Camping Huttopia Verdon Gorge — Attraction in Castellane

Good campsite, with two downsides. So let’s first deal with these two so you can decide whether you want to keep on reading.

First off, a quite busy road cuts the camp site in two. If you have teenagers, not a problem. Should you have younger children, consider to book a river-side pitch/tent/chalet (there is virtually no need to cross the road to the other side) or prepare to walk them to the entertainment/bigger pool/river side.

Second, the restaurant serves (good) pizzas and crêpes (pancakes), period. No salads, no steaks, no burgers or even french fries. Forget poké bowls. If you generally cook yourself and use the restaurant for the occasional pizza, or if you really like pizza (or crêpes), that’s fine of course.

As you’re still reading on, let’s talk camp site. The general condition is very well, with houses, trapper tents and amenities in good condition. The only thing in constant disrepair is the upper-side washing/drying room where the power fails every time the washer and dryer are on together (staff just restore power and wait for the next guest that has to wring out their laundry manually). Cleaning of our chalet could have been better, a six out of ten I recon. The pitches and trapper tents vary in shadow and privacy, with the chalets you generally have good shade but varying degrees of privacy. The access to the river is great, with knee-deep parts, where kids love to build dams, and rapids and deeper parts where teens and up entertain themselves with inflatable tires and jump off rocks. There are two mildly heated swimming pools, one at 1m20 depth (less worries if your kids are not yet swimming that well) and one going down to 1m90. The pools are both surrounded by wooden flooring, which makes it gentler to the eye, less hard on kids’ skulls (of course, yours don’t run alongside the pool) an less hot than stone. There are some spots for charging electric vehicles, but don’t expect power charging. You may want to consider that the camp site is built on a slope and from house 132 up you will enjoy a bit of a climb coming back from the river/restaurant/swimming pool. Nothing terrible, unless you are less mobile. Small carts are provided to carry groceries and luggage up. Groceries that you can get from the Castellane Casino at 15min driving, supplemented with fresh vegetables from a stall on the camp site (almost daily in high season) and a proper daily bread service. The camp store, however, is a laugh; you can get some “regional products” and not much more.

The restaurant’s focus pays off in quality of preparation and the bar staff serves with a smile. Adjecent to the restaurant there is a small field with picnic tables where activities take place and children play at night. The bar offers some choice in (non) alcoholic beverages although they are not overdoing it. Live music about once a week and generally a good atmosphere help keep the place crowded every day of the week.

Although the camp site is favored by the French, during high season you will find a lot of Dutch and Flamish tourist, supplemented by the occasional Czech, German, Italian and Briton. There is limited entertainment and mainly in French with a bit of English translation by the supervising staff. With over 200 pits/tents/chalets, having only 12-22 places for much of the entertainment (e.g. the night walk or pottery course), you may have to register well in advance to secure a place. The staff changes from year to year - young seasonal workers from various countries - and the 2022 season has a good and friendly crew.

In the surroundings there is a lot beautiful nature (lakes, viewpoints) and there is a water adventure booking office on the camp site. In terms of culture, there is the Castellane village but not much more, unless you travel 1hrs+ over narrow D-roads. The stable warm/dry weather, however,...

