A camping conundrum...

Montbazon from the bridge over the Indre

...I'm recently returned from France and there has been a question that has been circling my mind all the time I've been on the other side of the channel.  Let me explain...

I've always camped from being in my very early twenties.  And OK, at twenty and twenty-one, money was not plentiful so maybe camping was an affordable solution. But the need for a cheap holiday was not, and still isn't, the real reason I took to camping and still use campsites.  For me it's all about the location, the view and the opportunity to go just about anywhere, to stay how long I want and to move on when I decide I've had enough.  So, take my pitch at Montbazon.  A small bustling town just south of Tours with a campsite on the banks of the river Indre.

The view from my pitch

On arrival one of the first things I do is take a walk around the site to see where the sun is, where the best view is, where the nearest neighbour will be...  And I normally pick a pitch that gives me a great view, that gives me some space between me and whoever else is parked nearby and that is not near the sanitary block.  Sanitary blocks on campsites kind of all look pretty much alike - so when you've seen one, you've seen them all!.  At Montbazon, I picked a pitch that overlooked the river and set my rig so that I could sit in the shade with only that view in front of me.  And, when I lost the sun in the very late afternoon I wasn't worried that it happened about ten/fifteen minutes earlier than some of the other spots behind me.  Why?  Because for the sake of taking about 15 steps in front of my pitch I could take my chair, my book or a glass of wine and sit on what I decided to call Plage d'Anglais.

And the conundrum?  In the two weeks that I was there only two other campers came and parked in the spots in the area where I was camped.  Everyone else - and there were a significant number of people who came and went and stayed for a few days - all clustered themselves around the sanitary block.  Maybe they were just being practical, I don't know.  Perhaps they thought it would give them an advantange for first in the showers in the morning.  Maybe!  But after a few days I noticed another aspect to this, what I considered to be, odd behaviour.  They all set their rigs in exactly the same direction!

My view from Plage d'Anglais

And the camping conundrum?  Why does anyone want to sit facing the bog wall when they can have a view like this...

Answers on a postcard, or in the comments box below, will be very gratefully accepted.

I will be back with more posts from Montbazon, and other interesting places, in the coming weeks.