Introduction

This article is about using camp sites in Europe for your camper van, specifically ones that offer ACSI discounts out of season. There are other options of course. Many van owners like “wild camping” but it is risky, uses up the leisure battery and in many countries is illegal, so we choose to avoid that. There are also dedicated camper van parks (known as “aires” in France and “Stellplätze” in Germany), which are slightly cheaper but very austere, normally just rows of vans on a concrete car park, so we only use them In an emergency.

Checking in

This is always slightly nerve-wracking because you never know exactly what awaits you.

Problems can start even before you arrive, because the directions can leave a lot to be desired and postcodes can be inaccurate. So it can take ages and numerous forced wrong turns before you even find the place. It’s quite likely that reception will not even be open, because they tend to have varying opening hours which you can’t predict in advance. Certainly in most European countries there is a lengthy lunch break from around 12 to 3. It’s possible that you might have to park up outside the determinedly shut barrier for a couple of hours before being granted admission. Then of course there is the question of whether they actually have any space, which is in the lap of the gods because you don’t know what special events may or may not be on. 0ften, different European countries will have a variety of bank holidays which you are unaware of but which mean that the campsite is fully booked. So you present yourself at reception and have no idea whether you’re going to be treated with grumpy resignation (mainly at the larger chain establishments) or greeted with wild enthusiasm and huge admiration of your sweet and rather unusual little campervan. Sometimes you will have to present your passport and fill out copious forms with numerous personal details; in other places they simply wave you through without taking any details at all. Normally you will be presented with an unintelligible map of the campsite and try to navigate the illogical numbering system before you eventually find your spot. You will be given details of all the rules and regulations and the location of things like bathrooms, waste disposal etc. At that stage you will be free to set up. For me, setting up has three main components: firstly, winding down the legs at the back of the van in order to stablilise it. This is an awkward activity, very squeaky because in 11 years I have still never remembered to oil it, which would make things a lot simpler. Then the gas needs to be switched on, again a slightly uncomfortable activity, and finally the rather intimidating procedure of plugging in the electricity. This entails untangling the cable, carrying it across swathes of sometimes wet grass and attempting to locate the plugin spot, which may or may not have a compatible plug. One thing you learn very early in campervanland is to take a variety of connections, otherwise you may be stuffed.

Facilities

Sites very enormously in what they offer in the way of amenities. Currently we are on one that has a swimming pool and a snack bar but last week we were on one that had neither of those and nothing to offer in bad weather. Normally there are facilities for washing clothes but how they actually work can vary enormously and often entail buying tokens to insert into the machines. Attempting to construct a washing line between two trees can be awkward and mainly is verboten anyway. Similarly, you never know what it is going to confront you in the way of showers, but one thing all showers have in common is they are far too small and offer no way that your clothes will not end up drenched as you shower. Sometimes these, too, will require a token and the four minutes allocated need to be calculated cleverly, unless you want to end up still covered with suds when the water runs out. The water of course can vary from blisteringly hot to icy cold. A squeegee on a pole is normally provided so you can make a token attempt at swishing the floor, which has no perceivable effect on the hygiene.

The toilets, well, where do I start? Will there be toilet paper provided? You don’t know in advance. If it is provided, will it have run out? You have no way of knowing until you are ensconsed. Will the loos even have toilet seats? Not in France they won’t. Will there be a chance of a “flush and run” special? Yes, in France, certainly. Your relationship with fellow human beings that you do not know is shockingly intimate in these communal facilities. I can’t speak for the ladies, but certainly the extraordinary and horrible noises that men make when doing their early morning functions are beyond belief and I recommend only using these facilities at a quiet moment like lunchtime when everybody has retreated into their caravans for a lie-down. Sometimes the toilet blocks incorporate all three elements, the wash basins, the toilets and the washing-up facilities in a single room. There are certain points of etiquette that need to be followed. I noticed this very morning guys coming out after a poo and washing their hands in the washing-up area. I got into terrible trouble last year on a site in Germany when I was discovered washing my socks in what turned out to be a washing-up area rather than a sockwashing area. It was a genuine error but someone spotted me and dobbed me in with the camp management, who came and remonstrated. It was a rare occasion for me to pretend that I was an Innocent Englishman who spoke no German and they forgave me.

