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The best river access is at either Les Peupliers, or L'Ardechois - and we've been several (or many) times to all three sites!  Val de Cantobre, as Huw says, doesn't have particularly good river access any more, since the farm at the bottom of the hill took possession of their part of the river banks.  There's a good pizzeria, and my sons used to enjoy the 'hanging out with other teenagers' there.  They all loved L'Ardechois, but it isn't cheap - but you can walk into Vallon for the weekly market, for the 'bars' and a bit more life, and the Pont D'Arc is just down river.  We used to bodyboard on those polystyrene body boards from the site down to the Pont D'Arc and then get a bus back up again.  The Tarn is slightly deeper, and slower flowing at Les Peupliers, but good swimming and good canoeing from further up river.  We did a 22km descent last year in our own canoe, being taken up river on the bus from Les Peupliers, and coming back down from Les Vignes to the site boat ramp. 

The 'trips out' from all three are fantastic - you can do canoeing on either the Tarn (Peupliers) or Ardeche (Ardechois) or organised activities such as canyoning, mountain biking, bungee jumping, rafting, climbing, via ferrata, 'go ape' tree type places, and so on, both areas have them in plenty.

Les Peupliers does have the advantage of taking Camping Cheques from 24th August, so you could save a little on the normal site tariff.  I would find it hard to choose betweeen all three, and as I say, we've been to them all many times and may be back again this year, weather permitting.

Hi Huw & Val,

Thanks for your input, we just want to make sure we make the right decision, don't really want two grumpy teenagers for two weeks !

Any other advice you can offer would help !

Ade

My teenage sons were happy at L'Ardechois and Val de Cantobre - they've not been with us to Les Peupliers.  Personally, with teenagers I think I'd choose L'Ardechois - because that's where they actually 'requested' to go at the end of A levels - when we took friends with us and another came down on the bus to Valence.  He then caught a local bus to Aubenas where we picked him up.  At the same time yet another friend was doing 'PGL' work at a nearby site, so one night we had seven teenage boys staying with us.  The pool is not huge, but the river is great for messing around in, and they almost grew up there - I think we probably visited every other year for several years.

It's in a fantastic area, with plenty going on - and yet you're near enough to the coast to have a trip down to La Grau du Roi, which is probably the nearest bit of the Med, if they want to or if the weather's bad.