Last Updated on 5 June 2026 by Colette
This May half term we were finally able to make our long awaited return to France. Our last holiday in France was back in 2019 when we spent a week at the Eurocamp site of Les Sablons and stopped at Les Alicourts for one night in either direction. We had intended to return to France in 2021 but of course that wasn’t to be – and with travel restrictions remaining in place at the start of last year, we put our French holiday on hold.
This was our fourth family holiday in France having stayed at a Yelloh! site in Benodet with my parents and sister when the children were tiny followed by Chateau De Lez Eaux with Eurocamp and then Les Sablons and Les Alicourts which were also Eurocamp holidays. This time round, when weighing up our options, a holiday with the French company of Yelloh! Village was considerably cheaper.
We booked our May half term holiday to Camping Les Tropiques in Toreilles based on proximity to the beach, good water slides and a high probability of getting good weather. Camping Les Tropiques is a Yelloh! campsite in Toreilles which is so far in the south of France that its practically in Spain.
We weighed up various travel option; flying to Carcassonne and hiring a car – quick but expensive, driving to Dover and catching the ferry – the cheapest option, or driving to Folkestone and taking the train which was slightly more expensive than the ferry but saved quite a bit of time. In the end we decide that this time round, driving to Folkestone and taking the train was the best option. (You can read more about why we decided to drive to the South of France with no stops here)
Driving to Camping Les Tropiques took us about 18hrs in total and I know lots of people thought we were bonkers but flights to Carcassonne, though relatively inexpensive, would have added around £500 to the cost of our holiday and would have meant we had to hire a car and bikes, add on the cost of linen and towel hire and and would generally have had far less flexibility in terms of packing and the journey itself.
Because we were holiday on with Kirst and Chris, we paid a small fee to be able to book accommodation next to each other – and this was absolutely worth the extra euros as it meant that we could easily pop between our mobile homes and really just meant we were on holiday together rather than just in the same place if that makes sense?
Yelloh! Camping Les Tropiques
So, I wanted to tell you a little bit more about the campsite that we stayed at (you can read specifically about our accommodation here) – about the reasons why we chose Camping Les Tropiques in Toreilles and also what we thought about it.
Why did we choose Camping Les Tropiques?
As I’m sure you can imagine, we spent quite a bit of time researching different campsites in the south of France – I chatted to lots of people on my facebook page and asked for recommendations but Dave did all the leg work in terms of reading through the various facilities that different sites offered and doing comparisons of price etc.
One of the things that we were looking for when we were booking our Yelloh! campsite was proximity to the sea – because to be honest I don’t feel like I’m on holiday if I haven’t felt the sand between my toes! Alongside this, we were looking at sites that were fairly low down in France on the basis that the further South we drove, the more chance we had of having a nice weather!
The other deciding factor in terms of choosing this particular Yelloh! campsite was that it had a number of quite big slides: four that were identical (and perfect for racing!) and a separate twisty one down the side as well as several different pools. Our kids are of an age where kids’ clubs are of no interest to them (which is just as well as there was little to no entertainment at Les Tropiques when we visited as it was so early in the season) however they are confident swimmers and can be trusted to be in the pool independently (though not unattended of course) so good swimming facilities and a range of slides are key to keeping them well entertained on holiday!
Unfortunately, when we arrived at the Les Tropiques campsite, only one of the slides was working right up until the very last day when randomly the other slides were turned on! There was no communication about this – we don’t know why they weren’t turned on so we don’t know if they were broken and had just been fixed or if they just hadn’t bothered turning them because it was low season season either way it was quite annoying.
What you need to know about Camping Les Tropiques
As I’ve mentioned, Yelloh! is a French company so the campsite was very French in that there was not a lot of English translation around the site. All of the “Welcome” documentation we were given was in French, signs around the site were in French, the menus in the bar and restaurant were also in French. For us this was fine because I do speak a reasonable amount of French and can manage in these situations (in fact I quite enjoyed flexing my severely underused language muscles!) but, if you don’t speak any French at all you’re going to be relying very heavily on Google Translate and Google lens.
