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We are looking for a site in the dordogne.  We like the looks of soleil plage.  What is the village de la plage like for tents?  We are 2 families looking for adjacent pitches and have been told that they only have ones in this area left for mid August not village de la dordogne.

Also we would want fridge hire but they say 'camping' fridge does anyone know what sort of size this would be?

Any other site suggestions would be appreciated.  We're taking some friends who have had a bad experience of French hospitality and are hoping to change their opinions.

Welcome to UKCS - the best site for information!!!

There have been lots of other postings about Soleil Page - see here for some of them.   We've been, and thought it a lovely site.  We were on the area Village de la Dordogne, though, where we had a fantastic pitch right on the edge of the site, and adjacent to the path going down to the river. 

It's a very popular site, and I'm not surprised that they have no space in certain areas in mid-August. 

I don't know what the pitches are like in that area - but you are nearer to the swimming pools and the central facilities, of the site such as bar, restaurant, shop, etc., which are a bit of a walk from the pitches we were on. 

Perhaps someone else who has been in that area can help.  I know several people have been to Soleil Plage - but I think they've all stayed on the Village de Dordogne part of the site (which we thought was excellent, with a good wash block, etc.)  I know there are reports of ageing washblocks, but this wasn't our experience.

It is a big site, and busy, with lots of British visitors - and quite a lot of mobile homes - and I would imagine in high season would be very 'lively'.  I suppose it depends what you want from a site, really.  If you prefer 'quiet' then it might be better to look elsewhere.

Have you read the reviews here?

Thanks.  I think it will be worth a try.  We've not got a huge tent so if the pitch is a little small, whilst it would be disappointing it won't be critical. 

The site sounds to be the right mix for us - our kids will be 4 and 7 so look for sites likely to have other British children they can mix with they'd be bored with anything too quiet or if they were struggling to communicate.

We've also stayed on larger sites (1000+ in the Languedoc) but it felt like one of the many sites we live near here in Skegness (apart from the weather that is!)

Generally we prefer the slightly smaller sites (around 200 pitches) so that they are still large enough to offer good facilities.

We stayed at l'Etang de la Breche in the Loire last year and so far it's the benchmark, hopefully this one will beat it, we really want our friends to like France as much as we do.

Many thanks for all your replies.  Our friends also like the look of the site from the website. So we're going to book - hopefully tonight.

We just need to decide whether to overnight near the tunnel (use the Tesco vouchers!) and do it in one day with an early start or to leave home early the next day with a stop in France half way.

I prefer the first option as it gains us an extra night on site without an extra days holiday needed.

I'd do the first option if I were you.  It's what we always do.  We take a late night ferry and stay on the French side for our first night, then we're up and away by about 8.00 am and can get well down into France for the second night. 

There are lots of budget hotels on the French side - every town of any size has two or three chain hotels - such as Premiere Classe, B&B, MisterBed, and so on - and you can get rooms sleeping four at some B&B's.  It's a long drive, though, to Soleil Plage, particularly the last cross-country bit, so don't under estimate the driving time needed.  Personally we couldn't even consider doing it now - though in the past (without the caravan) we've driven back from Le Moulinal at Biron to Chateau du Gandspette in one day - and still arrived in time to eat in the restaurant.  Mind you we were with Canvas Holidays then and didn't have to set up or take down any tents!

With 2 drivers (and no trailer or caravan to tow) we're thinking about 10 hours including stops.  Would this be fair? 

Leaving Calais about 8am to arrive on site to pitch about 6pm.

Google maps is suggesting 7hr 50min via Paris we've done Paris before but thankfully my husband was doing the driving! Any preferences on the route down?

SP has just emailed me back saying

"Yes I have 2 pitches from August 14th but not really next to each other.

At this moment it would be pitch 151 and 89, but numbers are not guaranteed if we can put you together, we will do it."

Any thoughts?

151 and 89 are down in the area we were in.  We had pitch 115 which was a cracker.  151 is 2nd back from the river and it's not worth paying extra for a river pitch in my opinion.  I don't know if you've seen the campsite plan (here) but the pitches are not that far away from each other.  Sometimes, in my opinion (and we did camp a lot with friends) it was better to be separated - you had two different sets of neighbours to make friends (or otherwise) with and had your own space when it was apparent you 'just wanted to be alone!'

I'd go for them if I was you.  I don't know the size, but unless you need massive, then none of the pitches looked particularly small to me.

We were at SP in August last year and had a great holiday, helped by two weeks of hot & sunny weather. We were in the village de la Dordogne, and I thought this area of the campsite was more spacious than the other camping area and had a lovely feel to it. Being close to the river was a bonus, although it is more of a walk to the pol, shop etc.

Looking at the two pitches, from my memory 89 was a good size sunny pitch, close to the toilet block. Didn't go down the avenue to 151, but although the pitch sizes did vary quite a bit, none I saw were that small. Although not together, as Val says, they are not too far apart. You may well end up with pitches closer together. We wanted to stay an extra night, and the owner spent a long time working out which bookings she could move around to allow us to stay on our pitch.

We hired a fridge and very glad we did - managed to keep the beers cold even when the temp reached 40 degrees! It was a regular 'under counter' sized fridge, with a small freezer compartment.

I'm sure you'll have a great time!