"What's he looking at?"
"Who?"
"Him, that fat bloke in the white van, he's staring at us. Is the boot open or something?"
"Well, you said you'd shut it. Is that bus driver flashing at us?"
It served us right really. We'd borrowed a pod.
Hauling a pod around south London turns you into something of a figure of curiosity. Driving past a bus stop packed with people nudging and pointing takes some getting used to. But if you will haul the bastard offspring of a Japanese love hotel and an old-style Volkswagen Beetle behind you through Streatham, what do you expect?
The idea was simple enough: borrow a pod and have a look at a few of Eurocamp's campsites. The reality was a little smaller and a little odder than we expected. The pod is a hand-built affair, consisting mainly of enough space inside for a bed and very little else, with a boot attached which houses two rings and sink, which make up your kitchen. It's one of those things you can't make up your mind about: some days you think it's cool, retro-chic; some days it's the most badly designed, claustrophobic coffin-with-portholes you've ever come across. But whatever sort of day it is, you do, frankly, look a bit daft. Whether such low-grade humiliation was worth it on a first-ever camping holiday was something we were about to discover.
In its favour, the pod is easy to tow - it's so small it trundles gently behind you, with only the weight to make a difference. Until you try and reverse, you barely notice it. Everyone else notices you, though.
Me, the lovely wife and the pod were off to France. Eurocamp's accompanying kit of maps and directions got us down to Portsmouth with a record-low number of navigational arguments (I find that road signs sweep past remarkably quickly).
A matter of hours and the lovely, olde-worlde charm of Portsmouth was upon us, swiftly replaced by warm anticipation as we squeezed our car onto an overcrowded ferry and cheerily engaged in a sweepstake about how many scratches we'd end up with as a result.
Imagine our joy when we realised the fun was to be multiplied by the earlier cancellation of the afternoon ferry, numbers on our nocturnal trip consequently swelling by 300. The relative calm of our window cabin (now there's posh!) was a comical contrast to the carnage elsewhere on the boat. Hundreds of drunken stag and hen parties eyed each other up and realised that while they might be the ugliest, the drunkest and possibly the loudest, they certainly weren't the only ones to have thought of fancy dress.
Thankfully only one chap had had the bright idea of wearing a coconut shell, fore and aft, and nothing else. While we were spared the back nut moving too much in the drunken swaying, the shell to the front failed to contain its contents, the result resembling a very bewildered and extremely lost snail.
After that, sleep didn't come easy and we arrived early and witless in France, continuing onwards to Brittany, specifically Dol de Bretagne and the Chateau des Ormes campsite.
Dol de Bretagne is a mere hop from the Mont St Michel, a bizarre but magnificent Benedictine Abbey built on a rock out to sea. If you come to see this, and you really should, get out of bed early. In the early morning sunshine, it is a fabulous sight, but as coach parties arrive, the magic dissipates.
Dol itself is a little charmer of a market town, with a rather more modest 11th century cathedral, and is a very splendid setting for a caravan site: a spectacular chateau nestling among three lakes, an incongruous but well-used cricket pitch, and 800 caravans, mobile homes and tents. Not to mention an enormous, crenellated paddling pool, a Spar, a pub, a pizzeria, a piano bar and a surprisingly pleasant restaurant.
This is a very lively site, full of children and highly organised, with reps from an array of different companies to point you in the right directions for the boating lake, karaoke, golf driving range and pony rides. The veneer of chaos apparent when we arrived concealed (like an upside-down swan) the calm organisation going on behind the scenes. Impressive, just not for us.
But for gregarious families with children, this is a fine place. Sadly, some weren't the gregarious types and the site at night resounded to shameless family arguments as parents loudly explained to kids that this was no holiday for them with children who couldn't behave. Mornings were dotted with whippersnappers sulking behind Shreddies packets before slouching off to play solo badminton or catch with an equally sullen sibling.
But there's only so long that you can enjoy the misery of others, so back to the pod and back to the road for the second, and final, destination.
The Vendée is a marvellous piece of coastline. Buffeted by a surprisingly gentle Atlantic, it boasts sandy beaches, resorts and market towns which reek of that peculiar French, slightly raffish charm; towns that win you over by the sheer fact they obviously couldn't care less if you like them or not.
A six-hour drive from Dol swept us into the relatively tiny site of La Forét, which is not, as Eurocamp would have it, in St Jean de Monts, but on the very lip of the neighbouring town of Notre Dame de Monts, around 6km from its big brother, St Jean.
This is to the site's advantage. Notre Dame is a small town, slightly gone-to-seed with a smattering of restaurants - mostly galettes (savoury pancakes) and Italian - tourist shops, bars and a small stretch of beach. Quiet and unassuming, it's a total contrast to the bustling St Jean, the second-largest town on the coast and rammed to the gills with bars, restaurants, cafes and campsites.
Should neither appeal, the port of St Gilles, with the obligatory picturesque markets, quayside cafes and restaurants, is easily reached and offers another take on the French experience. Eat the plentiful high quality seafood or peer with green eyes at the yachts of the better-off-than-thou.
For the full length of the coastline, traffic to the beach compares unfavourably with Regent Street on a Saturday afternoon. But once you escape, there's miles of picture-perfect coastline to lose yourself on. You may even be tempted to abandon the car in favour of impressively maintained cycle tracks which follow the shore, mainly through pine forests which protect from either sunshine or rain, both of which can plentiful on the same day.
The La Forét site is handily located on such a track, a 10-minute walk through the forest to the beach. With only 60 pitches, it's a haven of peace after Chateau des Ormes. Each pitch is surrounded by hedges, ideal for ferreting away a pod, offering, as it does, surprising privacy. Which was handy one rainy afternoon when we had retired to our pod to while away the hour (not easy in that confined space), only to find, when claustrophobia hit, that the pod had locked us in.
The thin stop-messing-with-the-door smile was replaced by a get-us-out-of-here hiatus, but all the shaking of the apparently flimsy door was of no use. We were locked in. Fortunately one of us had seen The Wooden Horse, and knew that if we could just remove the floor and wriggle out, safety was at hand. Sadly, our hero was too fat to do anything about it, but his slender lovely wife managed to ease herself out, dust herself down... and disappear in an ill-conceived attempt to tease.
Aside from such minor panic, La Forét is a small marvel of calm and unobtrusive organisation. The facilities are few - an extremely small pool, a barbecue area, a little shop and a bakery service at breakfast time - but its calm seemed to attract peaceful fellow-campers. And all very civilised: no shouting and solo badminton here. Every day I would dutifully lose something in the shower block and every day it would be waiting for me on my next visit - usually before I'd noticed its disappearance.
Very kind, but once they'd finished returning my goods, they soon returned to doing what they enjoyed most. Staring at the damn pod.
How to get there
P&O Portsmouth run daily ferries to Cherbourg, St Malo or Le Havre. Eurocamp Independent provide maps and directions from whatever your starting point in the UK to the very entrance of the campsite.
Prices
You can travel to Le Havre or Cherbourg for as little as £15 for a day return ticket. Prices for a car and four people depend on when you travel. Check with the operator.
Accommodation
Again, prices vary according to whether you bring your own tent/pod or mobile home or whether you rent Eurocamp's tent or mobile home. Prices vary according to the time of year. Check with Eurocamp for prices on 0870 366 7572.
Useful links
podcaravans.com
lesormes.com
eurocampindependent.co.uk
poportsmouth.com
