Mud, rain and filthy campsites - is this like that everywhere?

[Maria41]

Ok, I am a bit new to campervan life.
We got a LWB van converted and hit the road on the 20th of September. Since then we crossed many countries ( France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, a bit of Bosnia, Albania, northern Greece, Bulgaria , and back to Greece and the Peloponnese and now in Sicily ). Up until Montenegro we had good weather and great campings with clean facilities with few exceptions.

Since then, it has been all dreadfully down hill. The campings, out of season, in Greece have been beyond description from bad to horrendous ( I mean toilets full of urine, human poo everywhere, grime all over the sinks). Even the better ones the toilets bin are overflowing with used toilet paper. Basically no one seems to clean the facilities at all for the full winter!

We decided to make a run for Italy but the 1st camping we stopped at was almost as bad. We camped wild instead. We have done a lot of wild camping since first entering Greece!
On top of that never ending rain means we are cooped inside a tiny camper, not that great.

Next winter (2020/2021) we are thinking going to Portugal and Spain. Are the campings going to be that bad? Or are they clean at least? I am seriously considering whether this is worth it. We can camp wild for one or two days. We have a small loo and a symbolic shower but we still need facilities every other day or two days.

We have to be back in the UK for mid January ( few commitments) and we plan already to avoid campings across Italy by using Mac Donald’s for WiFi and swimming pools for good showers. Currently we are in a very clean camping in Sicily and we will stay here for now. Still raining though. Been like that for the last 6 or 7 weeks. Not great fun. Mud everywhere all the time.

I would rather go travelling on my motorbike again and stop at cheap backpacker places every night in South America or Southern Africa! Cheaper, cleaner and much more enjoyable. Not more expensive ( minus cost of shipping two motorbikes half way across the planet of course).

Maybe campervan life is not for me. Or I missed something somewhere? Sorry for the rant but it is not all singing and dancing. I can’t bear so much filth. Massive piles of garbage everywhere, stray dogs and cats and their poos everywhere, beggars, prostitutes every 100 metres in rural roads, public toilets that are beyond description ( except at MacDonald, they usually have very clean toilets!).

Do you have bad days too? How do you cope with all the filth? I don’t think I will ever go back to Italy or Greece, campervan or any other way! Unless crossing on my way to Turkey.

 

[BreweryDave]

There is a reason most folk overwinter in spain and portugal?

However, it does sound like you’ve been unlucky, but have wheels can travel, if you don’t like it, move on. We tend to only use Aires as don’t need or want full campsite facilities, and many do the same.

Download apps like campercontact and park4night and choose based on reviews?

 

[Stonemags76]

That’s why we only do Spain & Portugal in the winter! Clean & sunny on the whole!

 

[Potty]

Forget camp sites in Italy and France. Many will be closed anyway. Lots of good aires in Italy and especially France. Don’t give up based on one bad experience.

 

[dotsontour]

Sounds your having a horrendous time . All I can say is move on carefully select your next site .Good advice re camper contact & park4night.
The other thing is without being rude is , you can often laugh off small things but when you get a series of them plus terrible weather you are bound to get fed up . I’m not saying filthy toilets and showers are to be shrugged off so complain after all your paying out your hard earned cash . Best of luck things will get better .
Regards dotsontour

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[PhilandMena]

Spain is popular in the winter. Portugal can e wet due to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean. Morocco is the dogs but you may have issues getting a green card. We are doing Greece & Crete next year during Spring and part of Summer, will check out those toilets after reading your post.

 

[Landy Andy]

The benefits of having a motorhome, is that we don’t need to use other people’s services, and we care a lot less about the weather. Possibly you need to redesign you vehicle to give you the ability to be more self sufficient, and more room to cope with bad weather.

 

[Badknee]

If you check annual rainfall for the countries you want to visit it’s a good start. We did it for Italy and Greece a few years ago and it wasn’t good. Southern Spain or Morocco are safer bets for sun. The campsites and aires we use in Spain are very well cared for but busy.

 

[nicholsong]

Sounds as though much of your problems stem from your limited on-board facilities.

We only use Aires and wildcamping and can go for a week till we need water and empty cassettes (2). But we have an 'A' Class with good facilities and 100lt water.

I had a boat in Greece for 30 years, so similar lifestyle to a motorhome, but never sailed beyond mid-Nov and never stayed on board beyond Christmas/NY, because of the weather and so much is closed till Easter.

