Familiar Places or Pastures New?

Our haunts have concentrated mainly on Cornwall, with Yorkshire close behind.  Done a bit of Wales, but it doesn't beckon to us.    Have done France for a number of years (motor caravan and caravan), and toured much of the midi-Pyrenees when we had the motor caravan.

We have said we would not go to Cornwall again, because we "had done it to death" over many years, but then some touring programme comes on the TV showing scenes we are familiar with, and there we go - planning yet another holiday in Cornwall.

France is still our favourite, but the recent collapse in the value of Sterling against the Euro has dented things a bit. At the moment, one good French holiday costs as much as two good ones in the UK.  We can get better deals, and with serviced pitches, in France than with CMC sites, but the combined ferry and Red Pennant costs are a killer.

On our summer jaunt in Europe we like to travel to different locations.

our first year was 2weeks in France, the following year, a week in Portugal, a week in Spain and a week in France.

This year was a week in Switzerland a week in southern Italy then a week in Lake Garda.

Next year is in the planning stages but looking like Southern France, Elba and the third destination not yet decided on.

This time of year we spend time researching locations, routes and sites.

Touch wood, it’s a good system as we seem not to have had a bad holiday yet!

You can replace your N&P account with a MetroBank one - they also offer transaction and conversion fee free withdrawals on their debit card, there is no minimum payment into the account, no need for 'regular' payments such as your salary/pension, and no minimum number of transactions per month.  Accounts have to be opened in branch - and most branches are in the south - but branches are planned in our area in the next year or so.  We opened ours in Peterborough.

We have a holiday home in France, as well as a caravan there,  and there is no doubt that costs of holidays there have risen, but as campsites are such good value in low season, there is free parking almost everywhere, and interesting places to visit are not in a 'National Trust' type scheme where you pay to park and pay to enter, but are more often than not free of charge, we still find we spend no more in France than we do in this country.  We can find beachside parking alongside lovely bays, free of charge, so we spend nothing, we can drive to and walk around Cathar castles, we can swim in fantastic cascades and rivers, we can watch birds of prey from our caravan or our roof terrace, and we can walk in forests, and beachside cliff paths and all these things cost us nothing other than the fuel to get to some of them.

We store our caravan in France so our ferry costs are cheaper with just a solo car.  Our storage costs 180 euros per year - half what we paid ten years ago for storage in this country - and we rarely pay road tolls.  If there are others like us, who rarely caravan in this country, then it's worth considering the option of storage in France.  We have paid as little as 11 euros last year for a very nice site alongside a river, with good clean 'Sanitaires' and very friendly site owners and staff.  We also got 7 nights for the price of 6, so an eight night stay cost us around £8.25 per night.  We don't use Red Pennant - but we don't need all the 'bells and whistles' it offers - we have breakdown insurance for car and caravan, and we take out an annual health insurance policy which covers us for longer stays in France - but in thirty odd years have never needed to claim.  We have both seen doctors and dentists, but the amounts charged have been so reasonable that they wouldn't exceed the excess.  We've only needed breakdown insurance twice and each time it has been sorted out whilst we've still continued with our holiday.

Back to the original topic, like others, we prefer a mix of the familiar and a change of scenery.  We use the site we store on as a base, then decide 'where do we go from here'.  We make sure we choose at least one new site each holiday.... and sometimes these become additional favourites, sometimes we never revisit them - and on one occasion we really didn't like the 'new' site, so didn't stay there at all but went further down the road to another (familiar) site.

I think the familiar combined with the new is the best of all combinations.  However there are still new countries in Europe we want to visit - but with the caravan in France most of South Europe seems a much easier option than it ever was from England.