Camping du Conguel campsite review

Camping du Conguel, a 4* site situated at the very tip of the Quiberon peninsular at the Pointe du Conguel.

My name is Art (short for Arthur) and I am the editor/owner of JCF.  I am writing it as my family and I stayed in Camping du Conguel from 25th June until 9th July 2010, and what you read here is precisely as we experienced it, warts and all.

I hated this holiday with a passion, though that was not entirely the fault of the campsite management. The area, though lovely, is completely and utterly boring - probably as boring as Malta but with better beaches. However, some people must thrive on boredom because it was certainly getting busy by the time we left, but I personally found that once we had walked the walks, seen the beach and Quiberon town it was time to move on, and that our 14 night holiday there was at least 10 nights too long.

I will take you through this campsite point by point so that you can make a well informed decision as to whether you would like to stay there or not in the future. Nearly everything I/we have to say about the campsite is a positive, but there is one serious issue which the site owners consistantly failed to address - noise from groups of tent campers - this is mentioned in detail near to the bottom of the page.

We found that most of the holidaymakers on site were French, though Thomson Al Fresco have about a dozen mobiles there catering for Brits, and Matthews Holidays with whom we went have roughly twice that many. 

Reception: Most of the staff in the reception office speak excellent English and are extremely helpful. There are masses of leaflets for things to see and do in the area.

Vista: The site looks out onto the Bay of Quiberon, a view which is stunning enough in itself for a one off view, but wake up to that every morning? Sheer heaven! Remember that the beach is literally across the road from the campsite entrance!

Pitches: Most of the pitches here are occupied by either mobile homes or motorhomes, though there are quite a few left spare for tent campers. Some of the pitches (like the one we had) have that stunning bay view and day long sun whilst others are far more shaded, so it is best to ask where you will be placed when you book. Generally the pitch sizes are on the small side.

Camp Shop: Camping du Conguel has a shop which we found to be clean as a whistle but lacking in certain commodities like fresh veg. The only perishables were baguettes and a rather poor selection of biscuits. However, the presence of the lovely Severine who runs the shop overcame any shortfalls.

Kiddy club: There is a kiddy club on site but we had no reason to use it - been there, done that ages ago!

Pool area: In effect there are 3 pools: a learner/small children's pool, a pool for the water slides and the main one for swimmers. We found all to be pristine clean at all times, unlike some others we have visited. Our verdict is: Superb.

Bar: There is a very nice bar area on a level with the Restaurant and Take Away, but at circa €5.10 for a pint of weak lager/beer we didn't visit too often. There are events in the bar during the high season.

Take Away: Christian who runs the take away also prepares and cooks the meals for the nearby L'Oasis restaurant. He is one of life's larger than life "characters" and is full of fun as well as being an excellent chef. The take away meals are mainly stone baked Pizzas, lasagne and croques, but are pretty good value for money we thought. Cristian has enough English for a non French speaker to converse with (just), but he has an excellent vocabulary of Franglais.

L'Oasis Restaurant: Meals were supplied via Christian next door and served to us by the utterly charming Juliette. The omlettes are superb here, and to be fair, the prices for the whole menu were quite good, and certainly no more than you would pay in town for the equivalent. Spotlessly clean and well worth a visit.

Now the bad bits: Nothing in life is completely perfect, and indeed, we never expected it to be so, but the management of a 4* camp site like this one need to tighten up a little on one or two things such as:-

1) There were weeds half a metre high poking out from the underneath of our mobile home (pic available on request) and a great many others, but we were advised by the Matthews Holidays rep that it is the responsibility of the site management to attend to this. Whilst a few weeds are of little consequence in terms of whether or not you enjoy your holidays they really need to be attended to as it makes the tour operators (Matthews in our case) appear to be lax when really they are not.

Having said that, our rep seemed to have plenty of time on his hands so I can't see why he couldn't have done a little weeding to make the pitches in his care look better.

2) Noise. Now here we ran into a few problems because our mobile home pitch was only about 40/50 metres away from an area which was most frequently used by groups of young French tent campers. Our second night on site was dreadful as there was a group of youngsters, all as drunk as monkeys, making very excessive noise until 1 am the next morning when some thoughtful person actually managed to track down the "Night Security" person to deal with it.

Where was he until that time nobody knows. Why was he unaware of the excessive noise and precisely what was he doing until he was located by an irate group of us demanding that he put an end to our misery? He did actually sort out that particular problem on that occasion though - after he was forced to. I wondered why he could have been so charmingly unaware of this problem when a great many other people in his care were not!

We had two more similar episodes of several nights each spread over the 2 week period about which I personally complained, only to be told that they perpetrators were "only young people letting off steam". That is not good enough du Conguel! They were noisy, drunken little adolescents who were spoiling other people's holidays.

About that I only have this to say to the management of Camping du Conguel,

 "You need to address the problem of young people who cause noise after 10 pm as they are paying you just a few Euros per night for the whole group of them whilst we in mobile homes are paying between €1200 and €2500 all told for 2 weeks holiday. We do not want our peace and quiet disturbed, our evenings completely ruined by groups of drunken kids dancing on car roofs and playing louder than loud music!" Get a grip on this please!

As I am sending the URL of this page to the management of Camping du Conguel to make them even more aware of this problem than I did in person, it would be nice to think that they will respond by saying that this will not happen again in 2011, and that their night security staff who in my (qualified) opinion are incompetent and utterly useless, will have their contract examined before it is renewed.

And finally: This last is not an indictment of Camping du Conguel because virtually every campsite at the far end of Quiberon suffers from the same problem, and that is - the aerodrome.

Oh yes, there is a small private aerodrome at the tip of Quiberon, and when these pilot chaps get revved up you certainly know about it as there can be take off and landings pretty much every few minutes, though to be fair, the landings aren't particularly noisy.

The point it here that none of the holiday brochures that I have read either online of in paper format mention the existance of an aerodrome with the landing strip literally 50 metres away from a bloody campsite! However, I suppose that is an issue best taken up with all the tour operators rather than the management of du Conguel.

Would we return? Yes and no. Yes, well my wife and daughter would, because the site is situated in a wonderful part of France, and the surrounding rocky scenery is as beautiful as is Cornwall, but boring, boring, boring. The site itself is a dream, and apart from the noise issues is truly excellent.

No because before we go again (I hope that day never comes) I would need a firm assurance from the management of du Conguel that they have a policy in place to advise young campers that there is a no noise rule after 10 pm, and that their "night security" can deal adequately with problem campers if they break that rule, without others having to become involved.

Issues like this are all about give and take, but some of us in mobile homes near to the noisy element felt that we were taking most of the time.