Welcome from Quingey. A little village slightly south of Besançon, which is, sort of, near Switzerland if you check this side of the map. And you might think, at first glance, what is the beauty of this place? It doesn’t look very inviting, and you may be right.
This is Camping Les Promenades in Quingey. Relatively small camping. Not much shade while we were there, somewhere in early March. At first sight, it looks a little shabby – a disused tennis court and the grass fields are getting away from the proper maintenance. But there’s more to it than a row of campervans.
A couple of Safari tents are here for rent and they are now open for the whole year (instead of only in summer), which is cool. It was quite chilly, about two degrees centigrade we touched. Just enough to avoid frost on the ground, and we managed to survive in the tent.
It’s been a lovely few days here, actually.
We were only going to stay for one night and move on, but it was pleasant and fresh in the lovely morning air. But what really makes it stand out is being right on the river. Quite a big river, quite wide and strong flowing. You can hear traffic across the water, from the busy road, but this is subliminally filtered out and the wide river just sets a calm mood.
Our reviews have been a little biased lately, especially during winter, which is mainly because there are not many people around. Normally you have the whole place yourself. Yesterday we had about five or six campers arrive, and if you think this is a little-known place, I’ll tell you that we had seven different camper – they came from all over the place – Belgian, Dutch, Swiss, Danish, French, English, German…
Off-season
It’s quite nice to come camping in the wintertime in the off-season. Okay, granted, there’s no swimming pool, and it’s not as warm, but hey, the ambience and the charm, and the relative silence and calm. This place has a fantastic lovely little French charm, with a French Village in walking distance.
We had a magic drive down from Freiburg yesterday, through the Black Forest region again, as well as the forests around Besançon, which was really cool.
From here we head further south, towards Grenoble, which is not the capital of skiing… but one of the bigger ski resort areas. All the time hugging the Swiss border that we visited when starting our road trip. We’ll find a campsite around Grenoble and then we’ll head further south towards Cotignac.
It’s been a good couple of days here. Enjoyed this little campsite. Killer 4G – if you need that, and enough power. The guy’s really friendly at the gate, he’s not there when you arrive though. You just ring the bell and he arrives a few minutes later. So what’s not to like?
Also, the bonus you were waiting for – good value, man. We paid €16 here for a pitch including electricity. A big pitch as well. It’s basically half the price of the one we did in Freiburg – I don’t know how to work that out. Not to mention our bargain campsite of Europe.
The Jura is lovely
Flanked by mountains and peaks, it is quite high in altitude, witnessed by the tall snow poles lining some of the roads, and frequent signs indicating snow chains are needed in the winter months.
Across the valleys, you will find vineyards, so maybe the snow gives the local tipple a little bit of freshness.
So now we’re heading back south towards Grenoble, which kind of feels almost like home, it’s so close now to Cotignac, the village we left two years ago on our tour of Europe. We’ve been on the road for a long, long time. It’s been really good.
Now we need to go back and find old Pepe, our bus, and see what we can do about finishing the build. And then change our way of travel. It has been good in the Landy, actually, the longer we spend in it, the better it gets! So we’ve got to make decisions now – what are we going to do moving on from here? Carry on like this or take the bus? Keep rolling…