The Voyages of the Slogship Enterprose continue
Taking the A9 back from St Maxime to Montpellier, one exits at Junction 28, wanders through Clapiers without any constructive signage….and then onwards expectantly with two right turns and a left to Camping le plein Air des Chênes.
One then turns back and ventures elsewhere. Anywhere, in fact, that isn’t Camping le plein Air des Chênes.
Camping le plein Air des Chênes is a monument to the idea that, when you get right down to it, some customers will buy into any old bollocks so long as it’s posh, and offers crap value for money.
When rung the previous evening, the staff at Camping le plein Air des Chênes promise you can turn up at any time and take residence. They just don’t mention that reception takes a three hour lunch each and every single day.
I could go on for pages about how Camping le plein Air des Chênes is for campers with more money than sense, but nevertheless a grossly inflated sense of snobbisme. However, a fuller macro-economic exposé of why Camping le plein Air des Chênes is so sh*t will appear here tomorrow. So in the meantime, let us move on (as I did today) to a much better family-run campsite down at Grau d’Agde, called Le Neptune.
The coastal village of Agde is a couple of exits after Montpellier, on the zero fashion-victim coast once the high-octane Côte d’Azure has given way to places closer to the reality of low Occitane.
At Le Neptune, there are no pinched corporate goblins, expensive extras, 57-digit entry codes and receptionists straight out of the Lebensborn homes. There are but two polite ladies, a mother and daughter, who provide free wifi everywhere, a free gym, polite service, a free and scrupulously clean piscine complete with high-quality loungers, well-spoken English should you need it, and lavomat services, showers and spotless loos. Even better: the wifi connects without asking you to join the French Foreign Legion, and if you take a camping car emplacement, there’s a free sink in which to wash your dishes thrown in. Just don’t throw the dishes in, as they’re Belfast sinks.
Walking distance away there’s a nice restaurant. Agde village is a charming Greek-style place devoid of kitsch, with a well-stocked grocery shop and stores. Across the road from Le Neptune is the smashing Hérault river, bobbing up and down like a waterway straight out of North Oxfordshire, minus only the hypothermia risk should you fall in after a smidgen too much Languedoc red.
Tomorrow Cap d’Agde shall be explored. Camping le plein Air des Chênes, meanwhile, will remain devoid of my custom. I’m a northern lad, and I’ve eaten at t’top table, but by ‘eck I know a rip-off when I see it.
The Slog 