Arriving in central Paris on a hot day was like diving into a river of molten bodies, so we jumped on to a train and headed off to another world entirely. We went to a campsite.

Now I know exactly what you're thinking. However cool camping might be, going camping in the world's most glamorous city seems downright wrong. Why not stick a knotted hanky on my head and go paddling in the Seine with my trousers rolled up to my knees?

As it happens, we'd suffered similar doubts ourselves before booking, but had crushed them with words like “restful”, “quiet”, “bucolic” “different” - and, well, “cheap”. Even so it did feel odd, arriving 20 minutes later at the neat, empty station that serves the northwest suburb of Maisons-Laffitte, 18km (11 miles) from the Eiffel Tower.

Out through the turnstile, we trooped into a weird sense of calm, turning left, plodding down two leafy silent back-lanes, then across a bridge on to a tiny river island.

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And here we found two jolly Eurocamp girls in a reception hut eager to show us the open-air delights of Paris Camping International in all its rich diversity: the “nicely crazy” camp café that keeps whimsically variable hours; the shop selling baguettes and all sorts; the concrete ping-pong tables littered with Dutch kids (harrumph, I wondered, would they shriek all night?); the boules pitch, netball hoop, swaying trees; and, oh yes, row upon row of tents and caravans - 360 in all, glimmering starkly between grass and tracks.

“And here's yours!” the girls cried.

How strange this was, too. Minutes earlier we had been barging through the cosmopolitan helter-skelter of the Gare du Nord. Now we were walking in quasi-rural silence on to the wooden decking of a mobile home, edging into the cubby-hole of the first of two bedrooms, and finally opening a window to find ourselves staring at the silent charm of the River Seine, surging ten feet away beyond a fringe of bushes.

This was the real moment of arrival; this sense of shock - or delight, really. Especially when I realised that we were actually on the chic Left Bank, if a tiny bit farther west than usual. We opened a bottle of wine and drank a toast to suburbia.

We became commuters, my wife and I, whizzing the 20 minutes into the centre by train every day to plunder the awesome, if sweaty, pleasures of cultural realism, before fleeing back to our campsite each evening to flop. The thing about Maisons-Laffitte is that it's not merely a Parisian satellite: it is a community in its own right, tree-strewn and tranquil. The best comparison I can think of is Tunbridge Wells, but with less insular smugness. (Sorry, TW: I grew up on your streets.)

In fact, wherever you stay in Paris, Maisons-Laffitte is worth a visit: for its miniaturised café-life, sprawling over the broad main boulevard, busy but less intense than in the centre; for its huge and gaunt château in park grounds shaped like miles-long cartwheels, stippled with trees and grassland and extraordinary well-to-do houses, many of them mock-Gothic; for its horses (there's a racetrack here); and finally, most importantly, for its sense of - oh, golly - suburban politeness.

Two scenes: in central Paris one afternoon, beside the Musée d'Orsay, we are sitting at a pavement table explaining to the waiter the kind of coffees we would like. Elbows fly past inches from my ear. There is noise, heat, bustle - and half-way through my franglais explanation the waiter shrugs and simply disappears, returning with the right cups but removing, in his haste, a small sheen of pleasure from the lunch. No big deal. He was just too busy to be charming, that's all.

Now see us in Maisons-Laffitte, at the oddly named Casino supermarket on the main boulevard by a row of lovely patisseries. We have selected our cheese, fruit, salad and smoked fish for dinner back at camp, but on reaching the head of the checkout queue we are told that we should have weighed our fruit and veg beforehand.

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