Motorhome friendly countries

A typical free 'aire' on the harbour at Valdermarsvik in Sweden

One of the questions we get asked a lot is which countries are the most friendly when it comes to motorhomers. There isn’t an easy answer to this one, and it depends to an extent on how you use your motorhome and where you want to park it! The simple answer is that everywhere is motorhome friendly to a greater or lesser extent. So which countries are the winners and losers?

Our very unscientific (and at times slightly tongue-in-cheek) test is based on:

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•       Category 1 -  Campsites / Overnight  parking
•    Category 2 -  Park and ride
•    Category 3 - The road network
•    Category 4 - The price of diesel

Category 1 – Campsite / Overnight parking

Winners: France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland

As motorhomers, those countries with cheap or free overnight parking areas (aires or stellplatz) as they tend to be called, tend to rank as being very motorhome friendly. France and Germany are particularly good for these and you can buy books that list them all.

Vicarious Books is your best bet for French Aires, as it is published in English and you can get it before you go. We bought our Stellplatz guide from a bookshop when we got to Germany. We found the Reise Mobil version to be the best. It’s all in German but it’s very easy to work out. It also came with a second guide that includes aires in other European countries. 25 euros well spent.

The Scandinavian countries enjoy the ‘right to roam’, which means that although there are certain restrictions, in theory you can park your van up overnight and stay anywhere. Some places actively encourage it and others have started making a charge. Here’s a tip: Biltema, which is the Swedish equivalent of B&Q even allow you to stay in their car parks overnight for free and for 50p you can have a coffee and cake and use the loo in the morning!

Losers: Holland

Aires should be motorhomers only but
you can forgive this outfit who had
made it to Calais from Denmark!

Least friendly in terms of the ‘wild camping’ in our experience has been Holland. I guess with it being such a small country, they have to be careful. They do have a few aires, but they tend to be three or four spaces at the back of a municipal car park – not the place you would really want to spend your holidays!

However, Holland does have a really good network of small campsites called ‘minicamping’. These range from being the equivalent of “CL” type sites through to 50 pitch sites with full facilities. They don’t tend to have the swimming pools and shops etc, but the price reflects it as they range from around £10-£20 for the night. They have a scheme with a book of sites (in Dutch) called VaKeBo, which you can pick up on any member site for around a tenner.

Category 2 – Park and ride

Winners: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia

This is a difficult one. Many motorhomers accept the fact that they might not be able to park right in the middle of a busy city. Having said that, it is possible. We have parked slap bang in the middle of Vilnius, Brussels and Toulouse to name three of the top of my head. However, we reckon that we manage about a 10-20% success rate on city centre parking, unless it’s Sunday, when it goes up to about 50%.

Instead, we use public transport and our bicycles a lot when we are travelling. Our van is only 6 metres, which means that we can usually find somewhere to park it on the outskirts and then either cycle, bus, tram or train in.

The real trick is to find a campsite or aire that is commutable to the centre. For example, In France we use a site in Melun. It’s on the ACSI scheme out of season and is less than a mile from the train station, which in turn is half an hour and about £15 to Paris. We have used this same method throughout Europe and it works very well. Public transport also allows you to see more of the country.

Losers: French and Italian coastal towns in high season.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the increasing popularity of motorhoming is that, particularly in the high season, busy areas have simply banned motorhomers from parking, and in some cases even driving into the town.  We found this quite frustrating in some of the French coastal areas where they seem to maintain the motorhome parking ban even out of season. Tres mal.

Having said that, public transport in both countries is excellent. Worthy of particular note is the Italian railway system. The network is really easy to use, with automated ticket booths in English. They operate a two-tier ticket system where you can pay less for a slower train. We travelled from Pisa to Rome on the slow train. It took over four hours but only cost about £20, and the journey was beautiful.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Italy has a superb train network.

Category 3 – The road network

Winners: Pretty much everywhere – apart from the tolls, congestions charges and vignettes!

