Information about Charente-Maritime and the camping holiday resources in the area

The Charente-Maritime is one of four departments in western France which go to make up Poitu Charentes, as our link to a map of the area shows, and of those four departments it is the Charente-Maritime which is most visited by holidaymakers and those taking camping holidays.

The region faces the Bay of Biscay,  Atlantic coast and the northern part of it joins the southern part of the Vendee. It is said that Charente-Maritime has more sunlight hours than anywhere in France apart from the Med coast, and of course this may be true, but most of the regions down the western coast boast pretty much the same thing.

Getting to the region is easy enough as your journey will be mostly on either autoroutes or dual carriageways, neither of which carry a great deal of traffic outside the high holiday season. We have mentioned the topic of long distance driving on other pages, and the same applies to driving down to Charentes in that you could well make savings in terms of time and money if you choose ferry crossing other than the Dover/Calais route which automatically comes with a holiday booking.

We have a link to a page which gives the distance in KM between major towns and cities, and before booking your camping hols it is well worth checking to see how far you will be driving to your destination. You can then work out roughly how much fuel you will use and the cost of it, then multiply the cost x 2 to take into account the return journey. Compare that to the extra cost of a ferry crossing nearer to your chosen resort. It may be cheaper, it may not be but it will probably save you driving several hundreds of miles more than you need.

The part of Charente-Maritime that most holidaymakers are interested in for camping holidays is the coastal area between La Rochelle in the north of the department and Royan in the south. The Royan area, which lies at the northern mouth of the river Gironde, is a major player in the camping holiday stakes. The city of Rochefort lies between the two a little way inland. This region also takes in the Ile de Re and the Ile d'Oleron.

The town of Cognac, famous for the drink of the same name, lies to the south east of the department, so on your travels you can expect to come across quite a few vineyards dotted around.