Summer Escapes: Unforgettable Campervan Destinations on the French Atlantic Coast

Spring is on its way and now is the time to start planning for our summer campervan adventures. In this video, we’re taking you on a journey to discover some of the most unforgettable campervan destinations along the stunning French Atlantic Coast.

Join us as we explore the sandy shores, wild & rugged beaches, and charming seaside towns that make this coastline a perfect summer escape for campervan enthusiasts. From the iconic beaches of the surf south west to the hidden places of Atlantic Islands, we’ll showcase the diverse beauty and endless adventures that await. In addition, we will offer you our top tips for planning a summer adventure to this beautiful part of the world.

Whether you’re a seasoned road tripper or planning your first campervan adventure, this video offers valuable insights and inspiration to help you plan the ultimate summer escape. Get ready to hit the road, soak up the sun, and create memories that will last a lifetime.

We are Richard and Jackie and we live in the UK. We retired from teaching at the age of 51 in the summer of 2022. Our plans for early requirement include relocating to the Yorkshire Dales, developing our forever home and travelling the UK, Europe and eventually the world in our VW campervan Nelson.

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Richard & Jackie

00:00 Thinking of a summer campervan trip?
01:40 The South West Atlantic beaches of France campervan destinations
06:02 The Vendee & the Atlantic Islands of France campervan destinations
11:13 Historic Brittany campervan destinations
14:03 Our top tips for a campervan roadtrip to the French Atlantic Coast

Hi we’re Richard and Jackie from early retirement Wonder lust we’ve just got back from our Winter Ski trip to the Alps and naturally at this time of year our mines turn to the summer and the adventures ahead last summer we toured the French Atlantic coast and we thought

We’d take this opportunity to take you through some of our favorite destinations that you might like to visit on the French Atlantic Coast So if you’re anything like us it’s the end of March and our thoughts have definitely turned to planning our summer trips and we thought in our next few videos that we would take you through some of our favorite destinations that we’ve been to in our VW Camper van for

The last 6 years so last year we toured the French Atlantic coast and we thought we’d take this opportunity to revisit some of our favorite destinations and hopefully give you some ideas of where potentially you could travel down that Atlantic coast and within that trip it almost felt like we had three separate

Holidays in one didn’t it we started off on the Southwest Atlantic Coast where it was just really wild and windy and the beaches were fantastic for Boogie boarding and watching the kite surface then we moved up to the French islands we visited the olon and the ilder and

Notier which were just fab and then we had the historic bit when we were up in Britany so we had a bit of everything we started last year’s road trip by sailing into Northern Spain so our first stop off in Southwest France was beitz it’s somewhere where we both wanted to visit

For quite some time because it is renowned as a very glitzy sort of surf capital of that region and it didn’t disappoint we stayed at a campsite just outside the town and then we used our bikes to cycle in and it was a really really strange experience because you’ve

Got a whole host of different beaches that are completely surrounded and encapsulated by the town it’s got quite a a Victorian feel about it but it’s very glitzy it’s a great place to sit and have a coffee and watch people wander by and the beaches are quintessentially French Town beaches I

Really enjoyed though we sat CED a little bit further north of bayit and we hit a beach called anglet and that was the iconic surf beach and it had a boardwalk with all stars with all the famous Surfers that had been there over the years uh there was just a really

Nice atmosphere there so then from the very glitzy Center of beit we then moved on yeah we found an air at a place called Capron the air is huge you could park at least a 100 motor homes there it’s a basically a beach car park it was

€13 a night a little man comes around with his machine that takes you13 so there’s no escaping that which is Fab and a little Bread Van came around in the morning every day the one downside to this air was obviously we don’t have onboard facilities in the VW and the

Toilets were the very very very traditional self-cleaning public L that France seems to love and they were disgusting but didn’t have to use them very often the beaches there were just amazing we spent a couple of days there in the end because we loved it that much

Uh we could watch the kite Surfers there were some really amazing Surfers cuz the swell was great while we were there it was just such a lovely place and there was just such a lovely chilled out atmosphere there was sort of Music drifting from some of the different Vans

Um they didn’t mind you getting tables and chairs out it was a nice atmosphere and it had a great little Beachside bar just at the top of the the boardwalk over to the beach so it it had that very relaxed summer feeling that Everyone likes we then headed further north to

Massages which is again another bit of a surf mea um we stayed at a really basic campsite it was a municipal campsite it was gray it was Back to Basics but it was based just behind the Junes again on a fantastic Beach and we just really enjoyed our time there and got the

