While touring, I explored unsupported camping (walk off into the woods), supported camping (organized sites), and hotels. In doing so, I learned two important lessons regarding accommodations in France:
Unsupported Camping
Although my unsupported camping practices were questionably-legal, I had no problem simply stopping at a favorable location when the sun started going down. In doing so, I looked for a place where (i) I would not be visible from the road and (ii) the land was not obviously developed.
Most of the Alpes and Pyrenees is either farmland or undeveloped national park. I tried to restrict myself to the later, under the assumption that hiding in a park for the night would be unlikely to raise suspicion. On the contrary I did not want to get woken up at 5 am by an angry farmer with a pitchfork, wondering (in French) what this tent is doing where his cows are grazing.
I camped in unsupported locations five nights:
| On July 14th, I camped near a reservoir, outside of Chambery | |
| On July 15th, I slept just into the woods alongside the Cormet de Roseland | |
| On July 16th, I slept roadside on the Col de L'Iseran- this was the view from my tent | |
| On July 17th, I found a great campsite off a dirt road en route to the Col du Galibier- this is a picture of how to spot a road with "access" to good unsupported camping | |
| On July 21st, the night before the Plateau de Beille finish, I slept under the stars beside the road, halfway up the finishing climb. Note from the picture that there were plenty of people with the same idea. It's 100% OK to camp on the road beside the Tour route the night beforehand | |
Supported Camping
There are designated campsites throughout the Alpes and Pyrenees (at least during Tour time). I only found a handful of these sites via Google and guidebooks prior to my trip. However while riding, I saw a sign for camping in almost every town through which I passed. Like hotels, these legitimate camping sites vary in quality and atmosphere.
One option for camping is "Camping en Ferme", which means camping on a farm. Signs for this type of camping are generally at the outskirts of a town, where the farms are located and indicate that the farm is one or two kilometers down a dirt road/driveway. At these sites, one pays a farmer for the right to set up a tent on his land, thus avoiding the possibility of a rude awakening with a pitchfork later that night.
Other camping sites cater to motor coaches and are generally marked with a picture of a motorcoach/RV. These sites are pretty much parking lots filled with RVs and not particularly pleasant for the cycling tourist or tent camper.
Other supported sites offer a middle ground, providing grass lots for nightly rental and motorcoach parking. Just like hotels, these sites vary widely in their atmosphere, amenities, and cost. One can get a pretty good idea for the quality of site by the number of stars on the sign that advertises the camping site. While I was touring I noted that both hotels and camp sites were rated on a scale of one to four stars. Generally, the fewer the stars, the lower the cost and fewer amenities; and the more stars the higher the cost and more amenities. My attitude towards supported camping was as follows: If I am going to pay to sleep in a tent, it's because I want a shower and electricity. Accordingly, I chose 3-star sites, which offered both (and more).
On July 22nd, I camped near Ussat, which was near the July 22nd finish at Plateau de Beille and also the following day's start in Foix. Aside from a bed, this 3-star campsite offered everything that a hotel does: showers; toilets (no toilet paper); a restaurant; and electricity. Additionally, the site was directly on the Ariege River: kayaking, swimming, and canoeing were available.
The views and atmosphere at a supported camping site pale in comparison to the panoramic views provided by pitching a tent in the high Alpes. However, I am not a hard-core naturalist and I have a fiance who expects nightly phone calls. For ten Euros (about $15), I washed three days worth of grime off of me, ate a hot meal, and charged my phone and camera batteries. After this experience, I was sold on supported camping. The picture below shows an example of a supported camping site in Bagneres de Biorre. My tent is just to the right of the dirt road and is nearby mobile homes and other campers. This particular site had showers, electricity, laundry facilities, and a lake for swimming.
Hotels
Like the U.S., I found that hotels in France varied most dramatically in quality in price. While some four-star hotels charged 200 Euros (about $300) per night, I found exceptional accommodations for 20 Euros per night (about $30). For example, this is a hotel I stayed at in La Grave (in the high Alpes) for $30 per night and the view from my room.
I elected to sleep in hotels under two circumstances: (1) I was in a large city and couldn't find adequate camping; (2) I wanted a break from camping. In both cases, I was looking for a bed, shower, electricity, and a roof. I was not looking for mints on my pillow and satin sheets. For those prices, I'd rather buy a good bottle of Bordeaux and skip the mints on the pillow. For me, the trick to finding a hotel that I could afford was to shop around a little bit.
Shopping around for a hotel makes a huge difference. In the towns and cities that I visited, I found that hotels posted their rates just inside the entryway. The rates for each hotel depended on the size of the room (one, two, or three people) and the amenities that came with the room (for example, private toilet, private shower, a bath). In my experience, a one-person room (chamber) in a two-star hotel, with a toilet and shower could be found for between 20 to 40 Euros, depending on the town/city. Seemingly identical rooms in the same town varied in price significantly (40 to 65 Euros). In cities the pattern to the price was pretty simple: the highest priced hotels were directly across from the train station; similar quality hotels could be found by walking one or two blocks from the station. In Grenoble, the two-star hotel across from the train station was 67 Euros per night and an equivalent hotel, one block away, was 33 Euros per night. I developed a general rule of spending 10 minutes looking at the prices in four different two-star hotels and then picking the cheapest.
Food
The food in France, alone, makes the transatlantic trip worthwhile. And this is an understatement. Many people travel to France for the sole purpose of experiencing the food. After a modest sampling, I completely understand why one might make the food-oriented trip. Proper restaurant meals take place over the course of several hours, cost about $50 per person (another $50 for a modest wine), and consist of five to seven small (by American standards) courses that look like fine art and taste even better. Someday, I hope to revisit the France to experience the cuisine. However, on this trip, I restricted myself to one dining experience. The rest of the time, I bought food in shops.
Each moderately-sized town through which I passed had a bread store, cheese store, supermarket (Casino), and a butcher. On the first day, I adopted the following morning routine: (1) visiting the bread store, where I would start the day off by eating three or four fresh pastries and buying two loaves of specialty bread (e.g., olive, cheese, cheese and ham) for my lunchtime picnic; (2) visiting the cheese store to sample the local cheeses and then select one to accompany my bread; (3) visiting the supermarket and buying some juice (I usually gulped down a liter of OJ each morning to assuage my morning hunger), fruit, and wine (the supermarkets had a huge selection of excellent French wines for about $5-10 per bottle and I quickly got in the habit of trying out a different bottle each day between lunch and dinner). I usually also bought a "treat" for the day as well- pate, chocolate, sausage, etc., just to add a little variety.
While the local shops do not provide the dining experience of a restaurant, the attention to the quality of the food is exceptional. The bread I bought each morning was still warm. This is the inside of a bread shop in Foix (unfortunately, this was on the day of a stage start, so the selection is a bit picked over):
The pastries were beautiful to look at, let alone gobble down. Choosing a cheese involved sampling slices of the best local varieties from the knife of person who made them.
Buying food from the local shops, I was able to eat extremely well for about $20 per day. I think this is pretty amazing, considering the volume of food that I ate while riding 6 - 14 hours per day.