La vie est belle in our little home on wheels

Or, how Wayne Hemingway and his family learned to stop worrying and love France, the caravan and dry-stone walling

The Hemingway family has journeyed through central America in a minibus, travelled through the deserts of Egypt and Oman in a 4WD, and roughed it in far north Queensland and the Northern Territories, but two things we have so far avoided are France and caravanning. The Caravan Club may be signing up 50,000 new members a year, but the idea of driving at 50mph with regular stops to open your flask on a lay-by and then spending a week in a soggy field fills us with as much excitement as a dry-stone walling course, or joining a Cavaliers-and-Roundheads re-enactment society.

But then I read about the Pod: a "retro-futuristic", odd but cool-looking vehicle that doubles up as trailer and mini caravan. It has a kitchen, washing facilities, two berths and an awning. You can even unclip the base and turn it into a table, with your feet dangling towards the ground beneath. A really neat piece of design that can be pulled along at speed. Satisfied that my cool rating wouldn't be downgraded (but still worried about soggy fields full of families in shell suits), we took the overnight Brittany Ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo. Ferries seem to have changed a lot – comfortable cabins, decent food – but thankfully there was still the obligatory cheesy band, seemingly confused, playing "Ferry 'Cross the Mersey" when we were in fact crossing the Solent.

We drove south along the beautiful Loire Valley on deserted roads, through sleepy villages. At Saumur thick grey mist descended. I was intrigued by a tourist sign announcing "Troglodytes". Much to the disappointment of our five-year-old, the Trogs weren't Stig of the Dump-style friendly beasts, but equally strange characters keeping alive a local tradition of living in damp caves, in return for scraping a living as tourist entertainment.

It was time to find our first planned "hook-up", a few kilometres north of Chatellerault ("twinned with Corby". The campsite, Château Le Petit Trianon de Saint Ustre, was in the grounds of a chateau: the facilities were excellent and the owners were disarmingly friendly. We spent a couple of days cycling along truly rural lanes past wonderful old farmhouses bearing "For Sale" signs, no doubt designed to seduce property-obsessed Brits looking for cheap second homes.

We spent much of our time in the heated swimming pool, eating in the Pod and visiting the nearby Planète Futuroscope, a theme park which is far more intelligently designed than all the Disney locations put together, and where you don't have brainwashed actors prancing around dressed in silly outfits.

But the damp mist wouldn't lift and we hadn't driven this far just to sit in a soggy field, so we broke camp at the crack of dawn next day and headed for the coast. Within a couple of hours we were driving under clear skies and entering the Marais Poitevin, an area of wetlands criss-crossed by rivers and drainage channels and dotted with wonderful, deshabillé houses and barns.

It's great to be on holiday and suddenly come across somewhere as beautiful as this. We put our visit to the beach on hold and found a caravan site – where we discovered to our delight that the Pod was classified as a trailer rather than a caravan, and so we were only charged for our tents. We hired bikes and had one of the most enjoyable days imaginable, pedalling along flat, well-signposted, carless routes. We spent hours cycling beneath crystal blue skies, over rickety bridges. Sometimes we crossed canals by self-pulling chain boats. We stopped to watch kingfishers skim waters teeming with huge fish.

Overnight the mist returned and showed no signs of clearing. We broke camp that morning in a record 30 minutes, and a mere two hours later we were set up again under cloudless skies on the Ile de Ré. Again we had no idea what to expect, but had found a gem.

Ile de Ré is a 30km long narrow strip, comprising sand dunes and sandy-beach fringed land, scored with Dutch-standard flat, family-friendly cycleways. Our campsite was at the Ars end of the island, next to the beach at Phare des Baleines.

This beach is a sand-dune and forest-fringed arc with giant, Second World War invasion bunkers which provide great sun shelters and play areas for kids. Add to this a supply of large, flat stones that we built into windbreaks and mini houses and we had committed three of our listed sins against the "cool life" in one day: caravanning, re-enactments and dry-stone walling. If there had been a train network on the island we'd have probably pulled on our cagoules and started recording the locomotive numbers.

Days four and five of our six-day trip were spent cycling from beach to beach, sailing in dinghies, eating mussels, sampling oysters, which apart from tourism are the lifeblood of the island, and spotting the icon of the island, dreadlocked Rastafarian donkeys.

We split the 400-mile return journey north to Caen with a beach stop at La Boule. As you enter the town there are signs proclaiming it to be "The Coast of Love" and "The Best Beach in Europe". The beach is indeed pretty impressive, with miles of fine, white-sanded slopes and excellent beach restaurants.

With its enormous crescent shaped bay, and a promenade full of high-rise hotels, it looks like Rio, only without the dramatic backdrop, big surf, kids playing football and samba rhythms.

If you're into big, lively, sunny beach resorts then La Boule is worth a few days' visit; it added another dimension to our great, cheap holiday.

The Facts

Getting there

Brittany Ferries (0870 536 0360)

Two adults and four children in one car can travel from Portsmouth to St Malo from £189, (from £297 with a caravan in tow).

Being there

Pod caravans (01984 632 322; www.podcaravans.com) are from £4,800. A Rentapod hire service launches next spring, prices from £120 a week.

Château Le Petit Trianon de Saint Ustre, Ingrandes sur Vienne, via Eurocamp Independent (08709 060604; www.eurocampindependent.co.uk).

Marais Poitevin: Camping La Venise Verte, Coulon (00 33 54 935 9036).

Ile de Ré: Les Perouses, St Clément des Baleines (00 33 54 629 2518).

Further information

Planète Futuroscope, Poitiers (www.planete-futuroscope.com).