Opportunity to get the bikes out yeah we took the bikes with us and for the first time we actually used them loads there was lots of forest cycle paths that we could go on you could go along the beach fronts we had a blast and one of the

Most bizarre things that we were a little bit disturbed at to start with in the town we thought that there was a bull fighting ring but then when we did a little bit of research behind that the region is known not for bull fighting but for bull vaulting so the whole town

Comes together in this little mini stadium and the men take their opportunities to jump over bulls that are running at them quite a bizarre Sport and then our final destination on the Southwest coast of France was at bicar Ross we actually liked it that much we stayed there for three or four

Nights the campsite that we found through the axi system was actually a bargain if we hadn’t got the card it would have been about €35 a night and I think we paid €21 and the facilities were Fab we were right by the beach and in the forests the surf Beach was

Amazing and we had quite a few nights there where we just took our lovely little flask of ink wine and sat and watched the sunsets one place that we visited but we didn’t actually stay was the junees dilat which is Europe’s highest sand June we would really

Recommend you going to visit it it was quite an experience climbing it one of the reasons we didn’t stay is most of the campsites were still closed they’d had a huge forest fire a couple of years ago but I think they were pretty much ready to open this year so yeah I would

Definitely stay if we had the chance moving on to the next section is the Von D and the Atlantic Islands to be honest we passed through the Von D pretty quick because we’d spent quite a bit of time there in the past and if we were really

Honest we were really impatient to get to the Atlantic Islands because we knew what a treat that we were going to have in store so the first island that we visited was the ilder olon that we’ve never been to before and actually I really enjoyed it it was so much quieter

Than when we’ve been to the ere it was an absolutely stunning Island we stayed on a camping hopia site that was based right by the beach we had some amazing sunsets that we could go and watch and the cycling on the island was Fab we did

A 40 km cycle and probably only got about 20 M of ascent on all of that cycle right up to the lighthouse which was beautiful and we did come past some really great surfing beaches we sat for about 3 hours and sunbathed it was just

A really nice slow pace of life and a quieter Island and the use of bikes is a common theme across all of the Atlantic Islands so when you’ve seen bike paths before you’ve not seen bike paths like this so you can literally Park your campan up and you can rely on bikes to

Get around the rest of the island these are designated cycle ways they are 9% of the time away from main roads or definitely separated from the main roads and there is just no need to move your van we then move further north to the Ade that we’ve been to quite a few times

Before the ilder is probably one of the destinations to go to in France and it is really really popular and you do need to bear that in mind because whether you’re going in High season or low season it can be quite difficult to find places to stay and we would absolutely

Recommend that you book in advance we were lucky enough to get on to another Utopia site and we stayed there for round about a week because it’s such a happy place and the campsite was actually in the middle of the island which doesn’t sound ideal to some people

Who would maybe prefer to be by the beach but it was just so well located we could cycle into the two Villages of St Martin D and FL which are stunning and we would go and have a bottle of Rosé and just watch the harbor life and watch

People quite interesting and yeah there was just so much to do from that campsite The Villages of the eer have to be an absolute highlight and as you cycling around the Island you will just not believe the beautiful places that you stumble upon whether it be as Jackie

Says some of the the major tourist destinations or whether it’s just the tiny little hamlets that are around the island if you’ve got a motor home or camper van with its own facilities there is a free air that’s really well located in the island I do think at peak times

You struggle to get on there because obviously the island is a very popular destination but it’s worth a thought yeah and if you are visiting the ilder I would definitely of all the places that we’ve mentioned book your camp sites earlier rather than later low season or

High season it was really busy and then we headed further north to nouer now we’d not really heard of that before and we definitely think it’s something that’s been kept a little bit secret it’s a French enclave and the French love it and there weren’t many British

People there we really enjoyed that time on noer one of the things that stood out for me was the block houses I saw them on Google Map and I was like what is a block house and actually all along the beach where our campsite was based were

These Old World War II ruins but what we really liked about the blouses is that the local graffiti artists have transformed them with some stunning artwork we spent a Fab afternoon just exploring them climbing on top of them having a picnic around there it is a

Really nice Island now we didn’t stay at Utopia site uh we were going to stay at a serviced air on the island but then we realized for a couple of Euros more we could stay at the municipal campsite that was right next to the air and have

The facilities of the swimming pool and the shower and toilet blocks and we had a great time there it was a very French and very basic campsite but just exactly what we wanted and it was just a small walk over the Junes down onto the beach

And we were I think the only English people on a very busy campsite we did cycle up to the local town that was about 7 mil further into the island and there was a lovely camping hopia site there that perhaps if we were to visit the island again we would stay at