This site has a great location, the Gorge scenery is fantastically beautiful and the river meanders right past your pitch. We organised our trip online, paid the extra pitch reservation fee and when we arrived and setup, it was perfect. At the bar that night, a duo guitar band were playing, and we munched on our pizzas and were very happy and pleased that we had made such a good site selection.||||The facilities are very good. There is a lovely pool, the loos and showers are clean and well stocked with paper et al.||||You can order your bakery requisites at the bar before 8pm the day before. ||However the wheel (and the shine) started to come off quite quickly, but you had to look initially. One case in example is the pool. Its lovely but not managed by an attendant. This means that it’s a free-for-all. We had a bunch of kids playing footie in the pool (with a full sized football), when we were there one time. I was a waiting for the inevitable moment when a little girl got smashed in the face with it. ||||However you can vote with your feet and come back at less busy times, but this free for all theme persisted, and on Saturday at around 6pm, 8 young teen men rocked up and set up their tents on to ONE pitch next door but one from ours. An hour later 2 cars and a minibus turned up and 12 girls and 1 guy turned up and all piled up on ONE pitch with their 5 tents. ||||We were in for it that night…||||The men were loud from the off. Laughing and playing music until midnight. We didn’t hear a peep from the girls. Perhaps they were nuns. Perhaps we were going to get some sleep after all. ||||At 2AM the girls came back and started to party. They screamed and shouted and sung. On and on it went. It’s a family site so we heard lots of people protesting and asking them to keep quiet but the girls found it all so hilarious until 4am. ||||The next morning, we complained. The site manager “Manon” was nowhere to be found. We left a message for her. She didn’t come back to us. We put it down to one of those things. The men and the girlies were both gone by midday on Sunday. Yay. ||The next day when we came back to our pitch from our visit to the gorge, we notice another van and 4 tents with 9 fresh teens arrive to drink and sing the night away.||||We had had enough and decided to call it a day. We checked out. The staff were confused why we were leaving early, we mentioned the noise and the reception lady look embarrassed. I told her that I would not pay for one of the nights as I didn’t get any sleep. She referred me to the mysterious site manager Manon, who when she arrived was a very young pretty blonde French lady. However, she completely mismanaged us. It was all very silly but I held my ground and she relented, stomping off into a huff. Hmmm, not very professional Huttopia.||||Around 20 mins later Manon appeared at our pitch whilst we were packing up and returned our deposit for the electrical cable. She viewed the huge party on the single site near us and spoke to my wife agreeing it was a problem. Then she burst into tears saying that she didn’t handle it very well and that she was sorry.||We melted… But we still left Huttopia Verdon Gorge, but we now love you Manon.||||So. ||||If you want a site where you can party all night and annoy lots of people in the process then this site is for you.||||If you want a family site that quietens down at 11pm, then perhaps avoid this site at peak periods. Clearly the internet booking is causing families lots of sleepless nights. Huttopia need to...

We stayed here for a week with our two children (3 and 6), having read what we thought were quite mixed reviews. To be honest. We thought this place was fantastic. There are beautiful views everywhere you turn. There are many more a short drive away, although we found you have to get to them very early to get parked as they are quite understandably very popular. The nearby town, Castellane is lovely and has just enough for a meander, something to eat or just grab a coffee.||||We stayed in a three bedroom mobile home which we found clean and met almost all of our needs. (I will come to the missing bits later). We cooked most nights in there, wandering over to the little cafe on site a couple of nights to sample the limited but tasty grub in good sized portions. The food and drink was served by really, really lovely staff. The limited menu wasn't a problem for us. Pizza, burgers and chicken nuggets sums it up. We were fine with that having eaten at home most nights anyway.||||The place appeared to be run day to day by young men and women. I don't think I saw anyone over the age of about 21. But what a great job they do. I found them professional, courteous, happy to help and very friendly. They are a credit to the company.||||I have to remark on the road. I didn't see it as a massive road going through the camp site, more the campsite is split over to sides of the road. To me there is a difference. And even with two young children we didn't find it an issue. As for noise, yeah we were a way back from the road in our mobile home so can't comment on noise. It is a fairly busy road at times, but didn't find that people sped along it.||||There were a couple of negatives for us. Couple of really minor ones. No toaster or electric kettle. Bit trivial and we managed nonetheless, but would have made life easier. The other one is a little less trivial for us. Our nearest pool was lovely and from your sunbed had great views. However, it's surround is made entirely of decking. You are required, quite understandably, to remove your footwear before going into the pool area and leave it at the gate. Which is fine. However, the splinters we all got in our feet were terrible, I'm still getting them out of my daughter's feet a week later. We had a few near misses as well when I found some large splinters that thankfully, I threw away before the got into someone's foot because it would have really, really hurt. If you don't want shoes round the pool that's fine, but then maintain the area so kids (or anyone else for that matter) don't get splinters. The final one is another minor negative, but some more entertainment in the evening would be nice. The bits they had were nice but wasn't much on. If the decking didn't give the kids loads of splinters I would have given this place 5 stars.||||Anyway, to sum it up, we had a fantastic time, in a fantastic location, being well looked after by fantastic staff. Would stay again without hesitation.........just sort your...