For the not terribly rich traveller, back in August 1988, France and camping seemed the ideal summer-holiday combination.

"You're not going camping in France in August?" pessimistic friends asked dubiously. "The campsites will be overflowing. All the French are on holiday then. You won't be able to move."

We pooh-poohed the opinions of these prophets of doom. But then, despite the beauty of choral evensong in Canterbury Cathedral (an excellent way to fill in time before your bargain-basement midnight ferry crossing), I succumbed to that worry-wart moment that always precedes a big journey, and suddenly feared they were going to be right.

They weren't. We had an incredibly peaceful 10 days. But then, where we were was not the Cote: it was the Massif Central.

Alas, the camera stayed at home for that holiday. But this is an extraordinarily beautiful mountainous area, rich with pudding-shaped ancient volcanoes, spectacular passes, blue-green forests, and spiky outcrops of rock.

With just one exception, the campsites were wonderfully quiet and uncrowded. So it was a great introduction to camping in France.

Our camping equipment was basic to the point of primitivism:

1. one just-about-two-person tent, just tall enough for you to sit up at the higher end, and just wide enough to get two pairs of prostrate feet side by side at the lower end;

2. one small methylated spirit camping stove (a Trangia); and

3. one 750-cc Fiat Panda for carrying it all round in.

The French, by contrast, did not seem to approach camping with the intention of roughing it...

So when we rolled up at Neris-les-Bains municipal campsite, we instantly became the Sunday-afternoon star turn. Children gathered from kilometres around to watch us put up this barely visible tent, and brew up tea on the Trangia. One older spectator viewed the proceedings with increasing incredulity, and asked us dubiously, "Have you come far like that?" When dinner time came, and we warmed up a can of choucroute, ate it with a baguette, and drank our bottle of wine out of plastic camping mugs, our neighbours must have thought it a pathetic sight.

The thing is that the French camper will settle for nothing less than a home from home. Mostly, they brought caravans, spent the first night erecting vast and complicated extensions, which quadrupled the available interior, tacked onto these another few acres of canvas awning, and then colonized the outlying areas of their estate for washing lines and the family cat. (We encountered several camping cats during our time in Europe, and only wished they would write and tell ours about the virtues of the roaming life.)

It goes without saying that every self-respecting French camper had brought his television. But other home comforts were many and varied. In one particularly nicely carpeted tent, we witnessed a daily ritual whereby the full complement of househouse china and glassware was unpacked for dinner, and packed away in its appointed carton at the end of the meal. After all, what would camping be without individual souffle dishes and silver fish knives?

The desire for space and grandeur can have its complications, however. During a later camping expedition to Provence, we stayed a few nights at Digne-les-Bains, a gracious spa town, and became friendly with an elderly French couple who had come to take the waters. In order to take them for as long as possible for as little as possible, they had bought a second-hand caravan. For the first night, this was sufficient for their needs, but then they were possessed by the ambition to put up the extension, purchased from the same source.

The old gentleman laid everything out on the grass. He surveyed the little pile of metal and canvas, chin in hand, took a stroll round it, paused, viewed it from another angle, and asked Nigel, hopefully: "Do you know anything about these?"

Nigel is an engineer, and will never refuse an invitation to help construct anything. He ambled over, and considered the problem. Another would-be extension-erector joined them. With vast amounts of arm-waving and head-shaking, they sorted the motley collection of parts into roughly homogeneous heaps.

There were one or two anti-social bits that didn't seem to want to homogenize anywhere, so they sorted everything out again according to a different system. Again -- pieces left over.

The prevailing mood was that if these pieces didn't want to join in and play the game, then they jolly well wouldn't get to be part of the extension, so there.

With the more willing components, the three cobbled together a more or less stable structure, thus proving that the uncooperative ones must have been red herrings, maybe even pieces of an entirely different extension. The two helpers wandered off, leaving Monsieur to drive in the pegs.

"Tea-time?" asked his wife, watching us brewing up yet again. "What you need is some of this with it," she continued, diving into the caravan, and reappearing with a dusty bottle. "Plum brandy, made with our own plums, and distilled in our own home."

It was good stuff.

