The Perfect Family Campervan Trip in France 🇫🇷 | Lakes, Cycling & Llamas! 🚐✨

Join us on The Perfect Family Camper Van Trip in France! 🚐✨ The final stage of our 3 week Trip with No Plan tour of France and Spain.

In this episode of Campervan Journey, we cycle around stunning French lakes, discover incredible free outdoor activities, and enjoy ice cream in the sunshine at a lakeside bar. We also spend nights at a Huttopia campsite and a France Passion stopover with llamas, donkeys, ostriches, and even a camel! 🦙🐪
#hymer #vanlife #huttopia #campervan

Along the way, we share tips on:
✅ How much campsites in France really cost (Huttopia vs municipal vs France Passion)
✅ What it’s like to travel Europe with no plan
✅ Family-friendly activities you can enjoy around lakes and forests in France
✅ Visiting the Caen Memorial Museum in Normandy before our ferry back to the UK

If you’re dreaming of a French road trip, or planning your own family camper van adventure, this video is packed with inspiration, laughs, and plenty of practical tips.

👉Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more adventures from Campervan Journey!

👉Fancy a sticker – drop me an email at campervanjourney@gmail.com

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🔑 Keywords

family camper van trip france, camper van journey france, van life europe, huttopia campsite review, france passion stopovers, cycling french lakes, family van life, france campervan travel, normandy campervan trip, van life with kids

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🏷️ Tags

family camper van trip, camper van france, huttopia review, france passion stopover, van life europe, french campsites, camper van family adventure, cycling in france, camper van journey, caen memorial museum, van life travel vlog, campervan trip france

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⏱️ Timestamps
• 0:00 – Welcome to our French forest pitch 🌲
• 0:48 – Bike hire & cycling adventure 🚲
• 2:55 – Exploring the lake & activities 🏖️
• 4:48 – Ice cream reward 🍦
• 6:04 – Huttopia campsite review 🏕️
• 10:22 – Shade, pools & staying cool 🌞
• 13:16 – Packing up & heading north 🚐
• 15:19 – France Passion stopover with llamas, donkeys & a camel 🦙🐪
• 17:09 – Last morning in France 🌄
• 18:56 – Normandy beaches & Caen Memorial Museum 🎖️
• 23:10 – Waiting for the ferry ⛴️
• 27:05 – Boarding & reflections on our trip 💭
• 29:12 – Back in the UK 🇬🇧

Thank you for watching, hope you enjoyed the video. Please LIKE, COMMENT, and don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to our channel to follow us and see more of our videos all about Camping, Travel and our adventures with our Campervan !

We love our Campervan and use it for all sorts of adventures, from travelling to the French Alps for a Ski trip to travelling to the Beach for a cold water wild swim.

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So Who are Campervan Journey?

We are JT, Harry, Claire, Sam and Ben, oh and Hunny the Dog. We discovered campervanning in 2015 when we bought our first Volkswagen T5 Combo after seeing many at our favourite campsites. We were staying with our tent, and dreaming that one day we would have our own Campervan. After much research, we bought and converted our own T5 Kombi to suit our requirements, check out the video on the channel. We soon discovered that owning a Campervan is a way of life and it is not just about amazing trips round Europe, it’s as much about great days out and family time…

We have been lucky enough to visit some amazing places with our van, many of which we know we wouldn’t have seen if we had not owned it. They instil a sense of adventure and where shall we go into your life.

After 3 years with the T5, we upgraded to a Volkswagen T6 California Beach, and then after 5 years we upgraded to our current van, our Hymer Free S 600. We continue to enjoy travelling and visiting some amazing places. You can check out our latest videos and adventures here on the channel !

Please remember and hit SUBSCRIBE! if this is your thing ! We try to make videos to share the good and bad of where we have been and some tips and tricks that we have learnt along the way, as well as reviews of some of the things we have bought to use whilst camping and places we have visited and stayed.

Remember, We believe that buying a Campervan was one of the best things we have ever done !!!

THANKYOU !!!
We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our Subscribers and everyone who watches our videos and for all of the lovely comments, it really does mean a lot to us., asn we’ll do the best we can to reply to every one. It’s great to get the feedback on our videos and great to hear from you.