I can’t pick a clear winner on this. Driving on the continent is one of the great joys of motorhoming. Whether you want to make progress on the motorways, or veer off onto the smaller roads through the little towns and villages.

Spain has to be one of the favourites as they 

have miles and miles of quiet toll-free motorways.  Rural France is amazing particularly if you avoid the tolls. You need to be a bit careful if you are travelling north to south as you can easily rack up around £70 in tolls on one long day of driving.

Tolls in general are a bit of a bug bear, particularly as you sometime get charged as being a car, other times as a van. In addition to tolls, many countries notably Switzerland and Austria have a vignette system whereby you need to purchase a ‘tax disc’. You need to check the local information to see how to do it. Usually it’s from petrol stations. Some borders still have controls where you can stop and buy a vignette. Switzerland very helpfully stop you on entry and extract the £40 odd quid there and then. They also charge you for a whole year! Other countries are more generous and only charge you for a few days.

Some towns and cities have introduced congestion charges too. Many Norwegian towns do this and will alert you to the fact. It’s all done electronically from your number plate and you can pay at petrol stations or wait for the bill which they WILL send through the post for when you get home!

The E6 that goes north and then further north in Norway is pretty spectacular. As it’s the only road going north, you are rarely alone and if they need to mend it, they have to do it while you’re driving on it! However, you are rewarded with amazing views that make you go ‘wow’ a lot.

Losers: Northern Poland.

Tram in Gdansk, Poland.
Great public transport, slightly scary roads!

We are sorry about this one. Poland is a beautiful place. We’ve been in the northern lake district and across the northern coast to Gdansk. However, our worst driving experience where we were a bit scared was north Poland. There was a lot of work going on the roads, but when we were there, the motorways were heavily rutted to the extent that you are actually in ‘tram lines’ that can be several inches deep. Road signage is OK, but if there are temporary road signs for roadworks, they can be a bit random. They are also very short on lay-bys and roadside stops in this area and when you do find one, it’s full of trucks.

Category 4 Winners – The price of diesel

Winners:  Luxemboug and Andorra.  

This might be a bit of a bloke thing, but I’ve got a bit obsessed by the price of diesel. Outright winners are really Luxembourg and Andorra. Basically they keep their prices low (along with alcohol prices) to tempt people to divert via their countries, just to fill up with diesel. The price is so low that I drove around the block a few times, just so I could get more in.

Eastern Europe seemed to be cheaper in general although many of those countries are now seeing prices of everything go up a bit.

The really amazing thing is the variation in prices within the same country. For example, on our last trip to France we saw prices of anywhere between 1.25 euros and 1.60 euros. Some of this variation was regional. For example, the area around Cognac seemed to be quite cheap, whereas northern France was more expensive. Much of the variation however was based on the specific locality.

Motorway diesel was by far the most expensive, followed by petrol stations on main roads and in very rural areas. The cheapest was the supermarkets and non-staffed stations. The simple trick really is never to buy on the motorway, but take your chances with a brief detour into a local town when you need to fill up.

Category 4 Losers: Britain and Norway

Luxemboug - fairytale castles and cheap diesel!

Norway has always had a reputation for being expensive for everything. I think we may have overtaken them now in terms of fuel prices. There’s not much you can do about this really. We try to save filling up until we get on the continent and we fill up before we come back again. In Norway, you just have to bite the bullet. Service stations can be few and far between if you are going north, so you need to fill up when you see one. Many motorhomers go up through Sweden for as long as possible before heading into Norway.

Summary

As I said at the outset, all the countries we have visited are motorhome-friendly these days. In high season, you are bound to encounter some restrictions and this is understandable. However, everywhere we have been, the locals have been pleased to see us. We’ve never had a parking ticket or anyone having a moan at us about where we’ve parked our van.

The beauty of motorhoming is that you probably get to see much more of a country than you would with any other type of holiday, so you can afford to be philosophical about the odd  ‘No motorhoming’ signs that you only tend to see in coastal areas anyway.

If you’ve got an opinion or experience to share, feel free to comment.