In reply to Bruce Hooker:
> > Other tips, don't leave anything visible in your car, thieves about,
This used to be a really bad problem around Font. I had two friends have their cars broken into on two separate occasions and everything cleaned out. The thieves were gangs who would descend on a car park in a van, smash the windows and sweep all the contents into bin bags, and drive off. Car alarms didn't stop them because they could sweep through a car park in less than 2 mins and be gone.
Other friends had their car targeted overnight when parked in the road parking right outside the camp site at Grez sur Loing
I had heard that due to more police pro-activeness in both marked and unmarked cars the problem had reduced.
Is it building up again?
Another target area are the car parks to British War Cemeteries on the Somme and other battlefields. With the increase in battlefield visiting over the next 4 years this is likely to be a growing problem.
All thieves are scum, but smashing into someone's car whilst they are on holiday causes inconvenience way beyond just losing the contents. Try finding replacement windows in a foreign country when you may have a ferry to catch and sods law it will start pouring with rain.....