Les vacances au camping des années 70 (vos souvenirs vont vous faire pleurer) 😢

Camping holidays in the 70s. The best summer adventure. 😢 Night of July 31, 1976. Somewhere on a national highway in France. A car is driving in the dark, loaded to the roof. Suitcases, folding chairs, a cooler strapped to the roof rack. The children are asleep in the back, between the bags. And the vinyl seats are sticking to their skin. In this video, we go back to camping holidays in the seventies. A world where there was no GPS, no air conditioning in cars, no online booking. We had a Michelin map, a trunk crammed full, and the open road ahead. We talk about loading the car the day before departure. The Renault 4L, the Citroën 2CV, the Peugeot 404. The trunk that was never big enough. The roof rack. The children crammed between the bags in the back, without seatbelts. We talk about the road. National Route 7, that legendary road that stretched from Paris to the Mediterranean for nearly a thousand kilometers. Mother with the Michelin map on her lap. Picnics by the roadside. France Inter on the car radio. And the traffic jams. The constant back-and-forth between those taking their holidays in July and those in August. Bison Futé, created in 1976 after the infamous traffic jam of the previous summer. We talk about setting up the tent. The canvas Canadian tent with its dozens of pegs and metal poles. Father sweating. Mother giving instructions. The children getting in the way. And that moment of pride when the tent was finally up. We talk about the equipment. The orange dishes. The gas stove with its blue canister. The cooler with its ice packs that melted by the second day. The air mattress that deflated at three in the morning. And the Manufrance and La Redoute catalogs leafed through for weeks. We talk about life at the campsite. The shared bathrooms. The phone booth. Children running around unsupervised. Tent neighbors becoming friends in forty-eight hours. Pétanque in the evenings. Pastis under the awning. The beach with Ambre Solaire sunscreen and sand in sandwiches. And we talk about the evenings. The setting sun. Camping stoves and barbecues. Transistor radios. The stars visible because there was no light pollution. Cicadas in the south. And in the tent, that intimacy where you could hear everyone breathing. And we talk about the last day. Taking down the tent. The patch of yellow grass where it had stood. Addresses exchanged on scraps of paper. Children crying. The road home, quieter than the one there. In the old days, we set off with almost nothing and found everything. Then we wanted more comfort. Today, we have everything. Except adventure. If this video reminded you of anything, let us know in the comments: What car did you use on vacation? How long did it take to pitch your tent? Did you have orange dishes? Do you remember seeing the stars from your tent?