planning help (1 Viewer)

[willyuk]

Hi all,
In a couple of years my wife and I hope to spend a while travelling through europe. I am in the very early planning stages and hope you can help. I have trawled the forum and know that choosing the right motorhome will be one significant task. There are many other issues I need to sort out and the main plan is to get the van and then experiment in the UK to bed everything in. The help I need now is more of a budget problem. I have no idea how much I need to allow for things like insurance, breakdown cover, site fees in europe, fuel, living etc etc. Can anyone give me a ballpark figure? Something along the lines of £x00 a month, whilst in France or £x00 a month in Spain.
I know it is the length of piece of string but any help would be much appreciated. We will e on a limited income and I am just trying to get a handle on how much I will need. I can work out the capital costs to some extent but the ongoing costs seem impossible to estimate without experience. I know the forum is stacked with folks who are old hands so if you could pass on your thoughts I would be very grateful.
thanks
Al

 

[barryd]

Hi there

We have done two long trips into Europe over the last year and we found that our costs were about £1000 per month. However. We did a lot of miles, probably too many really and our van is quite thirsty so if we halved the miles I reckon we could survive on about £700 a month. We hardly ever ate out and whilst France is claimed to be a costly country its cheap if you use the free Aires so you can save a fortune on not paying for campsites.

Our insurance is through Safeguard and is fully comprehensive and includes unlimited travel in the EU for 365 days and full EU breakdown cover. costs about £330 per year.

If you do use campsites then the ACSI card can be useful off season, usually April to July and September to OCtober although some sites stay open all year. The card costs I think £11 and you will pay either 11e, 13e or 15e max with a little tax on top. However in high season if your going to use campsites they can get expensive. Municiples are often very good value and other countries have free Aires as well as France. In Germany they are called Stellplatz and ITaly Sostas. They are not all free but many are.

This site is fantastic and has loads of free places to stay all over Europe http://www.campingcar-infos.com/index1.htm

http://www.vicariousbooks.co.uk/ This site has a range of publications that will help you. Go Motorhoming Europe is quite a good read and tells you everything from buying the van to travelling tips in each country. I think you can get the ACSI Card from them as well.

They also do All The Aires books for France and other countries which is useful to take with you should you not be able to get online as easily as abroad (thats another story as well!)

A sat nav is a must. I have all the Aires for the whole of Europe in mine which means where ever I am it is easy to find somewhere to stop. Dont forget as well that in many countries, especially France, wild camping or free camping is allowed unlike England.

Loads of info on here. Good luck

Cheers
BD

 

[hilldweller]

Something along the lines of £x00 a month, whilst in France or £x00 a month in Spain.
Al

You got it right first time, your figures are spot on.

Though you may consider adding 00% to cater for inflation, the Euro meltdown and the Pound meltdown.

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[willyuk]

You got it right first time, your figures are spot on.

Though you may consider adding 00% to cater for inflation, the Euro meltdown and the Pound meltdown.

yes I already added the 00% but found the difference was negligible so failed to mention it.

xx