What are the differences with French Aires

Greetings and welcome back to Caravan Escapades! Today, I’d like to delve into the topic of French Aires, as I’ve often received questions about their distinctions. There seems to be some confusion, especially within the Motorhome and Camper Van Community, when they mention “Aires.” When they refer to Aires, they’re typically talking about basic rural campsites or stopovers exclusive to them. However, it’s important to note that Caravaners might sometimes assume they can also use these Aires. On the other hand, there are Autoroute Aires, which resemble our motorway services but include smaller stopover areas as well. In this Vlog, I’ll showcase these different types of Aires so you can gain a clearer understanding and have realistic expectations of what they’re like.

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[Music] hello and welcome to caran escapades I hope everybody’s keeping safe and well um so we’re on our journey back um up towards s of Cal and home after our trip down in the South one of the things I’ve been asked about a few times are airs and um you know particularly the airs in France there are two time of airs they’re the auto rout airs and the airs uh well they call them air de camping cars so basically the those or the second type are the airs that are on the outskirts of rural towns they’re in rural locations that sort of thing but can only be used by motor homes and camper vans the other air the auto rout air can be split into two types um there is one that is fully serviced very much like our service our Motorway Services back in the UK and one that literally is just a rest stop uh will quite often have toilet facilities and they’ll vary in cleanliness that sort of stuff uh and they might have a little play Park as well little bit smaller but often very very suitable for you to stop and take a rest so we’re just going to pull over into one of the small airs now the small sort of rest areas there won’t be any facilities or there won’t be any sh and those sorts of stuff it’s also a Sunday so one thing that’s worth knowing on a Sunday hgv transport isn’t allowed on the French roads they have to park up so what you tend to find in all the airs on a Sunday is they are pretty sort of chocker with lores and things like that although this one only has two lorries so we’ll pull in just next to this one here and you can see there’s a small where you can’t see but I’ll show you so here we are we’ve just pulled over here uh along with the trucks these rest stops rest stops vary in size um you often find a picnic table that sort of stuff Claire’s just shaking her head at me the quality of the toilets here are not great so they’re obviously going to go and use the Caravan um what sorry it’s overflowing oh it’s overflowing so yeah they’re obviously not great uh um but you tend to have a few sort of parking spaces disabled spaces clear and Dy may can be a little bit FY oh okay I see what they’re saying yeah so there’s a long drops off so I don’t think these are in a particular well there’s a urinal there um yeah there yeah these ones are a bit you don’t often find that to be fair you do find them in reasonable sort of quality um as I say they come in various shapes and sizes one of these type I wouldn’t stop in overnight um you know I would stop in the other one and we’ll show you one of the other airs but I certainly wouldn’t stop in uh for any real length of time certainly not at night I’d be happy to sort of stop and have a break here for uh an hour or so stretch your legs maybe have a picnic that sort of thing but I wouldn’t sort of spend a night in one of these types of airs but I would in the others so anyway this is kind of the general rest stop air and we’ll let you know what the others are like so just to give you another comparison we’ve stopped at one of the rest airs just to grab a bit of lunch we’ve got some baguette and cheese and things like that with us in the Caravan so we’re going to make that it is one of the smaller ones it’s slightly different to the other one there’s an area for cars Etc over there uh um and trucks and Caravans motor homes that sort of stuff here so this is probably more common uh let’s go and take a quick look at the toilet facilities and see what they’re like so it’s the ladies this side these look a bit more sort of modern less problems with them there’s water there so you can fill up with the water that sort of thing obviously plenty of picnic tables recycling areas uh let’s give this a go so yeah look this is this is far cleaner far nicer um than the other ones that we stopped in and this is kind of going be a bit more what you can expect but it could be a little bit hit and miss right I’m going to wander back to the girls and get something to eat so we’re going to stop in uh the next type of air uh which is an air that’s kind of fully serviced so you’ve got fuel you’ve got got a shop you’ve got uh invariably a restaurant somewhere to get some food decent toilets that sort of what I say decent toilets um no we found them pretty good most of the time so we are 300 M from the next Air um also I don’t know whether you saw that sign on the right hand side it told you uh how far other the types of air are further along you can see the air on the left hand side there doesn’t look too bad um these airs are run by different companies uh very much like we have welcome break and Moto and all those sorts of stuff at home so again let’s hope that we can find decent Caravan parking uh it does say up here on the left we’ve got Caravan parking so round the roundabout See’s got a few trucks in and one of the things we have suffered from in the past is literally at the roundout you know not being able to stop because we’ve gone into the Caravan area um the Caravan area is height restricted but we are okay uh 3.5 M so we’re below that take the slip road ahead to A1 toward and I think I’ve just missed it I’ve literally that’s how easy it is to do I have literally just oh hang on hang on oh no I’ve not no I’ve not no I’ve not um hang on yeah it says the Caravan parking it might be here he’s up here lot yeah so a little bit further along careful cuz it looks tight and that is the one thing you got to be careful of particularly with um you know UK Caravans and bigger Longer rigs that sort of stuff they do put these big high curbs in in which can make it a little bit more difficult but we seem to be okay um I think I’m probably doing this all totally wrong you are going the wrong way down yeah there we go I’m going the wrong way but I wanted to get with the other Caravan so we’ll swing it back around in here so you can see the Caravan parking can be a little bit confusing so we should just pull up and we’ll come back to you in a moment so here we are we are parked in the air we are just going to go into Services one of the things I do do whenever I’m in the services we got a hitch lock on um and a wheel lock on and we’ll try not to stay away too far or for too long so we’ll take a Wander over to the services now again you know there are various different picnic areas um you know the services are vary in the