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#hymer #vwcalifornia #campervan #camping #motorhome #vanlife

Hi everybody, I’m JT. Welcome to another video from me here at Camper Van Journey. And you join me here in a French forest next to a lake in the middle of summer. What’s not to like? So, good morning. Welcome to our woodland pitch. Uh it’s a beautiful morning here in uh Cel Lua. It’s been really really really hot over the last few days and it’s noticeably cooler here this morning. Today we think we’re going to explore there’s a network of cycle tracks that go around the lake and the local woodland. So we’re going to explore those on the bikes. If you’ve seen our previous videos, you’ll have seen that when we were in Spain, we had a bit of a mechanical crisis with Harry’s bike. The derailia system just completely imploded and we tried to fix it at the side of the road and we couldn’t do that. So, we’re going to hire a bike here, an extra bike from the campsite here today, and that will mean we can all go out and enjoy a ride together. So, we have secured the rental of a bike. Cost of it was actually really, really good. The day rate was €13 for a normal mountain bike. Um, as regular visits visitors of Hutopia sites and you also get a 20% discount card. So, that took 20% off. So, roughly €10 for the day, which is, I think, really good for the use. So, we’re approaching the end of our trip. Just a few days left to go. And I just want to report a significant change in climatic conditions. It’s gotten a bit I’ve noticed this because both CLA and Harry have put a jumper on this morning for the first time in best part of 3 weeks. I think the last time you wore jumpers was on on the ferry. No, that’s a lie. I think I wore one when it was really cold in the pop top when we were on the Bastian’s farm. That was in this area as well. That was nearly warm, wasn’t it? It’s just cold here. Cold air. It still says during the day it could be warm. It’s still saying it could be 32°. Okay, so we’ve picked up the route that goes around the lake and adjacent to the campsite. There’s the van. And uh I’m going to I think the route down the lake is about 5 kilometers. There we go. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Claire and Harry are somewhere up there. So, probably need to get a wiggle on and go and catch them up. So, the lake adjacent to the campsite that we’ve just cycled around is fantastic. There’s a lot of different activities you can do here. There’s a beach area, a roped off, marked off swimming area which is up to 3 m deep which you can see people paddling on the edge with proper sand. On the far side of the lake, there’s proper sailing dingies that you can hire and then paddle pedalo type boats as well. So, combine that with the cycle route, these climbing activities, and then all the nature trails that you can follow as well, really is fantastic. Makes a great destination. But all of this is free. Um, you haven’t had to pay for any of it. You can just turn up and use it. And that’s what’s so great about France is that lakes like this, facilities like this are all over the country. Almost every uh town or village that we’ve stopped at has got something similar. Maybe not on such a grand scale, but just makes for a great outdoor lifestyle. And that’s what’s going to make it really hard to go back to work at the end of the trip. And the more we travel, the more we discover, the longer I want to be away for more or the more I want to be away for longer because there’s just so much to see indeed. Oh, doesn’t that van look nice par there in the campsite? Whoever owns that is very, very lucky. Claire’s just said, “It’s just like going to Paul’s call. There are people swimming in the water, first of all, and they don’t look blue. And it’s 35 degrees and we’re having ice cream and a beer. What? Why is it like fourth? Calm down. It’s not like fourth. So, this is the reward for cycling. Look at that lovely choice of ice creams in a very nice little cafe bar next to the lake. So, what a fabulous day we’ve had. We’ve done about 16 miles around the lake in two different stints. We went out this morning and this afternoon. If we were here for longer, then quite probably we’d look at um renting one of the or hiring a boat or one of the pedalos or paddle boards or what have you to explore the lake uh itself a bit more, but it’s a very very nice place. Um we really like Utopia sites and if you’ve watched our videos for some time, you’ll be well aware of that. But I’m also well aware that they are at the top end of the price range. And if there’s one thing that this trip has really highlighted for me is what a wave of options there are to consider that are considerably less money if you don’t want all if you don’t want or need uh all of the facilities that something like Hootopia can offer. So, we’ve really enjoyed the France Passion Sites, which have cost us pretty much nothing unless we’ve decided to buy something from the local producers. So, typically maybe 105 tops, maybe less. Mun municipal sites