Is vanlife heaven, a hashtag or a hoax? Is Hossegor a summer destination? Can you die of fart inhalation? Those, and a load more questions, were percolating in my brain as I hovered over the go button to book a 10-day van trip in the Basque Country.
For the past five years, my son Kip and I have made the same pilgrimage to a campsite in Messanges for our Basque Country surf trip with friends. This year, calendar clashes and the grom’s growing preference for music festivals over his dad pushed us to go earlier and smaller. So we tried something new: a van, in early July. Here’s an honest, farts-n-all review of renting one in July.
The Van
We booked through roadsurfer, chosen for its easy-to-use site, range of pick-up destinations, positive reviews and claims of few hidden extras. I also found some big discount codes with a quick look online. We chose the cutesy-named “Couple Cottage”: an oversized double bed, bathroom, kitchen, plus a fold-out table and chairs that appeared from nowhere whenever we needed them. Once we’d picked up a few new friends along the way, it felt less like camping and more like a mobile stately home with a butler. And yes, I was the butler.
Hossegor and Capbreton
The rough plan was to wild camp, but the local gendarmes weren’t having it, waking us twice at 7 am. Turns out things had changed a little since I last van-lifed down this way. Though, given that was in 1998, that’s perhaps unsurprising. Most beach car parks also have a sub-1.9m vehicle barrier. Which is how we found the essential app: park4nite, which has all the best spots for water, electricity and parking. Now summer in France is always a risky dance. Summer swells can be sparse, but the 10 pm sunsets, languid beach days, fun beach bars and holiday vibes can fill in flat days. In Hossegor, we scored some fun wind-swell days at Océanides Plage; however, the southerly winds promised better luck along Spain’s northern coast. And while camping was $20 a night, hookup included, with public showers and washing machines on the beach. Hard to beat, but after two days, we had the itch to move on.
Mondy
Over the Border To Zarautz
Packing up was easy, and the webcams showed Zarautz looking small but clean. High season meant the prime headland sites were full, but park4nite turned up a family-run spot a mile inland. We’d picked up more friends from a chance meeting at a World Cup screening, so the crew now numbered eight, and the van’s fridge, stocked with chilled rosé for the mid-30s heat, earned its keep as a genuine luxury.
We didn’t want to walk to the beach, so the van picked up the slack there too: a spot one block back, surfing perfect, warm Atlantic waves, with a cold drink always a stone’s throw away. There’s a freedom to moving on whenever you like that I properly understood in Zarautz. Though the snoring and rolling around in the heat overnight was less romantic than it sounds.
The real magic of the van wasn’t the bed or the bathroom, though, and I may be showing my advanced age here; it was the storage. All that “put your stuff down and forget about it” space. Once the boards were washed off and the wetsuits were dripping from the awning, we fell into a quiet routine: chess set out, music low, just existing for a bit in a tiny, perfectly organised fortress of calm. Kip’s got considerably better at chess than me this year, which is its own quiet horror, but losing to your kid hits different with the doors open to a sea breeze and nowhere else you need to be.
Back To France: Lafitenia
We looped back to Hossegor with our new friends for beach time, restaurants, and with teenage energy to burn (and show off), a jump off the town-centre bridge at high tide. We finished the week at our favourite spot, Lafitenia, where the parking police thwarted our original plan again, but park4nite came through with Camping Soubelet: a beautiful little site 100m from the ever-impressive Bibam restaurant, bar, and mini-golf course. I lost again, obviously. But we watched one hell of a sunset and shared a cold beer. He’s 16, we’re in France, nobody minded. Heck, I’ve heard the kids drink champagne in elementary school over here.
What Worked, What Didn’t
The unexpected joy of the trip was the vibe, not just inside the van but out in the car parks. Every site, be it the pines above Hossegor, the quieter Capbreton spots, the surf-hardened lots around Zarautz, had the same easy, unbothered energy. Other vans, other families, plenty of roof racks, not much fuss. Nobody showing off, everybody there for the same reason: good waves, good light, not much else on the agenda.
One piece of kit proved essential: the bike carrier. Bagging a good spot near the beach in July means you don’t want to move the van again until you leave, so having something else to get around on made all the difference: quick rides for bread and coffee, evening pedals along the front, no faffing with parking twice a day. And parking is a real issue at this time of year.
If I changed one thing, it’d be the van’s size. Sub-1.9m Transporter-class vans are the connoisseur’s choice for clearing those height barriers, though apparently the rules, and the appeal of bigger vans, shift once September hits and the crowds disperse a little. And honestly, we could have lived without the bathroom and shower altogether, given how close gelato and public showers always were.
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Would I (We) Do It Again?
“Are you glad I pressed go on the van?” I asked my son on the last day of the trip. He didn’t respond quickly. After all, it was 11.15, and he’d only been up for 15 minutes. But as he inhaled his 190th fresh butter-lashed baguette of the week, turned his wetsuit vest inside out, and checked the rip bowl from the kitchen table, he turned and said, “Yeah, why not?” And well, in terms of an honest review, it doesn’t get much better than that.
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