Assuming you have the necessary electrical equipment already installed in your caravan/campervan/trailer tent.....
Most French campsite systems will accept the modern UK type hook up cable, but some continue to use the older two pin plus earth sockets, so you'd best buy an adapter to cover this eventuality.
Reverse polarity can be an issue and most camping equipment shops can sell you a small polarity tester and a 'rewired' adapter to correct any reversed polarity supply. If you ask the shop's advice, they will sort you out with everything.
French campsites usually have something like a 6 amp supply as standard but you can have the option of paying extra for an uprated connection. Depends on which appliances you want to use. If you overload the system, it will trip - the reset switch is usually situated in the hookup box and all you do is ask them at reception to reset it for you.
That said, I have heard of people blacking out the whole site....
I found this, from another forum I'm on, very useful as it shows the kind of adaptors SD refers to :
The orange lead is an external type camping cable with the standard exterior round sockets (one male, one female). You then need a two pin plug with female round socket as seen towards the top of the picture. This is what plugs into the hook-up. And we then use a male round socket to standard UK three pin plug socket into which we plug an RCD. These can be seen at the bottom of the pic. We then plug 4-way extension leads into this.
(Thanks to the The Brethren, of Club Arnage, for the pic.)
Sunday Driver wrote:That said, I have heard of people blacking out the whole site....
Been there, ......Done that..... St Dizier, municipal site, very embarrassing.....
The country to the North of France and a bit off to the right sends a lot of her campers and caravanners to France for hols ....They come fully kitted out with loads of electrical gadgets and many of them and need more than one hook up to power them all ....That is my experience as an ex caravaner so when the site supply blows ....look for the guy with the two hook ups.... he is probably running a dimplex oil filled radiator in his caravan at the same time as the TV off his sat dish and freeview box while is wife has the microwave fired up along with the chip fryer doing dinner ......You dont wear clogs do you powerdiesel ?
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