that we’ve stayed at have ranged at anywhere between 15 and 30 depending on where they were. Uh, which again, I think €30 is still excellent value for money. And then the top end you’ve got something like this with Hootopia. Now the extra money you’re paying at a Hootopia site does give you a lot more. So we’ve got good clean toilets. We’ve got a nice pool. We’ve got good showers. Plenty of them. Spreading out some plusher sights to enjoy during our trip has given us a good balance. So, we’ve gone from being parked in a field with nothing at all to having a pool to having a cafe to having a a food wagon to have a bar to having activities for the kids if you want to do it. I think there’s music entertainment tonight at the other end of the spectrum. So whilst this has been a trip with no plan, if you want at this time of the year to try and secure a site like this or any site really, it’s probably worth trying to book it two or three days ahead. We did find as I mentioned in episode two when we were trying I think it was episode two, possibly episode 3 when we were trying to book a site at the coast. uh we really struggled to book a campsite um rather than not necessarily just a a France passion site or a basic municipal site to get a site with a pool and all of those other facilities for 2 or 3 days. We were going to struggle just because of the time of the year. So going forward as an idea what we probably do is maybe if we’re away for 3 weeks say for those 3 weeks we’re going to have book one site each for the different weeks for maybe 2 or 3 days and then spread or plan our traveling around those knowing that those sites if you like are locked in. We’ve got those secured. So, just a thought as to maybe doing that. Or you go completely the other way and do as we tried to do on this one, just not plan anything and just find our feet as we go. But it would be a lot like easier to do that if you weren’t in holiday season uh for Europe and peak holiday season for France. So, our pitch here at Hutotopia Lactole is actually a comfort plus pitch, which gives us a bigger pitch with the benefit of a picnic table as well. Uh, we didn’t specifically want one of these, but it was the only one that was available on the dates that we were looking for for for today and yesterday. So, we paid a little bit extra for that. We’ve got electric hookup just across the way. There’s a toilet block just in the difference. Another toilet block over the other side. Plenty of shade cover, which is great for keeping cool, but not so great for giving a signal for our Starlink. So, mobile reception isn’t great here. I think I’ve had between one and two bars of 3G and one bar of 4G. And we’ve been really lucky with the weather here, and looks like they haven’t had much rain at all over the last few weeks. But one thing I was discussing with Cla yesterday is that if it did rain here and rain for a few days, then some of the pitches, especially our pitch here, is pretty bare earth and it could get a bit mucky. One of the most important things for us when we were staying here, given what we’ve experienced over the last few days of temperatures well into the high30s, was to get somewhere with nice shade, preferably a nice breeze and a pool so we can cool off. And this site has absolutely done that for us. Now, we’re not into paddle boarding or kayaking, but I could see that if I was, then this would be a great site to come to for that. You can just see the lake on the other side of uh the road in front of us. And there’s couple of gates just farther up where you can nip through with your paddle boards. We’ve seen plenty of people do that from the campsite to go and enjoy the lake. If you hadn’t heard already, you can now buy a camper vanjourney sticker. So, if you fancy one of these, drop me an email at camper [email protected] and I’ll let you know how you can buy one. Looks pretty good on the van, I think. Morning. How? Good morning, Dad. All right. Yes. Did you sleep? Did you sleep well? I did sleep well. Thank you. Well, I did I say that I was cold. Were you? Yeah. I um were you cold all night? Only when I realized I was cold. I think cold is a relative thing. It was 18° last night instead of 24 or 26 that it has been. So what’s our plan for today? Well, we working backwards. We need to be at DEP for Sunday evening to catch our ferry. Uh DP is about 3 hours away and um it’s Saturday morning so we’ve got plenty of time to get to where we need to be and I think what we’ll probably do is see if we can find a nice little campsite somewhere between the two to spend our final night of the trip. Um have I’ve had a look on search for sites and there’s lots of different options we can look at. So we might just So what we’ll just do is we’ll just hit the road once we’ve packed up, have a leisurely breakfast and be on the road by say 10:00. What we tend to do is drive for an hour or two, have some lunch, and then find make a decision as to where we’re going to where we’re going to stop for the night. One of the things I really love about