quality this one doesn’t look too bad or how well kept they are I mean we’ve been to them before where they’ve had Immaculate grass um or there’s just about a left to be a bit overgrown a lot of them have play parks oh yeah a lot of them do CL just say a lot have play parks this one probably has got a play park but you can say it’s quite nice traditional for people to sit out as you can see the family up here look they’ve got their own picnic um sat out one of the things are becoming more and more common place is obviously the EV Chargers uh but that’s exactly the same as in the UK this is probably one of the better served um Services you got a McDonald’s territories def France you’ve got a Starbucks yes come on C no Shar uh and all the bits so we’ll go inside and we’ll take a look so just been inside the toilet obviously I’m not going to take the camera with me but yeah you know what they are pretty clean and spotless quite modern um quite refreshed what I will say as a caveat some of these serviced airs aren’t always the same some of them are a little bit more rundown uh you know a little bit older facilities probably aren’t quite as good uh this is one of the good ones there are quite a lot like this but there are um other ones that may be the services aren’t quite up to this scratch or this standard again as we kind of walk into the services you can see uh there’s your McDonald’s pretty much the same way as you would do in the UK plenty of seating areas hot food [Music] dispensary Starbucks get in toilets through there and again your Casino shop where things are becoming more and more common place and they do produce pretty good coffees these automated coffee machines that you can see all along the side [Music] there and then you literally just order these are on like to do cold drinks as well so yeah coffees cold drinks all sorts of stuff there uh great thing is as well you can swap it to English to do it all in English and they do seem to produce quite a good quality coffee um and then there’s your shop which you can quite often get I say quite often not always um can’t see anywhere but sometimes you can normally get a good um fresh bagette but probably even from the restaurant back there you could get one and again pretty much a service Serv one of the things you do get a lot of is these prefilled sandwiches um soft drinks and your biscuits so that is inside one of the French auto root fully serviced airs I mentioned earlier on about being able to buy the fresh baget that sort of stuff you can hear they’re even doing it as a meal deal look so you can buy the bagette you can buy your cheese and your ham that sort of stuff and a drink all for3 that’s actually not bad at all um so yeah get bread and stuff as well just a sample of the food you can get that’s from the food counter which as you can see it’s a lot better than our Motorway services at home so that’s what we call I guess a fully serviced air um here in France would we stop in one of these overnight absolutely and we have done on many occasions you know even for a short couple of hours get a couple of hours sleep right the way down to um you know spending the whole night here it’s a case of being safe really um you know I’ve heard these rumors about people being gassed in their Caravans overnight uh do you know what have you ever spoken to anybody that’s been gassed in a caravan overnight I mean from what I understand it’s almost a pure impossibility a gas sorry a caravan is a very well vented area um the amount of gas that you would need to fill a caravan to pump it in is almost a tanker worth the cost of the gas um it just makes it impractical you know I’d be really interested to speak to somebody directly that has being gassed in a caravan while they’re sleeping in an air would I stop in one of the other airs um where there aren’t any Services there absolutely not um no definitely wouldn’t stop in one of those it’s about being safe it’s about being secure you know what if you pull up into a services and you don’t feel secure move on to the next one particularly if you’re going to stop overnight you know try and stop where there are lots of people around that sort of thing um like I say I’m not telling you yes nothing’s going to happen to you if you stop in one of these airs overnight all I can tell it is our experience we’ve stopped in many them on many occasions and never had an issue it is just about I think about being sensible try and stop where there’s plenty of other people around the other thing we have had done actually with the carabin is we’ve had this extra lock fitted and you can lock it from the inside so we can drop that lock down from the inside and prevent anybody getting in so just to show you another service there a little bit of a smaller one so we pulled in typically this is what you get with Caravan Bays it’s just one sort of lay by on the side there so again electric charging points are appearing all quite new um this is a fully serviced air again with petol station that sort of stuff but the service area is slightly smaller but it’s still quite a nice qu one picnic areas dotted around is the car 4 Express again there’s your fuel pumps there without any trouble around here is your entrance and again I just show you another example of a service there again everything little bit smaller but you know reasonably well equipped shop R in there toilets and then a small shop area seating area food as you can see smaller selection of food and just an area to chill out and these all so much better than UK Motorway services so the final air and the air that we as caravaners can’t get into is the air camping car you’ll often see this sign here um invariably from motor homes that sort of stuff and essentially the difference between us caravaners and the motor home campers is you need to be self-sufficient so you need to be able to carry your gray waste water tank on board those sorts of stuff and these airs are generally on the outskirts of small towns like this um and you don’t normally have to pay um but they don’t want you setting up awnings and all those sorts of things um um so it purely is for a stopover but that is the camping car air um and it’s the air the o just caravaners can’t use so this is the typical camping car air as you can see it’s basically all motor homes there’s a small Spot Motor Homes Camper vans that sort of stuff there’s a small spot for all of them but you do have to be self-sufficient um they are a little bit closer in than probably you would get on a normal Caravan site and that sort of stuff but that is your camping car air so that’s our overview of French airs for you I hope you’ve enjoyed it um please if you got any questions leave them down below um you know use them in France they are different certainly to the UK ones they can be great they can be a bit diabolical um but anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed that so thank you very much for watching please don’t forget to like subscribe and share hit that notification Bell and you’ll be notified when we put more videos out right we must carry on our journey one more night in front and we’ll see you [Music] soon