Camping Le Valserine — Hotel in Gex

Beautifully located along the Valserine river, this small scale campsite offers a peaceful stay with some great views all around. Whether you like hiking, riding your bike, or leisurely enjoy your time reading a book in the sun with your feet in the river while enjoying some local cheese, you've found the right spot.

There are many trails that can be accessed from the Chézery village or from the villages nearby. We opted to pretty much ignore our car for our entire 10 day stay, and just do everything on foot or by bike. Great fun! And when you're back from your hike or ride, enjoy the showers which are kept quite clean (in an environmentally friendly way!), just like the toilets and dish washing and laundry area.

The personnel is very helpful and friendly, and provide service during the morning as well as during the late afternoon into the early evening. They also man the bar and tiny camping shop, where you can pre-order bread for the next day, have a drink or a snack, and depending on the day of week, have pizza or sausage with fries. The bar also offers a section of board games and (mostly French) books, or you can find them outside in the sharing cabinets.

More fun: Don't forget to say hi to the goats Take a short walk to the village, where you'll come across the local bakery and a small supermarket / bar Hunt for cheese, honey, local wines and beers in the Fromagerie next door (and/or buy yourself a hat, which I did) Book a lunch table in the village hotel (we unfortunately missed the opportunity due to car trouble and unrelated sickness, hopefully next time...) Grab your car and visit the neighboring villages, where you can also find ski lifts taking you to the mountain areas. We just hiked to the top instead, but with small kids this probably won't be an option. There is a great 360 degree panoramic view over the entire region from Crêt du Chalam (view of the Mont Blanc included), which you can either hike to from the campsite (requires good physical shape), or get to much easier by walking up from the Site de la Borne de Lion, where you can easily park your car. We found many people at the top who had done this (an entire school class, people with young kids, a bunch of elderly people, you name it).

TLDR; we really enjoyed our stay, and would be most pleased to visit this place again! Lots more to explore, and quiet enough to just sit around and read a...

I really wanted to like this campsite and I think with a few tweaks it could be fantastic. The staff who work here are very helpful and friendly and the campsite has a clear eco mindset throughout which is great. The pool although small was enjoyed by our children and the river was the highlight for us as it was extremely hot (32-38 degrees) during our stay and it was the only place to be cool.

There are simply not enough toilet and shower facilities to cope at peak times when the campsite is full. They are arranged in such a way that the showers and toilets are mixed on both sides of the block and you either do loops to find a free one or stand and wait on one side. There are also no separate wash basins, other than the dish washing ones, to do your teeth etc. The facilities are all mixed. Cleanliness wise, when we arrived everything was spotless but this slowly went downhill towards the middle of the week. I read that the campsite is building a bigger pool facility this winter, which is great, but I think a re-think on showers/toilets etc and the layout of them would be a great benefit.

Most of the pitches are quite large and some of them shaded by big trees with clear separation from neighbours. However, a significant proportion are in the full sun for most of the day, which whilst we were there was just unbearable - the extreme heat is obviously not the campsites fault. They have tried to plant bushes and trees but the plants that are still alive are many years off providing any shade at all. I had paid for a big pitch but was given a very narrow, standard pitch (66) where we had 4 very close neighbours with little to separate the pitches. Due to the heat, there was also often a strong sewage smell from the plant just down the river. Our pitch was incredibly stony, which can be normal for mountain campsites, but even with heavy duty pegs we struggled to get them in where the ground was baked too. A second groundsheet is also essential here.

The area is lovely, plenty of nature, walks, waterfalls etc and there are small supermarkets...

Unfortunately have to update this review. Since we had a great stay a few years back, we wanted to come back to this campsite, this time as a family. We booked an accommodation on site. Unfortunately we felt like we had to pay way too much in advance. We paid an advance, which is fine. Then, weeks before the stay we had to already pay for the entire stay, but ok fine. Finally, the day after we payed the entire booking, we also had to pay a deposit. In our opinion it's customary to have one pay an advance, pay the deposit upon arrival and complete the payment as one leaves. As I wanted to negotiate on this with the campsite, there was little understanding. Also due to trafficjams we couldn't make it to usual check in, which led us to the situation where we weren't allowed access until we paid the deposit, even though we had already paid for the entire stay. We are neat and trustworthy people, but the campsite owners were clearly expecting something else. This made our arrival not as relaxed as it could have been. The accomodation itself was tidy and it was fine.

We very much enjoyed this campsite with eco-mindset. Very clean sanitary complex, nice open pitches and located beside the river. There is a cute village in walking distance. We liked this campground more than the other campsites we visited...