On the subject of washing up, I have a question for those of my friends who are in long-term relationships. Do you ever consider doing anything at all without your partner? I only ask because at the time of year we travel, the people using the campsites are virtually 100% middle-aged heterosexual couples who seem to be so unwilling to be separated from their other half even for 10 minutes that they have to do the washing up together. They stand side by side, one washing and the other drying, but there’s never any suggestion of communication between the two, so you do wonder what benefit is being gained for either of them. I don’t think the quality of the washing and drying up is likely to be enhanced by having two people rather than one doing it, but I am invariably the only solo washer-dryer to be seen.

Miscellaneous

Campsite restaurants don’t tend to be very good. Sometimes they will advertise pizza but I have learnt nothing to contradict my normal approach that you should never buy a pizza from a restaurant whose speciality is not pizza. We tend to travel out of season so it’s not sensible to assume that the campsite restaurants or bars will actually be open or have anything beyond a minimal offering. Emptying your toilet in the morning is always a fun experience, as you join a queue of people carrying their piss-filled containers and with a beady eye checking that you are following the correct etiquette. This is of course after spending at least a quarter of an hour trying to locate the toilet disposal area in the first place, normally hidden in a far corner. The ability to fill your camper with water is also challenging and it makes sense to carry a wide range of connecting devices for attaching your hose pipe.

Dumping wastewater requires complicated forward and reverse movements with the van to position the waste tap exactly over a drain. Either that or try and discreetly open the tap on the pitch your occupy. This only works if it is a grass pitch and it’s fraught with danger if anyone should spot you doing it and tells the authorities.

Wi-Fi can be quite a conundrum, with great variations in provision. A few sites will offer free Wi-Fi but it rarely works in a satisfactory way because everybody is on it all the time, thus depleting its effectiveness. In that case, clusters of people lurk around reception, where the signal is strongest. Others ask you to pay a daily fee, sometimes with a minimum of two or three days. One place this year offered 30 minutes free and required payment after that and on one site the rather snooty lady said “You are on holiday and shouldn’t be using Wi-Fi so we don’t provide it.” She had a point, of course.

One perhaps unexpected thing that can crop up, especially in Germany, is the issue of how to pay. We were faced this year with several campsites that only accepted cash payments. Luckily these were ones we had contacted in advance so had been pre-warned, but it’s quite possible to arrive at the site and the first you know about payment conditions is a sign in the window. It’s equally possible that you will find yourself at a site that only accepts card payments and no cash, so it’s crucial to take a supply of each with you.

At this time of year I would say that 80% of our neighbours are Dutch. It appears that Dutch retirees are very well off and able to spend months travelling around Europe from site to site. They are invariably friendly and super respectable. It is very rare for us to encounter British campers anywhere other than in France. Some of the vehicles are beyond belief. Last week we found ourselves on a German site which doubled as a camper van sales outlet with hundreds of vehicles parked up for sale. Some of those were those gigantic ones which are literally the size of buses, with price tags that are unbelievable. I looked at one that was on sale for 385,000 euros, for which you could buy a very respectable house in Germany. We are always the smallest and most ancient van on each site. Most vehicles are gleamingly modern and you can easily calculate your fellow campers’ wealth. Either they had around £80,000 cash to buy it outright or they have around £400 a month to spare for HP payments.

One tip is to try and do a lot of research in advance about what might be near the campsite. Birgit is absolutely brilliant at this, thus we have this week been on sites featuring a Greek restaurant and a very good Indian restaurant where I had the best biryani of my life. It’s great, if possible, to be within walking distance of a village or town, but the most crucial thing is to be near a bus route or train station. This means that you can just leave the van on the site and explore without the fiddle-faddle of having to pack everything up and seek parking places in towns where more often than not the facilities are either underground or multi-storey, for which any camper van will be too high.

Most campsites will offer to order you bread and croissants for breakfast, but by no means all of them do, so it’s worth researching in advance. Inevitably, if you fail to buy anything for breakfast, the site you pitch up at will have no availability of food. Sites can vary from tiny meadows on farms to huge International chains with the focus heavily on families and children. These are likely to be heavier on noise but can often be just as entertaining as the rural affairs. It’s important to pay close attention to the microscopic print in the camping guide, for example the luxurious swimming pool depicted may actually be empty when you arrive. It’s also not unknown for the price to have changed dramatically since you decided to go there. There tends to be variable pricing, depending upon bank holidays etc.

