France Passion

Rowls1958

Rowls1958

Joined
Aug 9, 2023
Posts
47
Likes collected
73
Funster No
97,989
MH
Hymer Free S 600
Does anyone use France Passion and/or have any views on it - good or bad. Is it worth £30 ? Thanks
 
The only time I get it now is when going to provence. Couple of them down there we like that actually check.
 
If you are new to going to France it's absolutely brilliant, you get to know the real France for free, but, they are very rarely where you want to be and can be far away from anything.
And if you have the park4night most of them are in there anyway and you very rarely get asked if you are a member.
 
I agree with Chaser they can be good and varied,however,often difficult to locate and off the beaten track if passing through.
 
We only had 1 good FP site, most others we tried were, not to our liking. Give it a go and see if it fits your travelling style. Bon Chance

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
Had a great stop at Chateau Arnaud near St.Emillion last night and have had excellent stops in Champagne. That said quite a lot of the places are on Search for Sites. I tend to buy a subscription every couple of years or so to see the latest and the app is good.
Worth it for a first try.
 
I have and would recommend it
£30 for one night almost justifies it
Did all of the Alsace with it
 
We use France passion but I must confess not to be a member. SFS has them all and nobody seems to ask to see your pass. Mostly good stopovers and some excellent.
Phil
 
We like them - had some excellent stops, but be aware that there can be some moral pressure to buy some produce. That is generally no great hardship, but stopovers in say the Champagne or Cognac regions can work out quite expensive!

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
We’ve been members for two years and used FP stopovers almost exclusively for four three week road trips. Generally we’ve been very pleased with our finds, though one or two we moved on from. We usually set satnav to avoid motorways and toll roads as we like exploring real rural France. They’re great for this. We’ve found some idyllic stopovers and enjoyed good local produce.
 
I’ve enjoyed the few I’ve been to. Hosts tend to be very welcoming.
But they are often the most expensive sites - cases of St Emillion aren’t cheap.
 
We have stopped at some brilliant FP sites. We are members We did leave less than complimentary reviews for a couple that were poor and FP refused to publish them. So reviews should be viewed with caution.
 
David BW said:
We’ve been members for two years and used FP stopovers almost exclusively for four three week road trips. Generally we’ve been very pleased with our finds, though one or two we moved on from. We usually set satnav to avoid motorways and toll roads as we like exploring real rural France. They’re great for this. We’ve found some idyllic stopovers and enjoyed good local produce.
Click to expand...
Yes when we started over ten years ago we used them all the time for the first couple of years but we are quite happy in the middle of the country , but most of them are not near bars and entertainment if that's what you want and once we were used to aires we havnt used fp much although we still have the ten years old book and sometimes look if there is one close to where we are.
We have been on numerous vineyards and farms, plus a buffalo farm, ostrich farm, cider farm, honey farm, and so many I can't think of them. This is the first two we went on.
The first one we stayed at for two days and never saw a soul , its not as bad as it looks it was a cider farm and if you looked the other way it was orchard as far as you could see.
IMG_0035.webp
2012-09-12-104.webp

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
We found tourist information centres often have lists of places for motorhomes to stay ( one actually recommended a layby on a quiet road with great views!). The ones that were France passion weren't bothered if you were members or not especially if you bought some wine.
 
We stayed at a place in blaye a couple of years ago , it had once been a vineyard but the old guy who kept it had rooted it all up and rented it out for corn growing now , anyway he wasn't bothered about fp he said they charged him to be a member but he had put it on p4n himself as they didn't charge him and he was getting far more people coming off that than he ever did with fp and he wasn't going to join them next year.
 
chaser said:
We stayed at a place in blaye a couple of years ago , it had once been a vineyard but the old guy who kept it had rooted it all up and rented it out for corn growing now , anyway he wasn't bothered about fp he said they charged him to be a member but he had put it on p4n himself as they didn't charge him and he was getting far more people coming off that than he ever did with fp and he wasn't going to join them next year.
Click to expand...
It's a bit like britstops Vs the pub stop map that we used on here why pay to use a network of people who aren't getting paid to let you stay there. It's pretty obvious they are going to expect on average to get some buisness out of it and you would have to be pretty hard nosed to expect to stay free and not buy anything from them.
 
The Wino said:
It's a bit like britstops Vs the pub stop map that we used on here why pay to use a network of people who aren't getting paid to let you stay there. It's pretty obvious they are going to expect on average to get some buisness out of it and you would have to be pretty hard nosed to expect to stay free and not buy anything from them.
Click to expand...
Quite right, but if you get carried away at some of these fp it can cost a fortune.:(
 
chaser said:
Quite right, but if you get carried away at some of these fp it can cost a fortune.:(
Click to expand...
I suppose it depends if you're going to get carried away at a wine producer anyway in which case you might as well get a free night's pitch thrown in!

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
chaser said:
Quite right, but if you get carried away at some of these fp it can cost a fortune.:(
Click to expand...
A bit like pub stopovers. Free but the meal can cost you big. We stayed on one near Oxford and the meal cost us £65. We stayed another night and didn’t eat there just to even things up a bit.
Phil
 
Ray-Vic said:
Thank you, this will help with our month long first proper France trip in June.
Click to expand...
And you won't need to buy it again ;) must agree though for first time in France it's brilliant.

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 
My wife used to call it Honey Passion as we seemed to just keep buying jars of honey each time we stopped at one😂 usually very nice honey but certainly not low cost… but well worth it when you’d had a quiet nights rest and some of the lovely stuff on toast the next morning.
 
When we started with it over twelve years ago there was no app or map ref numbers just a small map in the book with dots on that could cover acres, then in the write up just a couple of directions of when you were nearly there it was almost as if they didn't want you to find the place.
God that was fun , it could take you all day to find a place you didn't want to stop at when you got there anyway.
But when you look back it was indeed fun and you saw far more of France than you do now with sat nav directions straight to the gate.
 
Must say though , when we started we had nothing but a map book and FP and it always seemed more fun not knowing what was going to be at places before you got there, nowadays folks do all this researching and stuff and have sat nabs that whizz them off straight there and they know all about it before they get there.
Not the same anymore. We are lucky that Julie speaks good french so we can ask directions but she still likes to go by the map and always has one on her knees.
 
I love France Passion, and think it’s certainly worth the joining fee. The new app with GPS Co ordinates makes it really easy to use and the user-reviews mean that you know what to expect. I love being able to meet growers and people who are enthusiastic about their local areas and to stay in places that tourists would never normal find.
 
For those of you who have said you didn't like a site, what was it that you didn't like, please? I've thought about using FR but would like to know the downsides just to get a good understanding of the sites available. I'd like to stay on more rural sites but I don't want to go for miles, possibly down little roads and tracks, to get to somewhere that's not great for whatever reason.

Subscribers  do not see these advertisements

 

Join us or log in to post a reply.

To join in you must be a member of MotorhomeFun

Join MotorhomeFun

Join us, it quick and easy!

Join us

Log in

Already a member? Log in here.

Latest journal entries

Back
Top