Country guide
Free camping and aires in France
France is the easiest country in Europe to travel cheaply in a motorhome, because French towns decided decades ago that visiting campers were worth having. The result is a national network of aires, many of them free, most of them unremarkable, and collectively the reason a French trip costs a fraction of a British one.
An aire is a municipal or private stopover for motorhomes. Most are a levelled bit of ground with marked bays, a drinking water tap, and a drain for emptying waste tanks. Some have nothing but the ground. What they almost never have is a reception, a barrier, or anyone to talk to, and that is the point: you arrive, you park, you leave.
They exist because French communes worked out that a passing motorhome spends money in the bakery and the bar even if it pays nothing to sleep. An aire is tourist infrastructure, not a campsite, and the rules follow from that. Stays are short, usually a night or two. Awnings, chairs and washing lines are generally not welcome, because that is camping and camping happens at campsites.
What we have mapped
Everything on our France map is officially designated: a municipal aire, an official campsite, or a stopover an operator has published. Wild camping is covered separately in the rules below, and we do not give it coordinates.
If you are in a tent
Then aires are not for you, and the word you need is bivouac. France treats bivouac and camping as different activities with different rules, and the distinction is strict enough to be worth reading before you go.
Where they are
Only officially designated stopovers are pinned. Wild camping is covered in the rules below, and never as a coordinate.
The rules in France
France distinguishes bivouac from camping, and the distinction decides what is legal. Bivouac means one night, a small tent or none at all, pitched in the evening and gone in the morning, leaving nothing behind. In national park core zones it is allowed only in designated spots and generally only between 19:00 and 09:00. Camping proper, meaning a pitch you settle into, is a different thing and is not permitted in the same places.
- Each national park sets its own detail, and the authorised spots and exact hours vary between them. We have not yet checked every park's own regulation individually, so treat the 19:00 to 09:00 window as the general pattern rather than a guarantee for a specific park.
Source: Le bivouac, Portail des parcs nationaux de France ↗ Checked 2026-07-19
Read the full rules for France →