While we were knocking it back, Monsieur emerged from the folds of his extension. "I've made a bad discovery," he announced, gloomily. "Some of the material is a bit...," he paused, searching for a delicate way of dealing with the problem of age, "... a bit, well, ripe." He showed us the places where attempts to draw the canvas taut had resulted in ominous tears. "I'm wondering if I've been had," he said, with the air of a man who has faced this situation before.

We wondered what we could do to cheer him up, and return the gesture of the plum brandy. We dug a pack of Scottish shortbread from Panda's surprisingly capacious boot, and offered them round. I was a little worried that people who had come to a spa to take the waters for the sake of their health might not wish to partake of all-butter biscuits, but this did not seem to bother them in the least, and whole cakes of shortbread were rapidly vanishing.

"Funny how we always seem to find the English," remarked the old lady (I rarely bothered going into the Isle-of-Man business). "It's the same where we live, in Poitou-Charentes. They've started buying up all the old farmhouses now. People say it's so much cheaper than buying a house in England that they can afford to have them just as holiday homes." She sounded as though she didn't quite believe such a preposterous proposition.

We thought of all the times we had slavered over French estate agents' windows, working out that we could buy a chateau in Normandy, complete with several acres of land, for the price of our two-and-a-half-bedroomed terraced house in southern Britain. But it seemed impossible to explain: this couple, like all the French, took land for granted. After all, they have twice as much of it as the British.

Campsites were a guaranteed way to get talking to people, even for the hopelessly introvert like us. Our Provence trip took place in early May; there was hardly anyone around, and the campsite owners all had plenty of time to socialize.

Jean, the proprietor of the Uzes "terrine de camping" (thus wrote a former pupil of mine), used to fetch our morning bread and croissants for us every day. But then, he would have done that in summer too, being a firm believer that "every camper has the right to fresh bread in the morning".



But at this slack time, he was able to invite us for aperitifs too, and as we sat discussing the business of running a campsite, over a nice bottle of the local rose, the purveyor of this very rose drove up in his pick-up truck with a fresh supply.

Of course, it would be only honest of him to test his own brew with a customer, and his animated air and glowing countenance suggested that we were not the first delivery of the evening. He stayed and downed a few glasses with us, very much at home, and obviously used to Jean's quips about his metier being the road to rack and ruin. Jean sang him the moral tale of the drunkard who couldn't understand why his friends called him "Six Roses" (which you have to pronounce the French way, or you won't get the pun). "Of course, they know I love flowers, but why 'six roses', and not one or two or three..., and why roses, rather than rhododendrons? Monsieur Edouard, behind the bar, said it must be because of my parents... But they didn't call dad 'Six Roses'. His name was 'Drink Fearlessly', and grandpa was 'Liqueur', and uncle was 'The Irrigator'. I don't see any connection with flowers. But if they want to call me 'Six Roses', then I'll just let them do it..."

"Cirrhose" seemed as alien a concept to our pink-wine friend as it was to the hero of the song, so he drank another parting glass or two, swung himself back into the driver's seat, and went on his way, several deliveries still ahead of him.

We encountered a wholly different breed of campsite organizer at Le Puy during that Massif Central trip. This was actually the only really busy site we have ever stayed on in France. This lady was the camp commandant, par excellence. She expected her rapid-fire questions to be answered with no nonsense, and had learnt the list of French departement names and numbers off by heart to save time at registration. Her instructions on where to pitch the tent and park the car were given to the millimetre. We realized why when we returned from our evening stroll to find that Panda had been boxed in by a multi-national selection of vehicles, and that our little tent was guy-rope to guy-rope with a whole phalanx of others that had been introduced where one would have sworn before that no more tents would have fitted. This lady practised campsite-packing as an art form.

Eager to get back to the space and quiet that we had become used to, we did Le Puy in a cursory fashion, and left the next morning. But it was well worth a look. It is in fact several "puys" (tall, jagged chimneys of volcanic rock, with various buildings or statues parked dizzyingly on the top). Strangest of all is the huge Madonna, made out of guns captured during the Crimean War...

