Summer 2020 - 5* Campsite in the Forest

Sunday 9th - Monday 10th August 2020
Huge THANK YOU to "Bad Neck" for this recommendation

When we first arrived in France we had put a request out to our YouTube community to give us recommendations for their favourite places to visit.  "Bad Neck" strongly recommended Camping Ardèche, part of the Camping Domaine Les Ranchisses group, and as this was the "mid-point" of our 6 week trip, we decided to push the boat out and explore a new area of France.

Nestled along the banks of the Ruisseau des Chabasses and surrounded by ancient woodland, the pitches at Camping Ardèche are spacious and have wonderful natural shade.  We pitched up quickly, and all the boys went off to explore the swimming pools while I stayed back to knock up a chilli for dinner. 

Everything about this site oozed 5* loveliness. The toilets blocks were beautiful, spacious and cleaned every hour.  The Swimming pools were large and clean with a couple of slides. There was an adult only pool, a wellbeing spa, a 5* restaurant and a snack bar. Even the onsite shop was stocked with high quality local products (as well as the usual loo rolls and toilet chemicals!).  For a few hours we were able to escape the the growing sense of unease that BBC & FCO alerts kept pinging to our phones.

After a fab dinner of chilli and salad, as the boys were washing up the dinner plates, the sky grew dark and within 5 minutes the heavens opened.  What a downpour! George, Harry and I had a wonderful time dancing in the rain before turning in for an early night.

Knowing that each night cost €100, we decided to stay one night and see how we felt before committing to a second night. I had hoped we would get a chance to "mess about" on the river on one of the many canoes and paddle boards available. But we woke up to even more alerts and notifications.  The tone of news from the UK was changing again. Covid-19 numbers in France seem to be spiralling out of control and the UK press were speculating that France would soon be returning to the "Do Not Travel List".

It was an easy decision to leave in the morning, but where exactly should we head to?  Track West along a route of sites recommended by our community, or start tracking North to get ahead of the impending quarantine rules?

https://www.lesranchisses.fr/
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