We found that some of the staff at Camping Les Tropiques spoke pretty good English but mostly they were French-speaking so between a combination of their English and my French we were able to get by and solve a few problems relating to keys, doors and frozen margaritas!
Campsite renovations at Camping Les Tropiques
The campsite has undergone some major renovations in the last year and I can only assume that they had planned for these to be finished for the start of the season as we definitely did not expect to arrive on site to find areas of the campsite unusable and essentially a building site. There had been no communication to forewarn us of this nor was there any sort of apology or explanation.
We actually arrived at the campsite the day after it opened for the season and, as I’ve mentioned, some of the renovations were not complete and there were lots of facilities that we didn’t have access to:
- There were was what I am assuming will be a small lake with a bridge over it at the entrance but it rather looked like a dried up swamp and was definitely not the first thing you wanted to see as you came through the gates – I’m sure once it was finished it will have made a really welcoming looking front area.
- The children’s play area couldn’t have looked less welcoming and in fact was completely unsafe with diggers left in the play area but no fencing etc to mark it as unusable – perhaps this is just the French way but if that was a site in the UK there’d have been fencing, tape, notices etc to make sure that it wasn’t used!
- One of the swimming pools was completely fenced off and unusable. There was a massive crane with building work going on across the course of the whole week in this area – which as I’m sure you can imagine wasn’t really the relaxing poolside vista we had hoped for.
- Throughout the week we watched lots of different things being done – for example new glass panels put up around the bar – which meant whilst we were sat drinking cocktails one afternoon, we were being serenaded by drills and hammers.
- The stage was still in the process of being finished off so there was no entertainment – not that we were bothered by this and with the site being so quiet its likely there wouldn’t have been any entertainment anyway.
There was still a lot of building work going on, this wasn’t something that we’d been forewarned about and obviously it was a little bit disappointing to find ourselves essentially holidaying on what was basically still a building site in many places.
However, it has to be said that the work that had been done was beautiful – the bar was looking really gorgeous as was the area around the main pools. It is all looking really fresh and modern; you could absolutely see how beautiful the renovations would be when they were finished.
Aside from spending our holiday on what was essentially a building site, the rest of the holiday was really lovely. The staff were really lovely, the facilities that were open were great; the shop sold beautiful pain au chocolat and croissants which we availed ourselves of on a daily basis, the bar staff were friendly and made cracking frozen margaritas and of course the newly built bar area itself was a really lovely place to sit.
May half term at Camping Les Tropiques
Camping Les Tropiques had only opened on the day we arrived I think or perhaps the day before – and as such was really quiet. We had expected that it would get much busier over the course of the week but that just didn’t it seem to happen. In fact, I didn’t hear another English voice on the campsite all week – although we were led to believe that there were other English families there.
Because we visited in what was essentially low season, there was very little in the way of entertainment and certainly nothing going on at the stages but this wasn’t something that really bothered us. Because we had Kirst and Chris with us, we spent our evenings playing cards and entertaining ourselves – which is all honesty is probably what we’d do anyway.
Around the pool at Camping Les Tropiques
It’s worth pointing out that there’s only outdoor pools at Camping Les Tropiques – but as I’ve mentioned, one of the reasons we drove so far was in search of sunshine and we were duly rewarded for our efforts!
At certain points we had the pool area completely to ourselves particularly first thing in the morning or around lunchtime. There were definitely times where it got busy but it was never overcrowded. I imagine during peak season it would be a completely different experience.
As a result of the renovation work that had been done, all of the beds around the pool were brand new. In fact so new that the staff were actually opening the packaging on the day we arrived! The beds were extremely comfortable and there were always plenty of them. There were plenty of umbrellas to provide shade too if you wanted it.
The pools were all spotlessly clean although we did notice that all three children end up with really sore toes which we think was from some texture on the tiles at the bottom of the pool where their toes had been rubbing because they all had exactly the same injuries on the on the pads of their toes – I would suggest it’s perhaps worth wearing swimming socks if your children are going to be in the pool often.
