When we are travelling around we usually select campsites based on their location- if it's somewhere we want to visit, we will go there. If I am searching in a more leisurely way I will look at reviews on here (S.T. Thomas has often reviewed the kind of sites we like), but I never look at Trip Adviser. However, it is quoted, particularly on FB, a great deal.
We don't use TA for anything else either, although it seems that we are out of step with much of the world. Is it an age thing?
------------- Freedom is a light caravan and an open road.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
I never look at TA, it drives me mad when it pops up as you are looking for a destination. I read the reviews on here, often after our stay.....
And always leave reviews on here too.
I do use TA for hotels as that to me was what it was more intended for. Sometimes with the review of campsites you are not sure if they are reviewing permanent accommodation or real camping? The trouble with overseas sites is that it is sometimes difficult to find reviews so perhaps TA might be better than nothing? There are a lot of Facebook Groups now that share reviews of site, usually with photographs but these reviews are not so easy to find once they have been posted.
David
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
------------- * Apple The Campervan - A Van For Work, Rest And Play! *
- 2025 - inc. FR & DE
- 2024 - 10/56 inc. FR & NL
- 2023 - 48 inc. FR
- 2022 - 49
- 2021 - 34
* Ex-tenter & solo female camper *
* Treat life events like a dog: If you can't eat it, play with it, or hump it, p1$$ on it and walk away! *
I would use reviews on UKCS and ACSI camping card site (as it tends to have reviews that are out of season and so are skewed towards that, their eurocampings site isn't as helpful I find) in the first instance. After that I would look at TripAdvisor and if all else fails Google. I usually read the comments carefully on all of them though and not just the rating score - often people mark a site down for the very reason we would like to go there, eg "no facilities for children" is a huge tick for us
Having selected a site I would then use Google maps and click."restaurants" to find decent places to eat nearby.
Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
TA can be useful for photos - not those of a bit of mould in the shower block that some people seem compelled to post - of the facilities and perhaps of the atmosphere in the bar and restaurant. Like other review sites it suffers a bit from little updated content since covid.
I’ll check UKCS first, if there are no relatively recent ones (within a year or two), I will first go to Google maps & link to Google reviews. If they’re equally old, only then do I try TA.
For finding somewhere to eat in a town I don’t know, TA works well. For self catering, I’ve found several places through TA.
We choose our site via UKCS reviews and then head over to TripAdvisor and filter to the one star reviews: they are usually hilariously bonkers. I get a bit uneasy if the site hasn’t got at least a few of them. “Grass was wet - awful”. “Rude owner called police and threw us off site for having a quiet conversation after 10:30pm” They’d make an amusing thread on here, come to think of it