Electrics in France
Comments
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For French hook ups I carry two adaptors - one being wired for reverse polarity - and I also have a plug-in tester for use in the van. I have never had reverse polarity where the blue UK hook ups are installed, but that might be down to luck.
Several years ago I met hook ups which were unsafe, but many of the campsites are now linked to organisations like ACSI, and I think the site owners have to be on their toes because of annual inspections.
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Would agree that an adaptor for 2 pin outlets definitely required, have needed that in France, Spain, Italy and Portugal, but have never bothered our heads about reverse polarity and been blissfully unaware of any problems related to that. Our small camper is fairly minimal on electricity use (fridge & single socket!) so we seem to get away with the 6 amp trickle you get at some sites. We have encountered the locked box phenomenon in Spain and Portugal but they were always prompt to come and ‘release’ us when we were ready for the off. Enjoy yourselves, France is great for touring and the roads are first class.
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Unlike Le Touriste, we have come across CEE17 hook-ups with reversed polarity despite the CEE regs stating which pole should be live and which neutral. We made up our 'rev pol' adaptor using a CEE17 plug and socket and short length of cable.
Our adaptor can cope with rev pol on both types of EHU. We can also deal with the situation where the site staff lock your cable inside the box as soon as you confirm you have a supply and promptly depart!
We too have a key for opening boxes; however, some sites use padlocks!!
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"....but have never bothered our heads about reverse polarity..."
A word of caution about that. Some years ago we stayed on a campsite called Les gravelettes, near Granville in France. Checking the muti-socket EHU bollard, I found that the earthing was not functioing, although all socket earthing pins were connected to each other, and all sockets were affected. I was also concerned because an obvious, rather oldish DIY camper van was plugged in to the same bollard. This meant that a van with correct polarity and one with reversed polarity, on the same bollard could mean that one of the vans would have the live feed going to its neutral side of the van sockets. Also, if one van had a fault where its live feed was leaking to earth, the other van would get a live back-feed to its own earthing system.
An old caravanning friend of ours, now passed on, went one step further. He had a cable with a spike which he attached to his van, and used to drive this into the ground and copiously water the ground around it.
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