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Well, back from our long weekend at Val de Trie which is the site which seemed to prompt Darlin to start this tread. Actually, we had a lovely time! The site is in the countryside attached to a farm (mainly dairy). It is very heavily wooded with lots of tall trees and the pitches, which are fairly large, are marked off, like lots of French sites, by shrubs and hedges. Some pitches were indeed very muddy, though the one we took (we were told to look round the site and choose our own pitch) was fine. Apparantly it had been raining for the best part of 2 weeks when we arrived and of course, with the trees, pitches weren't getting enough sun to dry out even when the weather was okay, hence mud! There seemed to be limited hardstanding so vans were parked on the grass which churned it up. The toilet facilites were newish and very clean, apart from inevitable muddy footprints, but the site overall could have done with a fair bit of maintenance and smartening up. I'd say it was more of a 2* site than 3* and if you paid the high season price inc electric it would have been expensive for what it was. Prices had gone down  when we were there so we paid about 19 euros a night, so still a lot more than a municipal. It was pleasant enough for a short stay though we probably wouldn't go back, but we will definitely go back to the area of the Baie de Somme which was lovely.

We have only had one holiday in France ( 3 weeks in July 2000 ) and 2 nights spent near Calais en route elsewhere, so our experience is very limited. We used Grandspette ( through CC ) , a site east of Paris we found in the CC Europe book, and 3 other sites we booked through the CC, in the Loire, Brittany and Normandy. We have been to plenty of other places all over Europe and we intend to spend much longer in France once we retire, but so far our impression is that ( as was said ) there are not that many sites of the same standard as the CC ones here, and some are a bit disorganised. 

 Having our own facilities means we are not too concerned about showers, dishwashing etc, but good toilets would be nice.  On many sites we have preferred to use all our own facilities, and sometimes even finding a place to empty waste water was difficult. Our Aquaroll and Wastemaster seemed to be quite a source of entertainment on some sites. I have noticed caravanners in many other countries do not use the van facilities much at all. 

Especially in Germany and Italy, we noticed the vans and tents were very close together, in some places almost touching, and there were few marked pitches.  If you said you were only stopping 1 or 2 nights then you got slotted in between other vans and nobody seemed bothered.

Sorry to digress...............

On the subject of prices, we have paid between £12 and £25 for 3 people usually high or mid season.  Some pitches were gravel, others grass, or rather lack of grass, and if it rained then they did have a tendency to turn to mud.  Worst was in Pompeii where we had to stand on the van step to use the BBQ after a thunderstorm left the site under 4 inches of water!