Guide contents · Chapter 13 of 14
Activities: land, air and taste
Hiking: the GR network and the mountains
France is laced with sentiers de Grande Randonnée, long-distance GR paths marked with red-and-white flashes. Join one for an afternoon; nobody checks you are doing the whole thing. The day-walk heartlands are the northern Alps and central Pyrenees: the Lac Blanc balcony trail above Chamonix, the Vanoise glacier country from Aussois, and the Cirque de Gavarnie, an amphitheatre of 1,500m walls reached by a flat valley stroll. In the Verdon, the Blanc-Martel section of the GR4 is the classic canyon-floor day: book the shuttle back and carry a torch for the tunnels.
- The GR20 warning. Corsica's GR20 is widely rated Europe's hardest waymarked trail: two weeks of steep, rough granite. It is not a first long-distance walk. Train for it, or take the gentler GR10 across the Pyrenees instead.
- The massif closure rule. In the Mediterranean south, high fire-risk days close entire forest massifs to walkers, with fines for entry. Check the department's daily access map each evening; europefiremap.com shows where the fires and smoke actually are.
Van base: the municipal Camping Le Grand Canyon at La Palud-sur-Verdon, a cheap shaded field 800m from the village. If the south is closed or smoky, the Alps and central Pyrenees keep every one of these walks good.
Climbing
Four heartlands, four different games. Fontainebleau, an hour south of Paris, is the world's benchmark bouldering forest: sandstone blocks at Bas Cuvier, Apremont and the Trois Pignons, graded circuits painted on the rock, no rope needed. The Verdon gorge means 300m limestone walls, most famously the Falaise de l'Escalès. Céüse, above Gap, is often called the best sport-climbing cliff in the world; budget an hour's uphill walk to touch it. The Calanques between Marseille and Cassis give sea-cliff routes above turquoise water, En-Vau the classic.
Fire note: the Calanques sit inside the Bouches-du-Rhône closure system and the hills around Marseille have burned repeatedly; on red days the massif shuts and smoke can reach the crags. Céüse sits outside serious fire country and absorbs a relocated week without complaint. Fontainebleau no longer qualifies: two fires burned around 2,050 hectares of the forest in July 2026, roughly half of it is closed, and that includes classic boulder areas. Check current forest access before basing a week (or a relocated week) there.
- Van bases: Camping La Musardière at Milly-la-Forêt (crash-pad hire, boulders within walking distance), the La Palud municipal site for the Verdon, and Camping Les Guérins at Sigoyer, the climbers' field at 1,300m below Céüse.
Via ferrata
Cabled climbing routes you clip along with a hired kit: the fastest way for a confident scrambler into big terrain. The Alps hold the best of it. The Via Ferrata du Diable at Aussois-Avrieux in the Maurienne is France's largest network, seven linked routes and nearly 4km of cable above Fort Victor-Emmanuel; Grenoble has routes on the Bastille cliffs directly above the city. Hire kit locally (harness, lanyards, helmet, roughly €15-20) and start early: cables get hot and busy by noon. Van base: Aussois village, where campsites and a summer ski-resort aire sit minutes from the routes. Alpine via ferrata country is low fire risk; no alternative needed.
Paragliding
Tandem flights need no experience, just a jog on takeoff. Annecy is the busiest free-flight site in Europe: launches from the Col de la Forclaz, landings on the meadow at Doussard, where the lake smooths the morning air for first-timers. The Dune du Pilat, south of Arcachon, is pure soaring: sea breeze hits Europe's tallest sand dune and pilots float its crest for hours. The Puy de Dôme runs tandems from the volcano's summit above Clermont-Ferrand.
Fire note: the Pilat dune borders the Landes pine forest that burned close to 30,000 hectares in 2022; flying stops and air quality drops when smoke is up. Annecy and the Puy de Dôme are the low-risk alternatives.
