In reply to Wink:
Not much help I can give except for brief memories of the Biolay campsite in 1964. I stayed there having hitched to Cham. I think someone in the bar National on the day we arrived told us it was possible to camp there. It was very close to the (then) edge of the town and was quite small and surrounded by scrub and trees. There were no toilets and I think no access for vehicles but it was free. Care had to be exercised when walking in and out because of the amount of crap in the wooded area. I cant remember who else was camping there whilst we were there but do remember some other brits who were in Chamonix that summer - Ginger Warburton and Rosco and B Nally and J Jarvis. I was never cleared off this site but was off others
I continued to camp in the valley through the 60's and later but cant remember the sites used in each of these years. Certainly I used Snells field and camped wild in the woods near Argentere and other free pitches. I did experience being cleared off a pitch by the police, but that was in the 70's, and was from a roadside pitch near a golf course. I was away climbing but my wife who was with our two children had a visit and had her passport taken. When I got back the next day we had to go to the police station to recover the passport and were left in no doubt what would happen if we didnt remove our tent and indeed if we were found wild camping again. Looking at slides I have and the age of my children this would have been perhaps 1974 or 75.
I don't remember brits using the Biolay site for long after 1964 but I may be wrong here. I thought the site disappeared in the development of the town - which grew considerably as it expanded.
Dave