The pool complex has sections of artificial grass (watch your feet on these, they can get really hot), clean paving slabs and palm trees. There’s two paddling pools, a pool for the slides and a separate rectangular pool for swimming – I know there was also another pool on the other side of the fence which looked very deep but they were obviously still working on this one so I can’t comment on how it looks now!
Eating out at Camping Les Tropiques
Aside from our daily, freshly-baked pastries and occasional baguette, we didn’t really buy any food on site. I think the kids had an ice cream once or twice but they weren’t anything special.
We had tea down the road at a food van called “O’Nipi” a couple of times – this isn’t a particularly cheap takeaway but the food was really good. I recommend the Croque Madame and Ben would tell you that the burgers are really nice. Do check the opening hours though as they are limited during off season.
We also had tea down the road at a really random restaurant which I can’t say a particularly recommend but as I can’t remember the name of it that’s not very helpful anyway is it! If you are planning on eating off site, do plan ahead as we got a bit stuck one night when we couldn’t really find anywhere that was open – again a side effect of holidaying off season but not one that was a major problem.
Although there is a campsite shop you are probably going to want your car so that you can pop to the nearest Carrefour (which is just a short drive away) and do a big shop. We found that the grocery prices were really reasonable actually, in fact we were quite surprised by the cost of our first shop and would say pricing was on a par with if not cheaper than the current grocery prices at home.
Oh while I’m on the subject of food – a BBQ is a paid for extra, you can hire it for as many nights as you like – but it isn’t actually a proper BBQ so we only ended up using it once despite having booked it for the full week.
What is there to do at Camping Les Tropiques?
So as I’ve mentioned, we were holidaying off season so there was next to no entertainment – but this isn’t something which bothers us as we don’t typically get very involved anyway. And, with the campsite still under going building work the children’s play area wasn’t safe.
I can’t say it felt like there was a massive amount of stuff for them to do on the campsite but because the weather was so good and the pools were open they were they were quite happy. Obviously it would have been better if all the slides had been working all week!
What was really interesting was that where they would normally have made new friends to go off and play with because there were pretty much no English-speaking people on the campsite, they didn’t really hang out with anyone else this time. Amy did make friends a little German girl towards the end of the holiday who spoke for really good English and they enjoyed playing in the pool together but otherwise it was very much the three of them playing with us and with Kirst and Chris.
Had we not had Aunty Custard and Uncle Chris with us, the kids might have found it a little bit harder to entertain themselves. We had taken our own bikes (though there is bicycle hire available) so they were able to ride quite freely around the campsite particularly because it wasn’t really very busy with traffic so we felt they could quite safely go off and roam the campsite. I would have let Ben and Chloe go to the pool on their own but obviously Amy was always with them anyway so either Uncle Chris went with them while we were doing grocery shopping or we were all there.
Proximity to Torreilles beach
Camping Les Tropiques is within about 500 meters of the sea – it’s an easy walking distance. It’s a beautiful sandy beach – quite narrow in places and busy too.
We actually only went twice down to the beach twice and the kids couldn’t go in the sea because it was absolutely full of jellyfish. We assume having watched a group of teenagers throwing them each other’s faces that they were fairly innocuous but we weren’t about to take the risk. What they did mean is that we realized we probably don’t need the proximity to the sea for the sake of the children – it’s more me that wants to see the sea to feel like a one-holiday.
If you do make it down to the sea, there’s a lovely bar to the left – I can’t find the name of it but it has a disco ball outside and sells lovely cocktails with a sea view!
Would we go back to Camping Les Tropiques?
So would we go back? Yes, absolutely. I know I’ve mentioned quite a few niggles in this post but they are mostly things that were related to building work which I would anticipate were quickly sorted once we had left! The campsite was quiet and had everything we needed for our family camping holiday – sunshine, swimming pools and fresh pastries!
Read these posts about holidaying in France next:
Driving to the south of France with kids
Le Petit Train de Perpignan guided tour
Drop-in Argeles Water Jump Park – Review & Tips
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