Our naturist road trip through France 2022 - Week 1

For a couple of weeks, the travel bug had been biting harder and harder. We had to hit the road again. ASAP. So we roughly put an itinerary together, rented a car, loaded the car with camping gear, and off we went.

In this weekly update, uniquely for Patreon, we will give you some insights into what happened together with pictures that may or may not have been published anywhere else.

We were off to a bad start, the clutch of our rental car made a squeaking sound that was unbearable. There was no way that we could drive around for two weeks with this sound, so the very first stop of this road trip was the mechanic. Luckily, the problem was easily solved and only an hour later than expected we were on our way to our first real stop: Naturist campsite Le Club Soleil de Troyes in the Champagne region.

Several years ago, this place had been recommended to us by a couple we had met along the way. Today, it appeared on the map as a perfect stop on our way south, and a great opportunity to avoid driving on the ring around Paris. We’ve once spent 5 hours in traffic jam on this ring, so whenever we can avoid it, we do.

Le Club du Soleil de Troyes is a typical naturist club, not a commercial resort. We’ve had different experiences with these kinds of clubs. Some are lovely and welcoming, others were totally run down and made us feel unwelcome. Luckily, this one belonged to the first category. Although it’s a small club, it has a lovely domain with a lake, a pool, a bar, and some other facilities. The big highlight though was its direct access to a river. The days were bloody hot, we’re talking about near 40°C (that’s over 100°F if we’re not mistaken), so a skinny dip in natural water was more than welcome.

The region around the naturist club was really interesting as well. This is the southern champagne region, with rolling hills covered with vineyards and picturesque villages along the way. Of course, we took our chance to visit one of the many champagne houses and get ourselves a little stock of the delicious drink. It’s not because we’re living in a tent that we can’t drink expensive wine now and then, we always say.

Another highlight in the area was the city of Troyes, with its beautiful architecture and impressive cathedral. Troyes is a small city and easily discovered by foot. And there is an abundance of terraces where you can taste local delicacies. We wanted to try a typical dish from the region, until we found out what the dish was… On the internet it’s described as “a sausage made of pork intestines, easily recognisable by its strong urine smell”. We love trying out new foods, but we have our limits. On days like this we’re very happy that we didn’t become food vloggers.

Our trip continued towards the center of the country, where we stopped at naturist campsite Les Fourneaux. This place wasn’t on our original itinerary, but when we saw on their website that they claim that their pitches are all between 400 and 1500 square meters (= 4000 to 16000 square feet), we just had to go there to see if that is really true. To European naturist campsite standards, those numbers are enormous.

Les Fourneaux is a Dutch owned campsite and we dare to say that 95% of the other guests were Dutch. You’ll find these typical Dutch naturist campsites everywhere around France, it often seems like they just picked up a naturist community in the Netherlands and just dropped it in France. The campsite is a lovely place though, with lots of greenery. We put our pitch and several other pitches to the test and yes, they were all larger than 400 square meters. We doubt that we have seen one of 1500 square meters though.

By the time, we had one bottle of champagne left, which was perfect to celebrate Lins’ birthday. We drank it in true luxury style, for breakfast, and later in the evening we celebrated some more with a bottle of local rosé wine. Birthdays on the road can be strange. Sometimes you’ll find great company and have the time of your life, other times they are rather lonely with just the two of us. This birthday was one in the middle. We mostly hung around our pitch, and just went to the bar around apero-time. We felt little connection with most of the other guests, so we just had a drink and went back to our pitch to celebrate some more together.

That first week flew by but we have about 7 more weeks to come. And we’ll tell you all about those in our future updates!