Remember that end of the Med is close to the Asian continental climate and Greece has ski resorts just N. of Athens. As others have said you would be better off at the W. end of the Med - Spain/Portugal and many people winter in Morocco. They have a maritime climate in which the temperatures are kept more moderate because the Atlantic water never gets very cold.

I think you would cope OK there even with limited facilities.

Persevere - MHoming is still a good life. This year was a learning curve for you.

Geoff

 

[DBK]

Are you familiar with French aires and in Italy sostas? There will be some with hard standing you can use and many free or a couple of euros for water. CamperContact and Park4Night are popular websites and apps. I find the apps the easiest to use and the CamperContact links to the Android and iOS versions can be found here: https://www.campercontact.com/en/content/app

You best chance of reasonable weather, without driving to Spain will be to stay in Sicily and ideally the south coast I think. If you can get in (it is popular) Camping Scarabeo would be a good. YukonJac was there recently and might still be there.

Post #155 onwards covers our time in Sicily from this site.

Two Go To Sicily

We are close to being templed out after visiting the Valley of the Temples today. This is one of Sicily's most famous sites for... er.... as the name suggests, temples. :) The site lies just south of the town of Agrigento. Which fans of Montelbano might regognise as the inspiration for the...

www.motorhomefun.co.uk

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[Maria41]

Hi thanks for all the feed back.
Yes I am using Park4night and it Has been incredibly useful to find sites. We use ACSI sites when we can but some are really bad.

We are now just next to Scarabeo in Sicily, staying at the excellent Luminoso camping with private toilet. Spotless.

I think we need to redesign a bit our van when we are back in the UK. Some modifications to make it more confortable inside and having more independence. We have already talked about this ( with the husband).

Yes we are going through a big learning curve. I think next September we will go to Spain mainly. I have Spanish ancestry so I speak fluent Spanish. It helps to know the local language.
We may even pop over to Morocco as the dog will not be with us. He is hating travelling and has been super anxious, which adds to our stress ( and feeling fo guilt!). He will be staying with his welsh family for few months instead, next winter.
He is a rescue dog and has lots of psychological issues. Found as a 5 or 6 month old puppy in Brazil back in 2011. He still has terrible nightmares from back then.

 

[sylvester1954]

We've just returned from a
3 month clockwise tour of mainly eastern Europe with our long suffering dog and as expected we started to catch the dull wet autumn weather especially as we came back up through France. Fortunately we found enough wild camping opportunities in France and Italy in particular therefore avoiding many waterlogged campsites. We manage to utilise public toilet facilities using an app entitled 'where is public toilet' and public baths for showering although we do have and use the facilities in our Kingham.
I am interested in thoughts and advice on Greece in early spring (March/April) as we may consider this otherwise we'll go to Spain and Morocco once again so long as we can get to the bottom of the van insurance conundrums discussed in depth elsewhere on MHF.

 

[nicholsong]

We've just returned from a
3 month clockwise tour of mainly eastern Europe with our long suffering dog and as expected we started to catch the dull wet autumn weather especially as we came back up through France. Fortunately we found enough wild camping opportunities in France and Italy in particular therefore avoiding many waterlogged campsites. We manage to utilise public toilet facilities using an app entitled 'where is public toilet' and public baths for showering although we do have and use the facilities in our Kingham.
I am interested in thoughts and advice on Greece in early spring (March/April) as we may consider this otherwise we'll go to Spain and Morocco once again so long as we can get to the bottom of the van insurance conundrums discussed in depth elsewhere on MHF.

For Greece you need to check when Orthodox Easter is next year as a lot of businesses do not operate until Easter and that probably includes most campsites, but some may be much later, so check.

Geoff

 

[ABZSteve]

Clean & sunny on the whole!

Nice

 

[RubyOptics]

Only a suggestion for a short-term fix...As you can see from my sig, I don't have a van, but have done a metric ton of camping with a family of four. I can very well understand the frustration of bad facilities + bad weather, especially for an extended period of time. I know this might sound a bit like "copping out" perhaps, but have you considered maybe finding a cheap AirBnB for a night or two? Would give you a chance to do all the laundry, get a bit of space to relax in while the bad weather continues, give the van a clear out to go back into it after a few days break to a fresh start, so to speak. We only resorted to it once after some terrible weather meant we were resorting to digging a moat around the tent to try and stop the flooding and I really believe it saved our sanity and possibly our kids lives !!