By way of contrast, we spent a couple of nights in a quiet little village called Thiezac, on the road to Aurillac. Here we discovered that the walking map provided by the local Syndicat d'Initiative, with its jolly colours marking the different routes, bore absolutely no resemblance to facts on the ground. The track on the map that we were following soon multiplied itself into a bewildering selection. We were soon entangled in masses of prickly undergrowth running across a one-in-two slope. Trying to recover the situation, we ended up on a steep hillside coated with scree and loose boulders. They'd obviously fallen from somewhere, and there was nothing about them that convinced us they'd reached their final resting-place. We picked our way gingerly upwards. After what seemed like hours, we hauled ourselves over the lip of the hill, and set off over fields with no trace of a footpath anywhere. Eventually, we hit a track that headed down again, past a rudimentary mountain croft where we ran the gauntlet of a ferocious band of dogs and a deeply suspicious old man, until the track turned into a lane, and eventually the lane into a metalled road.

We had to spend the rest of the day recovering from this experience, sprawled out safely in front of our tent, with wine, bread, cheese, eclairs, and coffee.

We turned north again from the Monts de Cantal to the Monts Dore. Towering above the the town of Mont Dore is the Puy de Sancy, and climbing the pass at its shoulder set the first impressive altitude record for little Panda: Col de la Croix St Robert, 1426 metres, or 4678 feet (Panda likes it best in feet, because it sounds bigger).

It was a blisteringly hot afternoon, and from the carpark at the top of the pass, we watched walkers toiling their way up the mountain. "We ought to go up too," said Nigel.

"Too hot," I muttered.

"Well then, what we ought to do is get up at dawn, and walk up at sunrise," he said, confident that this proposal would be turned down. To his surprise, I agreed that this would be a good idea.

We found a campsite with no overnight barriers or other obstacles to crazy schemes. We went to bed early, and set the alarm for the middle of the night. We went to sleep to the sound of owls calling.

Panda thought he had the worst end of this arrangement, as he chugged his way back up the pass in the pitch dark. Still a little bleary-eyed, we arrived at the carpark, and ate our breakfast, watching the light gradually return, and the sun glide over the horizon of peaks.

Then we slogged off up the mountain. It was a steep path, and the top revealed itself as the rim of a plunging crater, with an unexpectedly icy wind sweeping across its expanse. The chill served as a reminder that the Massif Central was inhospitable territory: it was not a wealthy area, despite the growth in ski resorts, and the land was hidden under snow for a good stretch of the year. The houses were incredibly cheap here, but we wondered whether we could survive the rigours of an Auvergne winter.

We could quite happily settle among the blonde, blithe stretches of the south, however. This is a region made by and for the sun, and rich in most riches imaginable, with the possible exception of water. The only problem with Provence is that maybe it's already over-populated with English people seeking French experiences.

And it gets busy in summer...

During our early May sojourn, when things were still pleasantly quiet, we made the most of what southern France had to offer. We poked around the spectacular caves of the Aven de l'Orgnac, where the lilting Provencal accent of the guide made you want to ask him questions just to keep him talking. We scrabbled along the boulder-strewn river bed of the Concluses, already dry at that time of year. We viewed the Roman Pont du Gard and the Gorges de l'Ardeche, to the croaking accompaniment of an unseen orchestra of frogs. We visited Arles, which lives on in my memory not so much for its superb Roman arena as for the exploding pile of dog excrement that Nigel trod in on leaving the carpark (it was a masterpiece of its kind, the consistency I strive for in a perfect souffle: delicate crust outside, soft and yielding inside...) We visited the Bird Park in the Camargue, where real flamingos reside in such numbers that even we managed to see them. We rode the gorgeous railway from Digne to Nice. We braved the tourists at Les Baux de Provence. We scrambled around the quiet, picturesque streets of Vaison-la-Romaine. And we gave Panda the opportunity to notch up another altitude record (1909 metres, or 6263 feet) by taking him up Mont Ventoux, an almost-Alp with snow at the top.





















And each day we would return to our little tent, eat a long, al fresco meal, sample the local wine, and watch as the sky took on all shades of colour, and the campsite bat went through his evening performance.