Because you would have access to the town one of the really interesting things about nouer is that its main industry seemingly is salt farming so whenever you cycled around the island you could see these flooded s of ponds that they used to evaporate the water from and you could get some very

Renowned numer salt from there to get to ntier you have to go over a big bridge but interestingly and one of the reasons I want to return is there’s also a Causeway that floods at high tide and you can cycle on and off the island

Through that and I’d love to have a go at that so moving on from Island life the next place that we visited was Britany and we did a bit of a historic tour there we started off in the ancient town of Vans which was just stunning we

Explored the ramp parts we then moved on to Conan which is a bustling and yet historic Seaside town it’s a center for sailing it’s got a medieval fortified Castle seemingly in the middle of the harbor and it is just a beautiful place to stop off and sample some real Britany

Life and we were on a bit of a quick bus stop tour really because we didn’t have long left in Britany so the last historic town that we visited was kimpe which we were there on a Sunday morning it was actually quite nice we just had a

Lazy coffee watching life go by just outside the cathedral which is absolutely stunning before we moved on to a really nice Beach town of camaret we actually stayed at a service air there and for us it was a bit of a new experience but it worked out really

Well it was close to the town center we had a bit of a pole down to the town center which had what could only be described as a boat graveyard um with the these incredible wrecks of boats that we spent seemingly hours photographing and just exploring the

Highlight for us from our Brittany part of the tour was when we were actually heading back towards the ferry and we stopped off in danan danan for me might have actually been the highlight of our whole trip it was the most stunning town we started off finding a free motor home

Air that we could stay on which is basically a field that they’d opened up underneath the huge arches of the road Network then as you walk up to the historic town it’s got lots of cobbled streets lots of cafes around there and the timber framed houses were just

Beautiful we had a bit of a tip off from some of the research that we’ done that the town is absolutely rammed during the course of the day and it was and it was really husty bustly but then the guide book said if you wait till after 6:00

The town literally just empties out and we had a lovely night wandering around just capturing everything on fil film and it was just a beautiful place to stop and there’s also a harbor that you can walk along and the night we were there it was really calm and still and

The photography of the lights of the Town reflecting on the river was just stunning so if you are sailing out of samalo or khah then danan is a really good stop off point for campanas and motah homas and we’d absolutely recommend it and in the future if we are

Are traveling out of those ports we’ll definitely use it as a stop off so after our 4 weeks of traveling up the French Atlantic Coast we have got a few top tips for you the main one being we thought that we would be able to do a

Lot more wild camping or find a lot more Park ups that were free for the night and that really wasn’t the case if we wanted to stay right by the coast we found a few airs that were cheaper but the wild camping is very very limited we traveled in June which is still

Technically classed as low season so we took advant AG of the axi card which for those of you that don’t know it is a discount scheme where you can get discounted pictures on a whole host of campsites um and it served us really well because in reality we weren’t

Probably paying much more than you would pay for an air and yet we’d got all the advantages of Electric hookup and all the facilities that we would need we also found as we got closer to July that the campsites were getting really busy and we did turn up a couple of campsites

And we couldn’t get on because they were full so I would say that particularly if you’re traveling in the schools summer holidays you absolutely do need to book and pre-plan your journey um and actually as you got closer to the 7th of July when the French schools broke up I

Think on hindsight we would have perhaps booked some of our campsites in terms of getting there there are so many different Ferry options and so many different ferry prices so you could choose to take the cheapest over to Cal Crossing but that then would leave you

With quite a long drive across France or conversely you could sail like we did into Northern Spain which was considerably more expensive but it did save on the driving and to be fair we were exploring Northern Spain at the same time somewhere in between you’ve

Got the options of Sher Borg K and S Marlo something that we have found on our travels is to make sure that you stay in a place for more than one night if you only stay for one night you don’t actually get any time on either of those

Days to explore your surroundings so we do try and stay at least two or three nights in any of the places that we visit in terms of guide books we use the Martin Dory take the slow road to France we like all of Martin dory’s books

Because we think uh the road trips that he recommends in all of his books whether it be France or the UK are really really good there were so many hidden gems and we pretty much stuck to his itinerary within these books and we’d thoroughly recommend them it’s not

A sponsored link but we just love his writing so hopefully if you like beach and Coast life we’ve given you lots of ideas of places that you could visit if you were going along the French Atlantic Coast including the islands but if you like your mountains in our next video we are

Going to do a similar format but we are going to take you to some of our favorite European Alps destinations for summer travels so that’s about it from us y see you later Bye [Applause] You