Gérard Sourdain remembers only too well that during his childhood his parents were too poor to pay for family holidays, and how out of shame he used to have to invent stories when his schoolteacher asked his class to write essays on where they had been during the summer. So when in 2006 he and his partner Isabelle Schweizer opened a campsite in Mélisey, a village in the Franche-Comté region of north-east France, he was intent on allowing others the chance he never had. The daily rates for renting the on-site caravans are just five euros per night for adults and free for under-18s. The income the couple receives from the campsite is insufficient to live off alone, so Sourdain also works as a fork-lift truck operator at the major Peugeot car-making plant at nearby Sochaux. Earlier this month, photographer Patrick Artinian spent a few days at the one-star campsite which Sourdain and Schweizer proudly claim is “the cheapest in France”.
Lilly has her mobile home parked here all year through, and spends the summer season at the site. Gérard Sourdain created the campsite, called La Bergereine, at a moment of major change in his life. The divorced father-of-two one day left Paris in his car, on a full tank, and decided to re-establish himself there wherever he ran out of fuel. Which was beside the abandoned land where the campsite now flourishes.
