Travel: How to find the perfect pitch

After 10 years of camping in France, Michael McMahon has the inside knowledge on how to get the best from your site

The children were star-gazing - from their sleeping bags, which they had moved out of their tent, unable to bear the thought of missing any of the meteors falling through the moonless mountain sky. Their low chatter was punctuated by firework-night "oohs!" and "ahs!", but the adults, reflective in their cups, sat at the candle-lit table in contented silence, reverent before the infinite heavens above the Alpes de Haute Provence.

It was our tenth year camping in France, I was thinking, and we had finally found it: the perfect campsite. Perfect for us, that is, and for our style of camping. We have four children, a modest income and a sense of adventure. A fortnight on sprung mattresses in a village of tents someone else has pitched is not for us, even if we could afford it. So, every summer we have just packed our kids into the car and our equipment into a trailer, crossed the channel and headed south.

We like to be free to tour, to potter, or to linger until our mood or the weather changes. Sometimes we might phone ahead to book our first night, but beyond that the deal is always open-ended. As the years go by, we've got better at spotting the good sites and staying longer in them. And we stayed in our "perfect" site for a week: a record for us.

But then it was rather a special place. We were in the heart of the Pays de La Motte-Turriers, a rural backwater north-east of Sisteron, where Provence and the Alps meet and merge in a unique terroir that has been miraculously unblemished by man. To be living en plein air in such a place more than doubles the enjoyment: you don't just look at it, you become part of it, blending into the landscape of mountains, valleys, rivers, forests and flowers. There's nothing between you and the countryside except a thin layer of tenting - and that, only at night. Staying in a hotel, a gite or even a caravan (however beautifully situated) is nothing like it. It's the difference between swimming in a river and skimming a stone over it.

At 2,297ft (700m) above sea level, our perfect campsite was Le Clot du Jay, on the edge of the tiny village of Clamensane. Unlike many sites, its pitches are large, and these are tucked naturally into the hillside that melts into the forests behind. Showers and loos are cleaner and better than average, and there is swimming in a fine little pool commanding mountain-peak views, or in the lake in the meadow beside the river. Upstream is excellent trout fishing and a spectacular 100ft waterfall. Well signposted footpaths leave the site. When we took them, we saw eagles, deer and marmots, picked wild strawberries and drank from mountain springs.

There are countless campsites in France, of course, and we've had almost as much fun in many of the rest of them. But if you are thinking of taking a pot-luck camping holiday like this, you can stack the odds in your favour by following a few tips.

First, it's worth buying and learning how to use the excellent Michelin camping guide, Camping Caravaning France, which lists details of 3,500 sites throughout the country, is published annually and is readily available in Britain. There are notes, explanations and a useful glossary of camping terms in English, French, German and Dutch. Facilities and prices are listed, and each site is awarded a mark on a five-point scale.

There is, however, a knack to interpreting the book. We long ago found that the higher the number of points, the less likely the site would suit us. Top marks tend to go to places with features we want to avoid: discotheques, supermarkets, and the like. Swimming, however, we do want, especially for the children: so we look for places marked as having pools or bathing, as well as showing the rocking-chair symbol which signifies peace and quiet. And if an area has campsites so thick on the ground (as in the Ardeche and the Dordogne, for example) that they can't fit into the standard scale map, we steer clear: it's unlikely to be our kind of camping, however beautiful the countryside.

Second, if you must go in the first three weeks of August, phone the next campsite you hope to stay in to make sure that they have an available space. Otherwise, you stand a good chance of being turned away, or - worse - reduced to accepting the pitch that everyone else has rejected: the one next to the humming dustbins, the clanging lavatories, or the telephone cabin from which animated adolescent conversations will spill out long and loudly into the night.

Even when several pitches are available, though, the inexperienced camper can make a disastrous choice. At different times we have set up shop in some pretty unwise places: on an ants' nest (it teemed), just above a site's septic tank stink-pipe (it stank), and (worst of all) right beside a bit of rough ground that turned out to be the village boules pitch on (inevitably) the night of a grand concours de clackety bloody petanque.

Third, be prepared. Be prepared for extremities of weather - especially in mountains. Everyone in our family can remember a night in the Pyrenees when we sat huddled in the porch of our tent, watching sheet lightning play from peak to peak as it moved towards us: at 3,445ft above sea level, the storm raged not only above and around us, but in the valleys below us, too. Smashing, ear-drum-rending thunderclaps rolled over us, followed by great waves of huge hailstones which roared upon the tent till we thought it would split, and beat on the car with a sound like a wildly over-revved engine. But we can also remember how our exhilaration subsided into sodden despair when we retired to the sleeping compartment to discover that our brand new tent had not been properly waterproofed. We should have checked it (and all the rest of our equipment) before leaving. (The French for waterproofer, by the way, is impermeabilisateur. Applying it is easier than pronouncing it.)

And if the weather does turn against you, or if the place doesn't suit, be prepared to move - but make sure you get to the next site early enough to set up shop comfortably. Arriving with over-heated children after the pool has shut does not put you in the best frame of mind to rise to the challenge of pitching your tents in the dark. Take a first-aid kit. Supplement the obvious things (sun, minor injuries, tummy upsets) with stuff to deal with insect bites, both prevention and cure. We always carry a can of Wasp-eze with us - and we use it, as much for horse-flies as anything else. I used to think those silently malicious creatures were so named because they bothered horses; I now believe it is because many of them resemble horses - in size. (Anti-histamine tablets can offer instant relief. Take some.)

But be prepared for the good things, too; for the sight of a morning mist burning off a big brown river, or the touch of an icy stream after a hot day's walk, or the taste of a mountain spring in a forest which smells of pine, thyme and rosemary. In short, be prepared for the things that only the outdoor life in France can give you.

CAMPING IN FRANCE

GETTING THERE

The author's favourite camp-site is Camping Clot du Jay, Clamensane, 04250 (tel: 00 33 492 68 32 29; fax 00 33 492 68 38 73). If you want to have a taste of camping in France without committing yourself to a long journey to the south, try the Camping Anse du Brick, Maupertus-sur-Mer, 50840 (tel: 00 33 233 54 33 57; fax 00 33 233 54 49 66) which is only 20 minutes from the port at Cherbourg, in Normandy, and has a charming woodland ambience, excellent facilities and a beautiful sheltered beach. A night in a reasonable campsite can cost a family of six anything between pounds 20 and pounds 30.

FURTHER INFORMATION

A really good website with lots of information about an excellent region for camping is www.provence-beyond.com.