Communal BBQ etiquette- France?

[justwondering72]

When I were a lass we had a lot of family camping holidays in France and I have fond memories of my dad cooking most of our food over a wee charcoal BBQ that my parents brought with them. Fast fwd to now, and we are doing a fair bit of camping in France, albeit quite a lot further south than my folks ever came, with our boys.

Every site we find down here has a ' no open fire / BBQ ' rule. Is this a new thing? Or because we are down south?

Most if the sites provide BBQs for use. I'm trying to work out the rules for using them...

If there are sticks and half used bags of charcoal lying around, are they for general use?

Is there any kind if booking / queuing system or us it purely first come, first served? We tend to eat earlier than the French, but at our last site all the BBQs were being used a lot, by big groups and I have fears of us being glared at by people wanting to use 'their' BBQ because we got there first.

Tell me how it all works please!

[justwondering72]

Bumping as our next trip is coming up, heading to a site in the Pyrenees.

Can I expand my question to ask, are open fires on your own pitch the exception rather than the rule in France these days? Anyone got a charcoal grill on their pitch at a French site recently?

[hillbilly]

They are definitely an exception.I have no experience about communal BBQs but If you check either //www.ukcampsite.co.uk or //www.coolcamping.co.uk you can refine your search for sites which allow fires. We specifically picked lesvalades.com because they do.