La Baule is is a haven for camping holidays being situated in the Loire-Atlantique department facing the Chenel du Nord, southern Brittany, western France

Well of course, the first thing is to get there but that is a doddle - you just can't miss and if you follow these directions you won't need to open a map until you are in the near vicinity of your camping site in or near to La Baule, which itself is near to the industrial city of St Nazaire - good for shopping though!

From Calais you need to go on the autoroute and pay I'm afraid - if you want to get there the same day that is, so get onto the A 16 and head Ouest (west) following the signs for Caen. Those of you who have caught the ferry to either Dieppe or Le Havre follow the same route to Caen, and then take signs for Rennes, the capital of Brittany.

If you have disembarked at Cherbourg then you need to go down the peninsular on the N13 and join the A84 to Avranches and Rennes.

If your ferry was to St Malo then you have it easy; follow the sign for Rennes like all the others.

Now all of you are on the fast N137 dual carriageway which goes down to Nantes (where you are not going!), so circumnavigate Rennes by following the signs for Bordeaux and carry on down the carriageway until you get to Nozay. Just after Nozay you turn off onto the N171 and head for St Nazaire and La Baule. If you lose your way on this trip then your karma is seriously out of sync with mine!

A couple of interesting facts about La Baule for holidaymakers: that at 12 KM it has the longest beach in Europe, and it is twinned with Inverness in Scotland and Homburg in Germany, as if you needed to know!

More to the point is the fact that La Baule is nigh on connected to Le Pouliguen in the west and Pornichet in the east nearest to the Loire estuary, which in urn you can cross over to visit places like the lovely Pornic, or a day or so out in the Vendee, but first you have to go over the St Nazaire bridge.

Now I have mentioned this bridge on another page, and I can tell you that if you as a driver don't have a good head for heights then it is to be avoided like the plague. This must be one of highest (if not the highest) domed bridges on the planet, and what makes it worse for the driver is that he/she is looking directly down into the murky depths of the Loire estuary several hundreds of feet below, so the best idea is to get into the overtaking lane and go like the clappers until you reach the other side. That's exactly what I did and got a speeding ticket for my troubles!

But all that apart, you will love your camping holiday in or near to La Baule, and by the time you get back all brown and relaxed we hope to have our Blog ready for your comments.