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Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
03/11/2013 at 10:05pm
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Joined: 15/3/2008 Standard Member
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It certainly is a gem.
I just returned from spending 4 nights on La Graciosa with the family, Oct 25th to 29th. The site is, as described above, very basic. Just a marked out area behind the beach at one end of town, with loos and cold showers. But it's free.
But the loos were clean, and the water wasn't actually that cold once you get used to it - and I'm a big wimp as far as cold water is concerned.
You must book in advance, at
http://www.reservasparquesnacionales.es/real/ParquesNac/usu/html/inicio-reserva-oapn.aspx?cen=8&act=+8
What you are actually applying for is permission to camp in a national park. You must specify dates and there's a maximum of 7 nights allowed per booking. You might be able to get more by booking in 2 names, but you do need to specify names and passport numbers for everyone in your party so the system might be clever enough to catch you out.
You will also have to pick a pitch from a map. We chose pitch one, closest to the loos. I was a little worried about the smell, but there was no smell, and it was actually about 50m from them anyway.
A ranger came round on our first morning, to check our details and cross us off his list. He also managed to tell us that we had strayed outside the bounds of our pitch, so we had to shift a bit after breakfast. Each pitch is marked by wooden posts driven into the sand with numbers on. Having found no. 1, we just plonked ourselves next to it, but it turns out there was another post with 1 on it on the other side of our pitch. I think the idea is to go between your number and the next number up, so the posts mark corners, not centres.
The sand is very loose, but there are plenty of rocks available to plonk on top of your pegs. This is highly advisable, because the site is quite exposed in a rather windy part of the world. It blew a constant force 4 to 6 while we were there; with severe gusts during the thunderstorm we were lucky enough to experience. But it was very warm in late October, up to 27C I think, we were never cold. There's no shade on site, on the whole island really, to bring a tent that can provide you some open shade. We took a Decathlon tarp for this, it was invaluable at noon.
The town nearby is very handy for shops - 3 supermarkets and a hardware store - and restaurants. There's also a cash machine. We managed to get meths in the hardware store and I later saw it in smaller bottles in one supermarket. The HW store also had gas, but not to fit the stove I brought. They had camping gaz like this:
http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/campingaz-cv300-cartridge-camping-gas-refill-p118474?gclid=COr6qavKyboCFRMctAodwxsAZQ
but I needed a screw on. But we brought the Triangia too so we were ok.
You could manage fine with no stove really; the restaurants are all fine and not expensive. The shops were cheaper than I had expected too, no obvious scalping going on. This is probably because most people who stay on the island are Spanish, we later heard that La Graciosa is where Lanzaroteans go for a break.
We flew Ryanair into Arricife. From there you need to get to the main bus station in Arricife (bus or taxi, we took a taxi because we wanted to be sure to catch the next bus), then get the bus up to Orzola. Orzola buses are 4/5 times a day. Bus timetables at
http://arrecifebus.com/index.php?lang=en
From Orzola you get a ferry to the island. 2 companies run ferries, alternating with each other, same fares. The ferries and buses match up fairly well, and the bus waits for the ferry if it's late. Ferries are as frequent as every half hour except in the early afternoon - siesta time. They run in pretty rough weather, as we found out when we left, the boatmen seem to know their stuff though; we could see how they took the best route to avoid the really rough parts of the straits.
As with every Canaries campsite we've used, there are a few permanent residents, who seem to be able to get over the 7 night limit. Don't try to pick pitch 5, it's currently home to Ivan, a scrawny young Spaniard. He appeared just as we were cooking on the third night, proceeded to entertain the children and invited us to view his "castle", an old Bell tent with a sofa and plastic patio chairs. He was clearly angling for a meal, which I was happy enough to provide: he was clean and not drunk, and the kids loved him. He was a bit persistent though, and there was a big language barrier. We managed to establish that he's been there 2 years, and I can see that it's a better life than living rough on the streets of Madrid. I'm sure that if any permanent resident caused any trouble the police would have him off the island in the wink of an eye. There were a couple of other pitches occupied in a similar way, but I never saw their occupants.
There’s not a lot to do on La Graciosa but chill out, so it was perfect. We spent 2 days on the beaches, I snorkelled a bit: there are plenty of fish too look at. There’s plenty of interesting volcanic feature to look at, if that interests you.
On our third day we hired bikes and took a loop round the north part of the island, it’s all dirt roads but no great hills to climb. I’d highly recommend you do the same. Bikes were cheap at 8 euro a day each.
Best restaurant we went to was El Varadero, at the foot of the pier. Very friendly and lovely food.
We’ll be back some day.
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Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
03/11/2013 at 10:45pm
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Joined: 15/3/2008 Standard Member
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Very strict weight limits! We are a family of 2+3 kids, so with 5 tickets you get 5 x 10kg cabin bags. We supplemented that with 3 paid for bags (15kg) at £20 each each way. Cheaper than a hotel stay. I think next time we could manage with 2, but need more max size cabin bags.
Ryanair hint: they charge for bags in the currency of the starting country. By booking each leg completely separately, I paid 20 euro for the bags coming back. The whole fare was in euro though, so check what exchange rate their applying. In our case it worked in our favour.
Tents, sleeping bags and anything sharp or liquid went in the hold bags. At Manchester we had to put the rucksack and a big kit bag though the oversize conveyor, where it gets x-rayed before you go. The man said "is that a stove?" I said yes, and he said "you've got no fuel though", which was true. No problem. Don't know if he would recognise a triangia burner as a stove.
Threads on various forums suggest that you might get a stove confiscated on the whim of a bag scanner. Some systems can detect the residual smell from a stove. I boiled the triangia burner which got rid of the methsy smell on the way out, then put it in a ziplock bag. Spanish meths is much purer alcohol, there was no real smell after using it. The gas stove was new, I bought a really cheap compact one in Wilkinsons for about £7 so it wouldn't have been a major loss if it was taken out. I took instructions for making a triangia type burner from 2 coke cans in case the worst happened.
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09/11/2013 at 7:32pm
Location: Cheshire
Outfit: vwt4
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Joined: 25/1/2011 Gold Member 
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We have done the same fly-camp trip for the last 2 years and it works brilliantly. Admittedly we have been 2 adults on our own but would work just as easily bringing the kids.
2 lots of carry on hand baggage, 10 kg, containing personal clothes, shoes, guide books.
1 hold bag, 20 kg, containing 3 man tent, 2 sleeping bags, 2 thermarests, trangia and small back up gas stove. Also 2 pack pillows, 2 small pack chairs all plastic plates, sporks, cooking condiments etc etc. Everything needed to camp fits in one large, carefully weighed holdall!
This summer we flew from Manchester to Venice with Monarch and paid £15 extra for the hold bag. We left this heavy bag at the luggage deposit(7euro a day) and travelled into Venice for a few days.
We then hired a car for 10 days from the airport and toured around the Dolomites, camping where we fancied. It was fairly expensive to camp but nothing compared to hotels.
We finally returned the car to Milan Bergamo airport and flew home with Ryanair. (the one way rental added £50 to the bill but was far cheaper than flying from Venice at the end of August) I can agree that Ryanair £30 hold bag fee is also 30 euro. It feels wonderful to get up on Ryanair!
We generally have short notice of a week or so in high season so being able to fly anywhere with a tent works for us
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Don't forget to leave a review of the French and other European campsites you have visited!
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