25 years on from its Nineties heyday, has Eurocamp still got it?

Heraclitus said that you couldn’t step into the same river twice. If he’d been a travel agent as well as a Greek philosopher, he would probably have added that you can’t go on the same holiday twice either, especially not if you leave a 25-year gap.

So we weren’t sure if we were being brave or foolish when we booked a family holiday with Eurocamp, the veteran camping business. The company’s pre-erected red and green canvas tents feature in all of my best childhood holiday memories, but those memories may well be rose-tinted, because it was on a Eurocamp trip that I first met my husband.

On the banks of the river Ardèche in southern France in 1992, Paul wooed me with his very best chat up line: “I think I saw some rats down by the river, do you want to come and see?” As a na?ve 15-year old to his mature 16, I thought his post-GCSE ennui very sophisticated.

A quarter of a century and two children later, I’m sure we can’t be the only couple who have the Cheshire-based company to thank for our relationship. When I was looking for a low-key summer holiday last year, I was delighted to find that Eurocamp is still going, its Eighties and Nineties formula of offering a British home-from-home on a European campsite almost as unchanged as Paul’s chat up lines, despite the competition offered by cheap flights, AirBnB and Center Parcs.

We wondered how our well-travelled daughters, who have bathed elephants in Thailand, swum with sea lions in the Galapagos and walked with a tapir through the Amazon jungle, would rate our retro romance trip.

“A ferry?” said Clover, eight, when I broached the subject. “I’d much rather go on an aeroplane,” while Daisy, 10, wanted to know if it was definitely going to be sunny, and if we could swim every day “like in Greece”.

“Of course,” I promised, crossing my fingers behind my back.

We picked our campsite with care, walking the tightrope between the children’s wish for night-time entertainment and an “awesome” pool complex, and our desire for peace and quiet and not too long a drive. Le Clarys Plage, in the Vendée, about an hour’s drive south-west of Nantes on the west coast, ticked most of our boxes. But my hopes for a romantic return to life under canvas were dashed.

It turns out that almost no-one wants to stay in a tent anymore, and so there were none on offer on this particular site. Instead, there was a choice of static caravans offering various levels of luxury.

Our Vista home was somewhere in the middle of the scale, with a wall of glass doors opening out onto a decked area and a separate bunk bedroom for the girls. For a little more money we could have had the Avant, which came with duvets and a dishwasher, while the top-of-the-range Aspect looked bigger than many London flats.

“You’re very lucky. In the olden days only really rich people booked mobile homes,” I explained sternly to the girls. “Everyone else had to go to the loo blocks in the middle of the night with a torch.”

“Cool!” Daisy replied, completely missing the point, while I turned misty-eyed at the thought of the romantic assignations that occasionally ensued on the way to the showers.

Back in the present, recreating the holidays of our teenage years turned Paul and me into our parents. I found myself packing tins of beans and orange squash, despite the availability of a perfectly good supermarket minutes from the campsite. Paul wondered aloud whether you still have to paint your headlights yellow with fluorescent nail varnish to drive on the Continent.

Every one of my childhood holidays involved a drive through France; nothing feels more grown up than buying a hazard warning triangle, unless it is ensuring that you write down the stair and deck number on your ferry to prevent hours of searching when you get into Calais.

One tip for reconciling today’s children to yesterday’s holidays is to start by upgrading your ferry experience. We opted for priority boarding as well as P&O ferry’s version of a VIP lounge, which gave us a private deck and space to spread out. Being first off the ferry at Calais made the nearly seven-hour drive down to the Vendee bearable: we managed it with just one stop.

Another tip is to bring some friends along, preferably those with similarly rose-tinted memories. My sister and best friend, both Eurocamp veterans from childhood, were as eager to repeat the experience as we were, so we ended up with six children in tow for most of the trip, aged from two to 10.

The campsite we’d chosen, mid-size for Eurocamp, had plenty on offer for all age groups. While Eurocamp has canned the cheese-and-wine parties offered to families in my youth, it retains a band of cheerful couriers who sort out maintenance, lend out board games and run popular children’s clubs. The girls enjoyed a chocolate-making session, a film night and an afternoon of arts and crafts, while we enjoyed a few hours off entertainment duty.

We were, however, obliged to attend the “talent” show, where Clover mumbled her way through a puppet performance and Daisy and friends recounted an incomprehensible tale about a vampire. Eurocamp kids' clubs are run in English, though the campsite’s entertainment is trilingual (French-Dutch-English). In fact, I’m not sure the girls spoke a word of French the week we were there - but they did throw themselves down a terrifying waterslide shaped like a snake, they swam and cycled round the site with new friends they’d made at the children’s club.

All of this activity made it difficult to get them off the campsite, even to the beach that was a 10-minute walk away.  

We didn’t fight it. Instead, we moved into a lazy routine of breakfast, kids’ club, swimming, lunch, swimming, kids club, tea, which didn’t leave much time for the improving geographical tours that the campsite puts on for more energetic visitors. The availability of so much cheap and good French wine didn’t help our torpor either, so I’m afraid the salt flats and thatched cottages of the Vendee went unvisited, much to the girls’ delight. We did manage one lunch out, where the children rejected all forms of seafood, and one visit to an authentically picturesque local market.

On rainy days (there were two on our 12-day trip) the mobile home seemed very small. I became as irritated as I remember my mother being when children tracked sand and Lego everywhere, and spent hours closeted in their tiny bedroom playing computer games with the blinds closed. And we were glad to return to a decent-sized bed when we got back to Britain, since a Eurocamp-sized double won’t please anyone used to a bit of sleeping space.

Has Eurocamp still got it? From the perspective of the children, who delighted in the sense of freedom that we can’t give them as preteens in London, the answer was a resounding yes. For the adults, although neither a cheap (at high-season prices) nor a luxurious option, it was a relaxing break with the added bonus of seeing the girls grow in confidence and friendship over the period we were away.

The same river twice it may not have been, but we’re booked in again for this year, and will be spending half of our holiday time at the same campsite. I’m hoping that the slightly posher caravan, with a dishwasher, duvets and bigger beds, might improve the experience. For the other half of the holiday, we’ve booked a Eurocamp tent in the Dordogne, for that authentic midnight-trip-to-the-loo-block experience. Who knows, there may even be some rats down by the river that we can go and see? Early memories are powerful stuff. It turns out that for me, and for my forbearing husband, Eurocamping is still the height of romance.

A week in a Vista caravan at Clarys Plage campsite costs ￡625.10 (per party) for a three-bed, one bath Vista at Clarys Plage campsite, arriving May 25, 2019 (eurocamp.co.uk); a ferry crossing with P&O Dover to Calais costs from ￡40 each way (poferries.com).   

Have you been on a Eurocamp holiday? What are your memories of the travel company? Please leave your comments below.