great shop, a restaurant and a bistro/bar, tennis and basketball courts, beach volleyball, an air-conditioned gym, laundry facilities and children's play equipment. I got a large discount (around £300) by booking online and picking it out of what was available - we booked in April.

GOOD THINGS

Eurocamp have a range of games and toys you can borrow at no charge like boules, scrabble, monopoly etc, should you need someithng to wihle away an evening.

Mobile homes give you the chance to self cater which is so much cheaper and nicer with small children than being in hotels and you can sit outside on your decking in the evening and have a quiet drink once the kids are in bed, which is perfect. Animation does give you the chance to go and do some things altogether - my three year old daughter loved the kiddie disco they ran for an hour every night at 8.30pm, and we sat, had a beer and watched her have fun!

The equipment is well thought through - a filter coffee maker, cheese grater, pasta bowl and pyrex casserole dish all come as standard, as well as barbeque tools.

The shower in our mobile was a fair size and had great water pressure.

BAD THINGS

You can't check in til 3pm, which is sometimes difficult to organise if you are driving yourself a long distance. You have to be out again by 10am in the morning, which I have always found hard, given you have to wash up breakfast, pack he car, sort out the kids etc- and they are in to clean quite quickly after ten!

You are then responsible for the cleaning of the mobile, so mum still gets to clean the toilet!! Bit of a busman's holiday that one!

Some pitches are better than others, and they do sometimes put up rows of eurocamp mobiles or tents, so it is bit like a mini housing estate at times, but then maybe your kids get to play with other kids they meet, so it has its advantages.

They make you pay for the whole thing 8 weeks before the holiday, so you do have to plan your finances carefully.

SUMMARY

Eurocamp is one of a number of companies who offer this kind of service, but what they do which most of the others don't is let you book very flexibly, so you can book any number of days if they are available - from one to 30! Many of their competitors let you book from Saturday to Saturday only. It provides a chance to live in a fairly outsdoorsy way, but still with the comforts of home, and you can fly drive by adding your own travel costs and they give you a discount if you don't take their ferry crossing. Book without discounts in high season though and it could cost you well over a thousand pounds for 10 days though!