Some travellers are very “purist” about never using campsites at all, and at the opposite end of the spectrum are the campers who plan their entire itinerary before they set out, booking all the sites in advance. That is a method that avoids some (though by no means all) of the issues I have described, but it would take a lot of the fun out of it for us. We value the flexibility to make day-by-day decisions about destinations. For example, this year we had situations where we liked a place so much that we decided to stay on a bit longer, and also examples of the opposite.

Apologies if some of this sounds rather negative. That is certainly not the intention, because in 11 years of annual early summer travels we have had the most wonderful times and the quirks and idiosyncrasies mentioned in this article are all part of the fun. Last week, for example, we spent a couple of days at what we both agreed was the most delightful site we have ever found, a family-run affair with charming hosts for whom nothing was too much trouble. Looking forward to year 12 already.

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We initially were headed for a spa town called Bad Kissingen but when we arrived at the campsite reception, we were greeted by a sign on the firmly-closed door saying that it was shut between 12 and 2. As there was still a lady inside at the reception desk, I hoped that she might take pity on us, but when she came to the door, she merely opened it, told me that we couldn’t check in until 2, locked up and disappeared, presumably home for lunch. This bit of German precision annoyed me so much that I declared we would not stay there. We proceeded to another site which was situated at a sports centre, but somehow we both agreed it didn’t look very nice, so we decided to take a risk and head for a so-called “Stellplatz”, something we had not done before. These are effectively car parks for camper vans. They do provide plug-in posts for electricity and a waste disposal slot but nothing else in the way of facilities such as showers, hence they are nice and cheap. This one was located adjacent to a swimming pool complex and was populated by people who seemed considerably more friendly and communicative than those we had come across on the regular campsites. We got into pleasant conversations with several families, including a young Danish couple who were spending their paternity / maternity leave driving around Europe with their tiny infant. 

Something we love to do in Germany is go for a Greek meal. Every German town will have at least one Greek restaurant and Coburg seemed to have three. The lady at the swimming pool told us how to get to the nearest one. This was when we made a slight mistake, by telling our neighbours (an elderly couple – the man was 82 and was still driving his huge campervan for five hours a day) about our plan to go to the Greek restaurant. We wandered through some pleasant suburbs to find the restaurant, which had a delightful garden in the shade of some willow trees. There was just one table available, so we sat down. Immediately the very eccentric, middle-aged, wild haired waiter came over and said that we should have approached him and asked to be seated. We apologised but he told us that the table was reserved. Birgit did her normal excellent job of being charming and I put on my naïve, ignorant foreigner act and he agreed to move us to an unlaid table on the outer fringe, on condition that we ate up quickly. We ordered and were waiting for our food to arrive when we noticed the old couple from the Stellplatz at the entrance. The waiter was shaking his head emphatically and clearly saying there was no availability. To my horror, I noticed that the lady was pointing towards our table and us, and in no time she had convinced the waiter that we were friends and were waiting for them to arrive. Thus it was that we had to share our planned romantic tête à tête with whatever the German equivalent of a Daily Mail reader is. Luckily, their food took ages to come and we were able to escape. 

The centre of Coburg was absolutely stunning, like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, with frescoed buildings, a beautiful town square and atmospheric narrow, cobbled streets. We ended up in the sweetest little bar imaginable for a late-night schnapps. The following day we planned to visit the castle at the top of the hill overlooking the town, but before that we spent a couple of hours in the swimming pool complex, where there was a huge variety of pools of different temperatures, some indoor and some outdoor. To get to the castle there was a minor problem in that roadworks meant that the bus up the hill wasn’t running and we had been warned that the pedestrian route was extremely steep. A visit to the local travel centre brought the result that we were given a replacement taxi to take us up to the top. I had visited that castle as an impressionable teenager on a school trip in the 1960s and was thrilled to discover that absolutely nothing had changed, as we wandered round the battlements to the accompaniment of the buzzing of a gigantic swarm of bees. I became engrossed in a reverie about ageing and all that life had brought me in the years since the last visit. We strolled back down to the hill and sought out an atmospheric Gasthaus, where our beers were brought to the table by a robot. I even enjoyed some shopping (something which is normally an anathema to me) because there were so many fun independent shops actually selling interesting things. Most days on our six-week trip were pretty much like this but the visit to Coburg was a representative example of the wonderful times we had. 