- Van bases: Camping Panorama du Pyla just south of the dune; the Doussard campsites beside the landing field; the year-round 51-pitch aire at Orcines for the Puy de Dôme (the summit-road car parks ban overnight stays, 22:00 to 07:00).As of late July 2026: Camping Panorama du Pyla sits beside an active fire region: the Gironde fire has forced more than 220,000 people out, including the whole Cap Ferret peninsula across the basin, and a separate Landes fire at Biscarrosse has cleared over 20,000 more to the south. Do not book the Pyla campsites or plan dune flying without checking the Gironde prefecture's current orders first. The authorities decide what is open; if they say leave, leave. In danger, call 112.
Cycling
Two different sports. For touring, the voies vertes (traffic-free greenways) are superb from a van, and the Loire à Vélo is the flagship: roughly 900km of mostly flat, château-lined riverside from Cuffy to the Atlantic. Ride any slice of it. For climbing, Mont Ventoux is the pilgrimage: the ascent from Bédoin runs about 21km and 1,600m to the bald summit. Start at dawn in summer, for the heat and for the afternoon wind that gives the mountain its name.
- Van bases: Camping de l'Île d'Or at Amboise puts the Loire à Vélo outside the gate with the château across the water; the municipal Camping La Pinède at Bédoin is the cyclists' start line for Ventoux.
Fire note: Ventoux sits in the Vaucluse, where red-risk days can close its forested slopes. The Loire, Burgundy's greenway through the vines and the Alsace wine-road cycle route all sit in low-risk country.
Wine tasting tours
Van travel and wine country suit each other, with the obvious rule about who drives afterwards. Burgundy's Route des Grands Crus from Dijon to Santenay passes the most famous vineyard names on earth in about 60km; Beaune is the natural base. Saint-Émilion, east of Bordeaux, does a medieval town, an underground church and merlot in one stop. The Alsace route des vins strings half-timbered villages such as Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé beneath the Vosges. The Loire adds Vouvray and Chinon, with cellars cut into the tuffeau rock, and the southern Rhône brings Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where several domaines take vans overnight.
Fire note: some wine country doubles as fire country. Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the southern Rhône sit in the high-risk arc, and the Bordeaux vineyards border the Landes pine belt that burned in 2022. Burgundy, Alsace and the Loire are the low-risk cellars.
- Van bases: municipal Camping Les Cent Vignes in Beaune, walkable to the cellars; Riquewihr's Place Jean Monnet motorhome parking (€10 overnight) for Alsace; Domaine de Maucoil's vineyard stopover at Châteauneuf-du-Pape. France Passion membership opens hundreds more vineyard overnights.
Cheese-making and farm tours
The Jura's Routes du Comté link fruitières, the village cooperative dairies where morning milk becomes 40kg wheels; many run cheap tours, and Poligny, the comté capital, makes an easy hub. In the Aveyron, the Roquefort caves under the Combalou plateau are open year round, and some (Gabriel Coulet among them) are free to visit. Normandy offers the village of Camembert and working dairies across the Pays d'Auge. In the Alps, the Beaufort cooperative runs summer visits while the herds are up on the high pastures.
- Van base: Roquefort-sur-Soulzon keeps a free 10-space municipal aire 800m from the caves, with water and toilets.
All four heartlands are low fire risk. Cheese country is green country.
Horse riding in the Camargue
The Rhône delta is the one place in France where a first-time rider gets a genuinely wild landscape: white Camargue horses, black bulls and flamingos across the lagoons around the Étang de Vaccarès. Stables cluster on the roads into Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and take beginners out on one- to two-hour marsh and beach rides. Van base: Camping Le Clos du Rhône on the west edge of Saintes-Maries, near the beach. The wetland itself carries little fire risk, though summer smoke from the surrounding scrub hills can drift over on windy days.
Caving in the Lot
The limestone causses of the Lot are hollow, and two show caves justify the detour on their own. The Gouffre de Padirac drops you 103m by lift and stairs to an underground river you cross by boat; book online in summer. The Grotte du Pech Merle near Cabrerets holds 29,000-year-old spotted-horse paintings and caps daily numbers, so reserve ahead. Van base: Camping Les Chênes, 900m from the Padirac entrance. Inland Lot is low fire risk, and the caves hold around 13°C all summer, which makes this the best heatwave activity in the book.