Camping du Lac de Saint-Pardoux

The lake is the main draw here, and it’s beautiful, with lots to do outdoors: wakeboarding, fishing, hiking, running and biking. We stayed four nights in August 2025, a family of four in a campervan. Camping was relatively cheap, especially if you’re looking to explore the lake. The pitches could be better, with little privacy and uneven ground tangled with roots. The facility blocks weren’t the cleanest, and there isn’t much on site for kids.

It’s much easier to travel around and visit places in a motorhome. When towing a caravan across France early in the season, there used to be very few open sites, and that number has dropped a lot over the last six years. Also, not all of this site’s facilities were open in March.

We won’t book here again. Only one heater worked, there was a stain on the settee, and the shower tap was broken and coming away. The wardrobe door wouldn’t stay shut either. Getting the car to the cabin wasn’t possible because the trees and bushes had grown over the access, and the parking area was full. We had to leave the car partly off the track so other cars could get past. There was no light on the way to the cabin, and when we came back late each night it was pitch dark. Luckily, we’d left the outside light on so we could find it. The cabin was much poorer than we expected.

The pitches are big, and the workers are kind. There’s no wifi at the pitches, just at reception. It’s a pretty busy campsite, and the bar is on the expensive side, though being right by the lake does make that understandable.