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Much of my life revolves around gigs, either attending them or arranging them. I’m also involved in small and medium-sized venues and festivals, so I’m tempted to set out my feelings about the live music scene at the moment. I know that the impressive work of the Music Venues Trust has brought this topic to the forefront of people’s minds in the last few years. 

I’ve been prompted to share some thoughts by something that happened this morning. A gig that I was looking forward to going to by an American band in a local venue was suddenly cancelled. In my disappointment, I contacted the promoter to try and find out the reason. I knew that several of my friends would also be likely to be disappointed, having looked forward to the show. It’s not an entirely new band but it’s a band that has rarely toured in the UK before. The promoter told me that after months of promotion and the tickets being on sale, they had sold a grand total of zero tickets. This was a situation that couldn’t be ignored because, as we know, every gig comes with its attendant costs of venue hire, staffing, payment for the band etc, etc. At some stage defeat has to be admitted and the plug pulled in the interests of everyone involved. 

The night before, I’d been to a show locally where the performers were outstandingly entertaining and everyone present enjoyed every moment. The problem was that there weren’t many people present, I’d say maybe around 30, and as an experienced promoter I could tell that the evening must have made a resounding loss both for the artist and for the venue. And on a personal level I have a couple of shows coming up that aren’t selling, even though they are established artists who have played sold-out shows for us in the past.

We are all used to the phenomenon of small festivals cancelling shortly before the event on account of low ticket sales, the two most prominent examples this summer having been Red Rooster and Kernofornia. The blame is often laid at people spending all their money on stadium shows or huge festivals like Latitude or the Hyde Park sessions, but just this week some of the biggest open air events for years, featuring artists like Eric Clapton, have also been cancelled for lack of interest. In a strange contrast, there seem to be more smaller and medium-sized festivals than ever before, most of which seem to flourish. Similarly, where I live in the Southampton area, this summer has seen a series of big open-air shows by mainstream artists such as Paul Weller and OMD and the whole thing has been an enormous success, with wall-to-wall sell outs. “Pub Rock” is more lively than it has been in years, with pubs turning to live music as a way of getting customers in, even though almost all of the bands are cover bands. Not really my thing but any band is better than none at all. 

People are casting around trying to interpret all this but it’s hard to find any hard and fast explanations or indeed solutions, because there is no clear pattern. One thing I know is that there are individual “scenes” for certain types of music, for example the metal scene remains popular, there’s a surprisingly vibrant and widespread blues scene, and again in my area we have venues such as the Joiners in Southampton which brings joy to my heart by advertising nightly shows by bands I have never heard of with Sold Out stickers on them. This tells me that there is still a thriving interest in and following for young indie bands, as there always has been.

In my own little field of “Americana” there is a faithful audience for touring bands from America and Canada, although the scene is actually a lot smaller and more insular than it might appear, It’s noticeable that many tours are playing much smaller venues and an increasing number of house concerts. Some venues like The Bear in Luton and the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Birmingham are tiny and you can see artists there who a few years ago would have played in places several times their capacity. Although this indicates a scene on the wane, there is the phenomenon of country artists who can swiftly accumulate followings big enough to fill the likes of Wembley. Who actually reaches that level seems to be largely random. 

Now I am going to risk being lambasted for saying something that has so far been unsayable. One reason for empty venues and cancelled tours is that there are just too many artists and not a big enough audience. As a promoter, I get approached several times a day by agents punting singer-songwriter types. I dutifully listen to the songs and in the main they are very good, but it’s simply impossible to book all of them. The audience, despite its enthusiasm, simply can’t go out every night of the week or indeed afford to do so, so they have to become selective. I regret to say that if I put on every show I got offered, almost all of them would be empty. This is, I emphasise, no reflection at all on the quality of music or the performance, it’s just that there is no longer room for all of them. I’m really sorry!

Demographics are important here too. Our audience tends to be people in their 50s and 60s. Not wanting to be morbid, but they won’t last forever and is there any sign of a new generation? No, there isn’t. I recently read an article about only a tiny proportion of chart hits nowadays being by actual bands. Luckily these things do go in cycles and my mentioning of the Joiners gives me heart, knowing that there are young music lovers happy to go out and support their favourites. There will always be bands around but people’s entertainment habits vary. Remember when we thought live music had died for ever when the dance and clubbing scene came along? Nowadays there are addictive phones and gaming consoles too.

