Camping le Grand Paris — Hotel in Pontoise

We booked and stayed via Eurocamp/Homair but this site also rents a number of mobile homes/chalets directly and there are a few 10 at most camping pitches.||The site itself is fairly small. It has a pool (quite small - about 5 x 15m and deep 1.2m in the shallow end and 1.8m in the deep end) with a separate toddler area. The pool is fenced off and covered. There is a bar / restaurant area, a room where they do children's entertainment during high season, a laundry area and a wash block for those camping. There is no shop. There is a "farm" which seemed to consist of two goats, some ducks, geese and other waterfowl. There were also copyu living in the lake. These are an invasive South American otter like rodent which were introduced into Europe in the 1920s for fur farms and some escaped. They are now endemic across continual Europe as there are no natural predators (but have been eradicated in the UK). Reviews talking about rats / ragondin are probably referring to these animals which live in the park, but will run away from humans.||The nearest town/ large village is Nesles la Valee and it has a bakery and small general shop / mini market. There are bigger supermarkets in the town L'isle Adam Parmain which is on the river Oise and has an RER station. There is a bus stop just outside the campsite and this takes you to another village Valmondois which is also on the Oise and has an RER station. It is a very good base for visiting Paris, Giverny, Parc Asterix and other local sites. It is the opposite side of Paris to Disneyland Paris so I wouldn't recommend for that.||Most of the site is let by them directly and is mobile home style. There are about 10 camping pitches which looked quite big and had electric hook up. The rest (about 20 units) is let and managed by Eurocamp /Homair. ||We stayed at the end of August and beginning of September and it was a bit like a tale of two holidays. Until Saturday 30 August the site was very busy, all the facilities were open and children were everywhere. After Saturday (French schools returned on 1 September) it emptied out and by our final day - Wednesday there were only about 10 units occupied and the park was very empty. ||It was great for what we wanted, a base to explore the area, however if you are looking for somewhere to relax and entertain the kids I think you might be better looking elsewhere.||Now to the Eurocamp accommodation. We rented a 2 bed premium mobile home. It had air-conditioning (although as the weather was mixed we didn't use that) and a covered decking area. The covered decking came into it's own as it was quite rainy and it provided much needed extended living space. Despite being labelled premium it had seen better days. It looked a bit tired, some of the furniture laminate was peeling and the kitchen drawer didn't really work. Perhaps it was because it was the end of the season, but we did wonder if this was premium we worried what anything else might have been. In terms of equipment it had a dishwasher, a filter coffee machine and the usual crockery etc. We didn't have a corkscrew initially but the very helpful reps supplied that. Bring your own teapot if you like tea and if (like me) you prefer big mugs might be best to bring your own one of those. We booked last minute at the end of the season so the price we paid wasn't much so something to put down...

This site gets mixed reviews and it appears that off season it is a quiet lovely place to be but in high season it is noisy over populated and not very clean.||We took our tent and were put in an area surrounded by cabins, on the corner of two roads. We constantly had children running past our tent, cutting the corner, who had no respect for tents, tripping over guy ropes and as we left we found one of the guy ropes had been completely ripped from the tent tearing the material. The pitch had a large hole in the centre of the pitch about 4 inches deep and a couple of feet in diameter which was a bit of an ankle breaker.||The site is surrounded by an 8 foot spiked fence. The gates are locked at 11pm. We were not told this at reception when we arrived. We came back from a great day at Disneyland at 11:10pm only to find that the gates were locked and the security guard would not let us in. Eventually we managed to get someone who was leaving to let us in, otherwise I think we would have had to sleep in the car. We had to leave the car outside.||The facilities were crowded, far too many people for the facilities and the staff did their best but were not able to keep them clean. We hoped to use the pool and tennis courts, but the pool was overcrowded though the day with no control over children jumping in and the tennis courts were used as football nets despite signs saying not to.||The site was very noisy with the DJ playing music very loud beyond midnight and people in the cabins competing with their boomboxes well after midnight. There were people taking loudly often until 3pm.||There seems to be a problem generally with locals, probably due to the noise as there were stones being thrown at the cabins throughout the night, with loud crashes as the stones hit the cabins. We were regularly woken throughout the night with loud bangs. There did not seem to be much security were doing to stop this.||The walk to the nearest town was a 2 mile hike made longer as we were not allowed the code through the gate to the footpath at the rear of the site. We were told we had to walk round and that the path went up a hill through a forest. Not put off we walked to the town and back.||Great location for Paris and perfect to visit Ouvers-Sur-Oise where Vincent Van Gogh is buried, where he lived and where he painted many of his landscapes. Asterix Park excellent and Tour of PSG stadium was also excellent. Disneyland was a must...

We arrived at the site and was pleasantly surprised to find a modern reception and helpful receptionist. We had already paid in full in advance, which was the only site on our holiday to demand this, so somewhat annoyed that we then had to pay more for an electrical hook-up. We left reception to find a suitable pitch only to find the campsite largely deserted. The pitches were obviously converted hard standings from mobile homes but found what looked like it was grassy. All the grass pitches felt as though they had simply broken up the concrete and thrown some dirt and grass on top; they were very lumpy with large rocks sticking out of the surface. We put the tent up and checked out the toilet block. It was probably the worst I have ever seen in any campsite in the whole of Europe. It looked like a 1950's barracks block but had been modified in the 70's by jamming as many toilets/sinks/showers into as small a space as possible. Most of the sinks were blocked, showers full of spiders webs and the whole was poorly maintained and not well ventilated; It. Stank. Foul! The dish and pot washing up facilities had cracked sinks and a luke warm dribble of water but the lights were broken. As for lights, the entire site was lit up like a POW camp at night with large industrial floodlights pouring down onto any unfortunate inmates unlucky to be camping beneath one. The children liked seeing the goats and gave them names but they were dissapointed by the "lake" and the "boats". I only saw one boat and this appeared to have been half abandoned on the edge of the "island". I believe Banksy modelled Dismal-land on this campsite! On the whole, it was no wonder they take payment in full in advance and the site was largely deserted, especially on the camping side. WORST CAMPSITE EVER! AVOID...