The French don’t just do campgrounds, they orchestrate them. They’ve mastered this mystical balance of contained bedlam: kids can roam like feral raccoons, find mischief, and disappear for hours, yet there’s always a fence, hedge, or polite elderly couple in a deckchair to stop them from escaping into the wheat fields.

On Île de Ré, we pitched up a short wander from rock pools so good they could feature in a UNESCO brochure. In the Pyrenees, our campsite had a river running through it, cold enough to make your skin squeak. On hot afternoons we’d flop in like seals, limbs numb, brains rebooted.

We rented bikes for a few days and the kids mapped every nook and cranny of the site like a military recon unit. They came back breathless to show me “secret” trails and lizard colonies. Foreign kids absorbed them into the crew without a shared word of language, just a lot of laughing and chasing. One particular cheeky-grinned kid gave us a Hollywood-style send-off, pedalling after the car and waving us out of the campsite like we were a rock band leaving on tour.

Tip: Pick campgrounds with nature baked in - rivers, pools, forests - and take or rent bikes if you can. It turns the whole place into their adventure kingdom. That kind of unsupervised, real-world freedom is vital for kids and yet in their normal lives it’s something they mostly find on a screen. Out here, they get to live it for real.

Cooking, pitching the tent, washing up, checking the oil… if you’re on a road trip, it’s all part of the game. And somehow, doing it outdoors turns mundane chores into minor adventures.

Like Johnny 5 from the 80s classic Short Circuit, kids in adventure mode are sponges for new skills. They want to hammer the tent pegs, stir the pasta, and inflate the air mattress until they nearly pass out. Sometimes this is brilliant. Sometimes mosquitos are mounting a co-ordinated assault on your shins and you’re wondering why you didn’t just do it yourself. But the wobblier the tent, the prouder they are of it.

At each campsite we treated the whole set-up like building a mobile home together. My son took immense satisfaction in frying steak over a camp stove, while my daughter became a ruthless enforcer of washing-up duty (“If you don’t do it, you don’t get dessert”). They weren’t just along for the ride, they were part of the crew.

Tip: Let them take ownership, even if it’s slower and messier. Camping is a natural learning environment, and every tent pole, chopped tomato, or half-blown mattress is a small lesson in self-reliance (and patience).

We basically travelled with half a boulangerie rattling around the car. Croissant crumbs are now part of our upholstery.

I love Aldi at the best of times, but French Aldi? Mon dieu. The snack aisles are an adventure in themselves - mysterious biscuits, cured meats in intimidating quantities, and Orangina bottles shaped perfectly for small hands. We played “snack roulette” almost daily: one of everything vaguely interesting, no questions asked. Sometimes a hit, sometimes a catastrophic miss, but always a talking point.

And then there’s lunch. France is essentially one giant deli counter. Cheese that would bankrupt you in the UK costs less than a Freddo here. Tinned fish comes in more varieties than Pokémon. Baguettes are so good they ruin you for life.

Our daily ritual: roll into a village, overbuy pastries (“go on, let’s have four more”), grab cheese, cured meats, and fruit, then find somewhere ridiculous to eat it. Rest stops in France aren’t soulless boxes. They’re mini-parks with trees, picnic benches, and occasionally a view worth framing. We’d flop out the esky, lay it all out, and have a roadside banquet worthy of a magazine spread… if you ignored the wasps.

Tip: Keep an esky or cool bag in the boot and treat roadside lunches as part of the adventure, not a pit stop. Snacks stop meltdowns, and proper lunches make you feel like you’re winning at life.

Having smashed through Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, we rolled straight into roughly 24 episodes of Real Life Survival Stories. The host, Jonathan Hopkins, has a voice that makes Morgan Freeman sound under-qualified. The kids were hooked, even when the stories got a little…graphic. One episode featured a man surviving a bear attack but losing parts of his face. My daughter’s immediate, deadpan response: “Did he find his ear?”

In a bid to tick the “educational” box, we also gave times tables songs a go. Imagine four people in a confined space, chanting “Seven sevens are forty-nine!” at full volume, over a Casio keyboard backing track, for half an hour. We sounded like a demented family cult but I’ll admit, the kids now know their sixes.

Tip: Pick something everyone can get into. A good audiobook or podcast series will turn hours on the road from an endurance test into something you actually look forward to. And yes, even times tables songs count… if only for the comedy.

The best bits were never on the itinerary.

In Sète, we stumbled across a water jousting contest. Full-grown men in sailor stripes trying to knock each other into the harbour with enormous poles, cheered on by a crowd that clearly took this more seriously than the World Cup. In Saint Felix Lauragais we pedalled velorail (think railway carts crossed with exercise bikes) down abandoned train tracks through seas of sunflowers.

And then there was Carcassonne. A medieval city of turrets, cobblestones and a haunted house attraction. On a whim, I took my son in. We were plunged into pitch blackness as actors in harrowing makeup leapt from hidden doors, screaming in our faces. Occasionally a strobe light would flash, revealing my son’s terrified expression inches from mine. We emerged blinking into the daylight, both silent, both changed.

This is why you leave gaps in your schedule. So the odd, the absurd, and the “what were we thinking?” moments can happen. The kids will forget the museum queue you skipped, but they’ll remember slack-lining through an alpine forest, swimming under a teeth chatteringly cold waterfall or - for better or worse - that haunted house.

Tip: Don’t plan it all. The weird stuff is what sticks.

This isn’t a full kit list. You don’t need me to tell you to pack clothes, sleeping bags, and a toothbrush (although you will forget something obvious). These are my non-negotiables, the bits that turn our trips from “pleasant” into “how did we ever camp without this?”

Tent – BlackWolf Turbo Twin 240

A tent so roomy it comes with east and west wings, like the camping version of the White House. Big enough for wrestling matches, reading nooks, and rainy-day Lego marathons.

Mattress – Exped Megamat Duo 10

Camping on a bad mattress is like blasting Beethoven’s Ninth through a tinny phone speaker - technically it’s happening, but it’s not the same. This thing is like floating on a cloud made of marshmallows delivered by cherubs. Yes, it’s pricey. Yes, it’s bulky. But your hips will thank you every morning.

Hammock – ENO DoubleNest

Slings up in two minutes between any two vaguely vertical objects. Works for reading, napping, or family pile-ins.

Esky/Cooler – Yeti Tundra 45 *

Keeps cheese cold, Orangina fizzy, and makes roadside lunches feel like an event. Doubles as an extra seat when all the camp chairs are buried under wet towels.

Speaker – UE Boom 4

For impromptu campsite discos. We may have traumatised some French pensioners with a mid-afternoon Fatboy Slim set. Worth it.

Walkie Talkies – Uniden UH45

Who doesn’t love a walkie talkie? Great for sending the kids on “missions” around the campsite, or for summoning someone back when you’ve burnt dinner.

Tent Lighting – Luci Solar String Lights

Rechargeable, bright, and stops you from accidentally putting on your daughter’s undies in the dark. Not that I’d know.

Dual Burner Stove – Primus Kinjia *

Boil pasta and fry steak at the same time. Will make you feel like Gordon Ramsay, if Gordon Ramsay was in board shorts swatting flies.

Finska – Planet Finska Original Set

Easy to whip out anywhere. We tried (and failed) to lure the French away from boules, but made a few friends in the process.

*dream purchase

This fascinating article from The Atlantic raises some important questions around how our kids’ essential sense of freedom is eroding away in the real world.

“Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialise in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that always allows them to hang out and no-one else hovering, their phones.”