Of course, the driving/camping holiday is not always idyllic. Our travels were studded with many a puerile squabble because we'd driven too far, couldn't find a campsite, had had to pick too many insects out of the camp dinner, or had taken yet another wrong turning ("I wonder where we should turn... There must be a signpost somewhere... It can't be up there, there's no indication at all... Oh, yes, it was up there -- look, there's a tiny sign just behind that big thick bush... Never mind, there must be another right turn coming up soon... Yes, here's one... Oh, but the road's closed... And now there's a 'deviation' off this one..." Etc, etc).

And, then, there's rain. In late June 1991, we spent a week camping in the Loire region. Not so much by the Loire itself as by its lesser-known brethren, the Loir, the Indre, and the Indrois. We camped in places like Brou, Montoire-sur-le-Loir, and St Aignan, and we visited the Clos-Luce in Amboise, the former home of Leonardo da Vinci.







After several days of good weather, the rain came one evening. It continued all night, turning the campsite into a quagmire, and we woke again the next morning to the drumming of this persistent cloudburst. "Right," said Nigel, "We said we were going to treat ourselves to a night in a hotel this holiday. That night's going to be tonight."

We breakfasted, soggily, and fortified by croissants, Nigel began to dismantle the tent. It was not many minutes before a relationship began to be discernible between the amount of tent left standing and the amount of rain still falling. As Nigel loaded the last items, the last drop fell.

Nevertheless, we had our hotel night, at the Novotel in Amboise. Some people scorn chain hotels, and say they're impersonal, anonymous, and characterless. Having spent two nights at a Novotel on a previous occasion, and found the room spacious, the service attentive, and the price not unreasonable, we disagreed.

No beans and baguettes for us that night. We treated ourselves to the works: a kir aperitif at the bar; then, in slow succession, Charentais melon, pikeperch, and tons of cheese. A delight.

Fortified by this night of luxury, and a substantial buffet breakfast, we felt equal to anything. We weren't daunted even when we couldn't find anywhere to park in Blois; then couldn't find any loos; then realized we hadn't got any money and so couldn't get in the loos when we did find them; then -- having obtained money -- couldn't find a bar in which to go to the loo, as we'd wandered away from the original unaffordable loos, and couldn't find them again; then couldn't find our way out of Blois as it was all one-way...

But we did find a campsite. Which leads me to describe another minus of camping: it does leave you very much at the mercy of the local wildlife. Insects were particularly in evidence as we headed into an area called the Sologne, a tranquil region of wetlands just east of castle country, and famous for being the setting of Alain-Fournier's beautiful Le Grand Meaulnes. We camped at a little place called Meung-sur-Beuvron. Within an hour we had seen a bright green lizard measuring at least a foot, an enormous spiky caterpillar almost as long, and a slug with the girth of a fair-sized tree branch.

The sighting of all these overgrown creepies in such rapid succession unnerved me somewhat. But this was only the preliminary propaganda phase of the war. Four o'clock brought the heavy bombers in the shape of enormous horseflies. When they tired, as by seven o'clock they had done, they were replaced by the light fighter aircraft: the gnats were about.

Cooking and eating supper while warding off all these menaces was less than the relaxing experience it usually was. Fairly soon, we decided to call it a day, and go to bed.

It was then proved that aerial bombardment is as nothing compared with the discomfort those trusty infantrymen, the ants, are able to inflict. They began to pour into the tent. We whizzed them fairly rapidly out agin, and decided to zip up all the flaps, despite the heat, in order to be safe. They were not deterred. After about an hour's sleep, I awoke to something crawling over me, and discovered about fifty of the creatures had managed to penetrate the zip. The resulting battle took on all the shades of a medieval siege. As fast as we brushed ants out, more of their brethren were clambering over the battlements of the bottom zip to join the invasion. Too bad there was no boiling oil. We slept very little that night, and packed up with record speed the following morning. I don't remember anything in Le Grand Meaulnes that could have prepared me for all this.

We drove off to visit the Domaine du Ciran, a wildlife preservation area that included all that was typical of the Sologne: forest, scrub, pools, streams, and a host of wild animals. At least that was what the leaflet said. In fact all we saw in the way of wildlife was yet more horseflies. Oh, and we did hear some frogs croaking. But as for the boar, deer, hares, and so on, well, they'd obviously gone to the Riviera to escape the ants.