this touring around is there’s no time pressure to be thinking I’ve got to be gone by, I’ve got to be here by. We can just go when we’re ready. So that’s what we’ll do. Okay, so all packed up and all ready to go. Really enjoyed our time here, haven’t we, Harry? It’s been very nice. It’s been very nice. So, we’re just going to empty our waste, toilet, toilet waste and gray waste before we head off so we’re not carrying that round unnecessarily. And then we think we’re going to head up towards a town called Seas S, which is about halfway between here and till next time maybe. Very nice. Very nice. So after a few hiccups along the way, we’ve driven about an hour and a half from Lac to Celate. We had two or three search for sites uh municipal campsites that uh we were going to investigate along the way. first one um wasn’t open or wouldn’t accept reservations from until 2:00 and it was just after midday. So rather than hang around, we drove on to the next one. Uh the next one that we went to, which was a beautiful little town, um forget the name of it, but it was only about uh 25 pictures or so by a river and it was full up. There was a sketchily written sign on the um a little shed or a little hut by the entrance that said complete which basically meant full up. There was a phone number for us to call but when we flown through there was there was no answer. So the next best option was to look at a France Passion site in the local area. So, clicked onto the France Passion website, found the nearest one, and 10 minutes later, here we are. Harry’s Harry’s just meeting our new neighbors. Look at all of them. So, we’ve got one, two, three donkeys here. Um, a miniature pony. There’s two llamas. At least two llamas in the field across there. two or three and then CLA’s been saying hello to the ostriches. Oh, and to top it all, just behind that digger, there’s a camel. So, in terms of wildlife variety and what you wouldn’t expect to see at a French campsite, I think this one probably tops it off for what we’ve had so far. But yeah, so for our final night of our trip, we had hoped to have a nice little um rural municipal campsite, which was somewhere along our journey, and I’m sure if we’ driven around for a bit longer, we could have found one, but uh we were so close to this, pulled in, plenty of space available as you can see. And yeah, I think for our last night in France, we’ll enjoy the company of some rather unusual wildlife. Now, I need to do my investigation into South American mammals, so I’m not sure if they are llamas or alpacas, but whatever they are, there’s three of them. So, this is us for the night. So, good morning. Welcome to our last stop, our last stopover of our trip with no plan after best part of 3 weeks. And I haven’t checked my mileage, but it’s I think it’s about uh 1,700 miles so far. We’ve driven all the way down to the south of France, all the way back all the way into Spain through Andor. Our last night ended up at a France Passion location uh in Normandy. And we got neighbors. Let me introduce you to them. There’s ostriches who are very inquisitive and very tall. If anybody tells you that French agriculture isn’t diverse, then well, they’re telling you a lie. But what’s really strange is got all these animals. There’s horses and ponies and such like as well. And we had a really quite a peaceful night’s sleep. There was no noise from the animals whatsoever. was expecting to be woken by all sorts of early morning calls, but uh nothing at all. But the donkeys do get excited when it’s feeding time. What a lovely little stopover for our last one as we head back to catch our ferry later tonight. So, what’s the plan for today then? Well, we’ve got a late night crossing tonight. So, we’re going to head up to Kong um and see if we can uh investigate some of the some of the wartime history that we’ve never visited when we’ve been to France before. So, um seems as we’re in the area, perhaps we’ll go and have a look at some of the Normandy beaches. What you got there? A momento of our stay. Nice. Mini horse kissed me. farted and farted. Trotted and farted. So, there we go. On that note, it’s time to head off. So, this France passion place has got a sort of um 24-hour vending hut if you like and it’s rather than a shop full of local produce. Oh, cidra palm juice pear juice biscuits. Potatoes. It’s baked. Woo! Woohoo! We’ve won. There we go. Biscuits. Biscuits. There was a moment then I didn’t think we were going to get anything at all, but we’ve got some biscuits. So fantastic. I think this is going to be my last panosa of our trip, which is a sad moment. And I’m enjoying it in the glamorous surroundings of a superu car park in Kong, but I have to say it’s still a good one. And I will miss a daily panel shocker. So this morning on our way back to DEP, we decided to come via Kong um to give us a chance to uh see some of the Second World War, Second and First World War heritage that um so impacted this area uh in history. And there’s a fantastic relatively new museum in Kong called the Memorial