I love to camp. I love everything about it. I love sleeping inches away from the world around you. I love listening to the rain while I'm tucked away in my tent, and never getting wet. I love cooking over a little camp stove, and coming up with creative dinners.I love taking my home with me in a little bag, and setting it up wherever I want.I love people watching at campgrounds... oh man. Some of the worlds most interesting people go to campgrounds in their rusty old RVs and old lawn furniture. When we slept outside of Nevers We had a hobo-looking man in a child's tent to our left, a hole heap of carnival looking people piled into a big tent in our front yard, a woman wearing a chefs apron making the most fancy looking dinner I've ever seen to our right, a duo of dirt bike dudes blaring music and doing that male-ego thing, a couple in an RV who thought this was just the berries, and laid out half-naked till then sun went down. I'm telling ya, camping is awesome.
Each campground in Europe, we've found, has its strange little quirks. In Germany you had to pay for your shower (usually a euro for 5 minutes), almost everywhere you camped. In France, showers are free... but they don't provide you with toilet paper, toilet seats, or hand soap in co-ed bathrooms. And then there's free camping
Free camping is the art of camping... for free. The rules are: 1) Wait until it's almost dark 2) find a hidden and safe location 3)Leave in the early morning 4)don't get caught. Almost every cyclist we've talked to understands and abides by these general rules, and they usually include their own. Such as, camping above traffic rather than below, having dinner in the desired free-camp location, asking farmers if they mind you sleeping in their fields,using a green or dark tent,stick to forests and densely covered areas, avoid public places and parks. Here's the part that gets me;
"Nobody cares if you free camp in France, everybody does it, and besides-- it's legal! Just be smart about it and don't get caught."
So, it's legal (apparently) but you have to hide. Does that seem odd to anyone but me? I dunno, maybe people get a real kick out of being sneaky
putting up a tent along the side of the road. Sure, you save a couple bucks, but you're not getting a shower, you can't sleep in, there's no fresh water there's nowhere to wash your dishes, there's no bathroom, there's nobody to talk to... and you're not going to get a full nights sleep. BUT! Everybody does it. It's almost like this secret club that you have to be a part of. When we crossed the border to France, the amount of cyclist we see by day increased, but the amount of cyclists we see at campgrounds has almost shrank to zero. C'mon, that's part of the fun! I love meeting other cyclists; talking about your trips,
discussing tomorrow's ride or the weather, comparing gear...and now, nothin'.
Alright, so I'd be lying to say Todd and I have never free camped. Sometimes, it's the only option: it's getting dark, there isn't a campground for 30 more kilometers and you are dead tired. We follow the rules, and find a safe spot...but we never sleep well. I'm tense the entire time and become startled by the slightest sound "Todd! Did you hear that? What was that!" I become this bundle of nerves... just awaiting my crucifiction when the farmer sees my tent parked in the grass
next to his corn field. Bottom line is, we don't like it.
Maybe Europeans (French) are more lenient with their property laws, and for them, it's not a big deal. But I think, as an American, Private property is just that, private. I think that just about every American I know would have had a coronary if they woke up and saw some rando camping in their backyard. You'd get slapped with every sort of trespassing, disturbing the peace, general misdemeanor law that's out there.
And so, this is my blogging justification of why Todd and I are willing to fork over the eight or ten euro a night to sleep in a designated campground. We sure do miss all the other cyclists, but we're having a good time hanging out with the French version of the Griswald family "That there's an R.V." Caravan Camping lands.
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