So-called Legacy bands are going through a fruitful era at the moment, but even they have to be careful not to put themselves into halls that are too big. There’s a trend for two or three acts from the 80s to tour together in order to flesh out the audience. In my own little scene, I know exactly which bands will sell out and I’m always right, but it doesn’t stop me booking bands that I know won’t sell out, just because I love the music – very selfish, I know. Most acts have a maximum audience ceiling and the old days when they could be booked into bigger and bigger halls with confidence are largely gone, although of course there are exceptions. I’ve really loved watching new young trio The Molotovs go from nothing to huge venues in the space of a year. 

At a small venue level there are a couple of phenomena to mention. First are the begging internet posts imploring people on bended knee to buy their tickets well in advance because otherwise the show could be cancelled owing to a perceived lack of interest. This is a really awkward one, because I fully understand and appreciate anybody not wanting to book tickets months in advance knowing that there was a chance that the gig might not take place. Nowadays it’s possible to keep an eye online on how tickets are selling and how many are left, so there’s little risk involved in leaving it until near the actual time. This also removes the risk of unexpected things cropping up which make it impossible for you to attend. Press adverts are few and far between nowadays because they are expensive and, as we know, there’s not much money around, so most promoters and artists rely heavily on internet posts. You can always tell when a show isn’t selling as the posts get more and more frequent. Connected to this is another matter which I find just heartbreaking. This is when artists go online themselves and implore people to buy tickets, effectively admitting that they’re not particularly popular and putting the blame on people for not wanting to come and see them. This kind of emotional blackmail can be really embarrassing. As a writer, I can fully identify with the situation but do I plug my books online to make people aware of them? I certainly do, but do I beg people to buy them? No I don’t, because they are capable of making their own minds up about whether they are interested in either my writing or the topics I’m writing about, just as any of us make decisions day by day about what we’re going to do, buy etc, and of course what shows we’re going to see.

Probably the most upsetting words you’ll hear as a promoter are “Oh, I wish I’d known about it, I’d have loved to come”. People’s capacity for failing to notice advertising is extraordinary. Reaching neutral people is really difficult if they’re not Facebook friends or on your mailing list. How are you going to reach them? Word of mouth is still by far the best method. Here in Winchester I have a dear friend who regularly rounds up his extended friendship group and drags them along to most of our gigs, for which we are eternally grateful. Interestingly, though, if he is not keen on a particular artist and therefore doesn’t put the word out, none of his friends attend without him. 

Where does that leave our beloved small venues, yes, those ones without which the music industry could not exist because that is where new talent is nurtured? I remember the impotent rage I felt when writing my book about the Joiners Arms, where the vast inverted pyramid of the live music business was revealed. The most important foundation, the small venues, struggled while the big concert promoters hoovered up the money and gave nothing back. It’s true that MVT has started to make some small progress in attempting to rectify the situation, but for most small venues little has changed. One of the oddities is that they remain to a huge extent reliant on alcohol sales to bring in a certain amount of money to subsidise the loss-making shows. Through a combination of high beverage prices and changing habits, it’s nowadays rare for people to go out and do a substantial amount of drinking while listening to music. In fact I’ve always thought it was a rather odd connection. Why is it necessary to drink alcohol while listening to a band? But that’s how the scene is structured and so it remains. 

The small venues are as adaptable as they are able to be, and virtually none of them have entirely avoided the tribute band / comedy circuit route. Good luck to them. Our friends at the Brook in Southampton have for years successfully used the profits from tribute evenings to subsidise more “credible” shows.  True patrons of the arts! While the dedicated music venues struggle, there has been a notable uptick in the amount of shows being held in unlikely places such as people’s back gardens and local churches. I put on shows like this myself but in a way I feel guilty because we’re able to do it because we don’t have the overheads that a conventional venue has. Run entirely by volunteers and not for profit, we don’t have to battle with rent, rates, staffing, VAT and all the other travails of a traditional music venue. Could we unwittingly be adding another nail in the coffin? I genuinely don’t know, but it does enable us to give quite a lot of extra work to impoverished musicians who can’t find it elsewhere.

I can’t come to any conclusions about all this. I’ve just set out a few random thoughts that came into my head because I’m sad enough to spend a lot of time thinking about these things. Sometimes I think that maybe people just don’t want to go out and listen to bands anymore and that’s all there is to it. Lots of things in my lifetime have changed irrevocably because society has changed so much. Could this could be just another one to add to the list? I do hope not.  

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