Dong. Wow. Oh, that is super cool. Isn’t that super cool? Yeah. Hello. If you’re in this part of France, this memorial uh museum is absolutely worth a visit where you’ve got any interest in military history at all. It’s a very very powerful and thoughtprovoking way to spend a few hours. Anyway, time to head off to the app. A new place, a new home for a while. Let me feel alive. Nothing to hold me back. Take my time. Just enjoy the ride. I know passing by. Life is good. Best I’ve ever feltwhere. So there we go. We’ve made it to DEP. Well, not strictly speaking DEP. a little village about four or five kilometers outside that we picked up on search for sites as a perfect place just to stop for a few hours whilst we wait for our ferry crossing. Um it’s a small village leisure center car park. I’ll put the the name of it I’ll put the name of the village uh down the bottom here. But we’ve just parked up. You can see behind if I swivel the camera around. What a fabulous view we’ve got of the English Channel. There’s a few other vans parked up here as you would expect from a search for sites location. What a beast that ICO is. Looks well set up for continental travel. Uh so our plan was always to arrive in Deep 2 or three hours ahead of our crossing just in case there was any delays or if at all possible to perhaps catch an earlier ferry. But uh the ferry times this time of year tend to be every 6 hours or so. But you never know quite how long it’s going to take to to load or disembark and uh if there’s going to be any delays when you come off the other end with with the customs uh procedures that are currently operational. But uh to find somewhere like this to stop and have a nice evening meal is going to be absolutely fantastic. Lovely. It’s like an English breakfast fire preparing us for home. Preparing us for home. Yeah. with is all the sausong gone? No, still got stick. With the new traveling or recent traveling regulations, we’ve got to make sure we’ve had to be careful. Make sure that we’re not taking things back that previously we would have taken back. There’s regulations on taking meat products, dairy products, uh anything fresh really at the moment. Now, obviously hopefully that will change in due course, but it’s just meant we’ve had a fun of it with what we’ve been shopping for. And one of our jobs this evening is to eat up whatever we can’t take back. And it sounds like a challenge Harry’s prepared to accept. I’m prepared to accept. You’re prepared to accept the challenge. So, there we are. We’ve arrived at DEP Ferry Terminal. Just like that from our nice little evening park up, we’ll probably have an hour or so’s wait before we’re boarding and then we’re homewood bound. They’re on in the So, there we are. All aboard the ferry at Deep. Um, really quick and easy to get on. Um, I don’t think it’s particularly busy this evening. As you can see, it’s dark now and it’s Sunday night. I think the busiest day for travel is probably Friday night, Saturday. Um, but yeah, we got 4hour crossing across. The weather doesn’t look too bad. And it is has been a bit windy, so hopefully it’s not going to be too choppy as we go, but uh we’ll be setting off very shortly. And there we go. Just like that. Or France. We’ve had an absolutely fantastic trip over the last few weeks and seen some amazing things. We’ve done so much on our trip with no plan, setting off from the from the UK and only having one campsite booked uh when we left for those first couple of nights. And it’s been amazing. We’ve seen some amazing things, been to some amazing places, and had great fun and made some great memories as a family together. And uh that’s what it’s all about. So, if you need any further reason to get out and buy yourself a camper van, then that’s it. Just do it. Go out and make the memories, have the adventures, have yourself a fantastic camper van journey. Thanks to everybody who’s been watching along with the series. Thanks to everyone who’s got in touch and dropped me a message with any questions or queries or given us tips about places to go along the way as well. Uh if you’ve enjoyed uh the videos we’ve been putting together, please give us a thumbs up. Please hit the subscribe button. It really does help the channel grow and keep an eye out for more videos and adventures coming from us very soon. Thanks for watching. So, there we are back in the UK, back in the Can’t see any of New Haven this time of day, but um it’s about 5:00 in the morning. Crossing overnight, it’s taken longer than anticipated. On the way out, it took 4 hours. On the way back, it seems to have taken about five, five and a half. If we were traveling slower or going against the tide, it was a bit windier. I don’t I don’t know. Just took a bit longer. But yeah, so hopefully it won’t take too long to disembark. And then we the last stretch driving back to Ssbury. Drop. I think I know you. Here we go. We are officially back on UK soil. UK concrete. This is where the vigilant customs patrol occurs over the left. Go around the road back that way. forever.