Cramped, overcrowded & noisy - never again!!
18 September 2013 at 14:59:00
Firstly let's be clear - I'm not a serial complainer; in fact this is the first poor review I've ever left in the public domain. However I feel so strongly about this campsite and the booking process that I don't want others to experience the same.
We arrived at Sen Yan in mid August when French campsites... are at their busiest - but having staying the previous week in another site further north we had something to use as a benchmark.
We travelled in a touring caravan that is 7.5m in length for reference - certainly not a compact unit. On arrival we were greeted pleasantly in English and shown to our pitch; testing my towing skills with a little weaving through tight bends with cars parked haphazardly every inch of the way - parked so close together due to the close proximity of the hundreds of "chalets". Our pitch was reasonably sized but had an overhanging tree branch that made positioning difficult. So anyway, I set about putting up our awning, etc. whilst my wife took the dog for a walk and pick up a take-away from the on-site restaurant - uh oh!! There was nowhere to take the dog for a run, no way of leaving the site apart from via the main entrance onto a road with no pavement, and no dog-toilet area or facilities. So having walked around the site, and through was she described as a ghetto, she made it to the take-away, only to be told that there was a 2 hour wait for food. Anyway, she went into the well stocked shop and bought the necessary items to make our own meal, then we settled down for a quiet relaxing evening, which is one of the reasons people go camping, right? wrong! At about 7:30pm the entertainment had started and although we were in a fairly remote pitch, it sounded as if a car with a powerful hifi was parked next door to us - unfortunately driven by a fan of retro classic pop-rock reminiscent of your cheesiest wedding disco!! That's ok we thought, the entertainment is supposed to finish by 10:30 and it will all go quiet... wrong again: at 11:30 the entertainment stopped, and was followed by at least an hour of shouting revellers making their way around the site and sitting outside talking loudly without empathy for others.
The next morning we had decided to check out the site as a whole with an open mind, but were very dissappointed with it - cramped pitches and chalets, limited parking, narrow roads, no open grass areas (for the kids to play or the dog to run), an obviously undersized swimming pool (although the natural pool area was quite pleasant), and literally hundreds of people.
So we called Select Site - our booking agent and were told that we could relocate to another of their sites for a small admin fee, but that if we wanted to check out and seek our own site we would need to speak to reception about a refund As the alternative Select Site option was around 150 miles away, we decided to move to another site less than 10 miles away, so went to reception to ask for a small refund as were vacating the pitch 7 days early... guess what, they no longer spoke English and could only shrug their shoulders!!
So that was the end of our Sen Yan experience, short but certainly not sweet. It isn't your typical French campsite - certainly not relaxing nor dog friendly, and definately not for young families who want some serenity and privacy. But, if you want Butlins style holiday in France and are not claustrophobic it'll be just fine...
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