Tasting the champagne lifestyle in France (on a cider budget)
For The Telegraph, Tracey packed twins Nancy and Lola into the battered old Mazda and headed for the beachfront at Prairies de la Mer, proving you can bag St Tropez for the price of a family camping pitch — helicopters landing on distant superyachts included.
Tracey wanders into St Tropez by the side door — a beachfront mobile home at Prairies de la Mer, twin daughters Nancy and Lola in tow, a helicopter landing on a distant superyacht — and makes the case that the champagne lifestyle really does work on a cider budget: picnic instead of Le Club 55, pedalo for €20 instead of a speedboat, catamaran across to Port Grimaud instead of the Bardot pilgrimage. Rounded out with a serviceable long-list of French campsites from Provence to Normandy, but the reason to read it is the opening — the GB sticker on the Mazda, the squeal from the back seats, and the observation that St Tropez is "far too cool for seagulls."