Back in more civilized castle country, we had few frustrations and much relaxation. This is probably because we did not visit many castles. These edifices, for me, are best enjoyed from a river bank while having your picnic. Closer inspection is not strictly necessary. We did visit Chenonceau, as it's one of the few where you can wander round by yourself, and don't have to submit to a guided visit. I remember the painted white sheep on the front lawn (there was an exhibition of Lalanne sculpture at the time); and the plain black and white attic room where some widow queen had lived the rest of her life in mourning.





Not far away is an area boasting a number of "habitations troglodytiques". These are caves hollowed out of the soft cliffs. Some are just used for storing wine; others are pressed into service as places to grow mushrooms or distill liqueurs; and in some, the ones at Troo, for example, people live. There is a little museum dedicated to the troglodytes, where you can see traditional cave interiors as well as photos of upbeat modern ones.

The elderly couple who superintend the museum were having great difficulty with the large doll who forms the centrepiece of the "Traditional Living-Room" tableau. The dummy showed an alarming tendency to tilt sideways in her chair, shedding her wig and clawing at the tablecloth in the process, and ending her trajectory with a dramatic lurch to the floor.

Feeling this could be upsetting for onlookers, the couple were attempting to nail her into position. They kept up a continual flow of information, interspersed with reprimands to the doll: "Yes, people still live in the caves. But not so many now. Sometimes there are open days, and you can visit an inhabited cave. (Just stay still, can't you?) They have to have them. Otherwise, people are always peering in uninvited, and -- you can imagine -- it's disturbing for the residents. (Oh, Madame, have you ever seen such an awkward creature?) Some people have caves as their summer residences. Very cosy they can be too. In fact, it's quite amazing how cosy you can make a cave. Though they do say that this hillside has been too much dug into, and it might all be going to collapse one day. (Now, look here, if you don't behave, I'll give you a slap.) Just look at this lace, Madame. How did they make lace as fine as this? There were some talented people in those days. There's some more in this chest over here. Look at this, so fine, so delicate."

We drove back along another winding, leafy river valley to our campsite. It was Friday night, our last night before heading for home, but the first night of the long weekend for the multitude of Parisians for whom this area is a convenient leisure region. Camping generally offers unrivalled opportunities for people-watching, but this evening, with a thunderstorm brewing, and the city folks arriving in scores, there were particularly rich pickings.

Next to us a very serious young man sets up his tent in a methodical, orderly, reliable fashion. He's about 22, and rather gaunt; he looks studious; and he's on his own -- crossed in love, maybe, or escaping from an unhappy romance? Next to him, there is a rather homely man (maybe 50), with an exotic-looking woman (maybe 45), accompanied by a white poodle. Her hair piled high, she wears a low-cut, close-fitting, tightly-belted bright red dress; strappy black sandals with four-inch stiletto-heels; and sunglasses in face of the gathering gloom dispensed by the thunder-laden clouds. They are having extraordinary difficulties setting up their tent. We predict a rift, in the canvas as much as in their relationship, before too much longer. Opposite us, a young couple (25 or 30 maybe), dressed in coordinating designer leisurewear, step lightly out of a shiny new car, and unload some shiny new camping equipment. This guy's out to impress. He's not going to be wrong-footed by some recalcitrant tent-peg. He's read the manual. Mr Smooth has that tent up in seconds. It's not chaotic like Mr Homely, and it's not boring like Mr Serious Student. Ms Smooth allows him to sweep her off to dinner in town, while Mr Homely battles to peg out the kitchen area; Ms Exotic vies with her poodle to give him disdainful looks; and Mr S. Student cooks himself a quick, efficient, nutritious, and utterly boring supper. Which unfortunately isn't quite ready before the thunder peals and the rain spatters.

Despite the inconveniences of cold showers and stand-up loos, I always felt homesick when I was back at home after a camping holiday. Homesick for the closeness to the night and to nature, for the fresh air, and -- above all -- for that inimitable sense of freedom.