Off to Switzerland with a tent for two, not wild camping but hunting for decent campsites around Zermatt / Sion /Interlaken / Meiringen / Spiez. Most important things are clean showers (I shudder at most I have seen on campsites!) and a pleasant situation, ie with a view, not with a caravan on each side of an allotted plot.
Any ideas? Which sites to avoid?
Bed & Breakfast recommendations in roughly the same areas also welcomed!
If you're thinking B&B, why not do huts up in the mountains which will probably cost the same or less but with obvious advantages? Definitely less in a dorm and you might even get a room to yourself now the main season's over.
The Zermatt campsite's pretty much a small field by the railway and anything around Interlaken/Speiz will be pretty regimented. I don't know Sion or Meiringen, but allotted plots seem the norm in the big tourist areas.
Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen might be suitable, though.
The campsite in Tasch is pretty nice. Just a 50 minute walk or short train ride from Zermatt.
Having just spent 5 days in the campsite in Zermatt i can second Erics comments. Its very cheap and right in Zermatt so very connvient. But its very far from 4 star luxury and you will be woken up by a very noisy train at 6am every morning. Never could work out what it was for! All the other trains were nice quiet electric ones.
The campsite in Randa just a bit further out was not too bad either.
Zermatt "Camping Matterhorn" - Avoid unless you really want to be in Zermatt. It's a good basecamp for climbers and is within great staggering distance of the nightlife but I wouldn't recommend it for most people. Im young enough not to mind living in squalor...
Randa (near Zermatt) - Camping Attermenzen - Pleasant campsite with good scenery. Facilities not bad, showers a little small but still warm and clean. You can choose to camp wherever you want, not regimented at all. I like it here, think a car would be useful though to get around.
Lauterbrunnen - Camping Jungfrau - A big campsite with caravans and mobile homes and everything BUT last time I went with my own tent they put us on a little pitch that was less regimented, on a terrace with other similar small tents. The facilities on this site are as good as you are likely to find anywhere and the campsite shop is fairly well stocked.
One thing I'd point out is that clean showers will quite often mean allotted plot. It's just the way "better" campsites work.
That reminds me, there is a site in Les Hauderes just down the road from Arolla. The facilities were nice and clean and plentiful and the owners very helpful. On my recent Chamonix to Zermatt trek we turned up without a reservation and they kindly squeezed us in (behind a caravan, but we were only going to be there for 12 hours) and charged us half the normal rate as we didn't have a "proper" pitch. Might be a bit regimented for your tastes but I felt they deserved a bit of good publicity.
Definitely less in a dorm and you might even get a room to yourself now the main season's over.
