Everything you need to know about buying a Motorhome in UK/Europe as an Australian

So many people from outside of Europe, especially Australians, would love to Motorhome around Europe! It’s a dream of many of us, but the barriers to entry are really, really high. We took the plunge and made the decision to do it, and here we are sharing with you all the process we went through to make the decision, the criteria and things to think about, and the logistics of actually doing it, from a family who actually have.

Deciding if it was right for us?

First up was Money. Is it affordable? Is it in budget? What is the budget? How much will it actually cost us to live on the road in Europe in a Motorhome? Is it more expensive than other travel methods? Less expensive? What about the cost of the Motorhome itself?

First up we did a costs comparison using other YouTubers (Thanks @AndreandLisa ) figures and we popped their rough numbers into a spreadsheet. We changed them up a bit to give ourselves leeway and tailor the numbers to suit us a bit better. Then we compared these to our actual costs incurred for a week travelling via AirBNB in the UK. (We’ve been travelling with AirBNB’s and House sitting for the last year, you can watch our adventures here!) We decided that our travelling costs would likely be around 50-70% of our AirBNB/Hire car costs. Phase 1 of the decision process was complete.

Secondly was, do we want to go back to this style of travel? We travelled Australia extensively in our caravan and truck, so we knew we liked the mobile experience, and we had recently hired a motorhome in Canada to do the Canadian Rockies, so we judged that Motorhome travel was probably right for us.

There was quite a lot more chicken and egg stuff going on with this in the background though, which we will start to cover in the next section. (Yes we may want to Motorhome, but can we do X, is Y do-able, can we insure it, how much will power cost, etc etc etc, so many things that we had to know the answers to before we committed to actually putting a deposit down on a Motorhome.)

Is it even possible to legally own and drive a Motorhome in Europe or the UK?

Ownership/Registration – Can you legally own a Motorhome in Europe or the UK? Somewhat! You can legally purchase a motorhome in many countries, however registration is very very difficult unless you do a few specific things, or have someone you really trust with an address you can use. This could be it’s own article, but basically we found

• CarTurf – German – Expensive ongoing cost, but included insurance.
• French Company – Once off high cost, low ongoing costs, but have to purchase and register in France.
• Lease from Netherlands – EuroRoadTrip – These guys looked trustworthy and have a Youtube channel etc, and we did contact them, however the motorhomes you are able to lease through them are quite old, and you still have all the risks of ownership. We would have also been able to do a newer van, but it was quite expensive ongoing.
• UK – Friend or BoatMail – There is a company in the UK called Boatmail, set up for Canal Boaters originally, who will provide you a full address in the UK for things like registration. We did not use this personally, but I think it would be ok.

We ended up choosing the UK for a few reasons.

• We had a trusted friend we could use
• English speaking to the dealers and or potential sellers
• Right Hand Drive if we later want to import it to Australia or NZ
• English dealers are reasonable and they have reasonable warranty and buyer protection. Our dealer has been excellent at fixing any issues that turn up. It doesn’t seem to be the same as Australia, where you would get an independent check done on a motorhome. In the UK you can pretty much trust that they will sell you a decent motorhome, and fix any issues that may occur.

One of the downsides of UK registration, is that we have to leave the EU periodically, and we require a yearly MOT (registration) inspection and certificate. This has to be physically completed in the UK. This isn’t a big deal for us, as we can get the motorhome serviced, and the yearly habitation check done at the same time, which keeps our 7 year damp warranty with Chausson.

Licences – This shouldn’t be an issue, but it was! What could we legally drive in the UK and Europe? Well, this is a thorny one for us, as we both hold Light and Medium Rigid truck licenses in Australia, allowing us to drive up to 12t vehicles. We thought this would allow us to drive up to the equivalent in the UK and Europe, however we were wrong! Apparently, it doesn’t matter, you are only able to drive small vehicles <3.5t and motorbikes in the UK. So this unfortunately ruled out a larger truck or 4WD camper for us. (Read more about it here – https://www.gov.uk/driving-nongb-licence/y/a-visitor-to-great-britain/any-other-country)

Insurance – Another thorny one. To cut a long story short, after 3 full days of research, multiple quotes and about 10000 internet tabs open, we received back 2 quotes and 1 maybe/no. Most insurers that would insure non UK residents, would not insure a motorhome. And most Motorhome insurers, would not insure a non UK resident.

We ended up with Stuart Collins & Co, a small UK broker, with a policy from AXA in France. It was quite expensive, but not eye wateringly. We received an eye wateringly expensive quote from Adrian Flux, and a No from a 3rd broker, who wanted us to have 1 year of experience driving a motorhome in Europe before they would consider insuring us. (truck licences, Australian truck and caravan, Canadian Motorhome and European car driving weren’t enough!) Our policy ended up costing us $2753 for the year, comprehensive cover including up to 12 months in Europe.

Breakdown Cover – This was a necessity for us in Australia, and saved our bacon a few times, as life on the road can be hard on vehicles. Our new Motorhome unfortunately doesn’t even have a spare tyre, none of them are fitted with them now to save weight! For this reason, we definitely wanted to have a top level breakdown cover for the UK and Europe. Unfortunately this also hits a snag, as it’s basically an insurance policy in the UK, and every single provider asks when you became a resident of the UK. There was one! One! provider we found that didn’t, which is DriverGuardianRescue. $303 for the year, and we are covered for a year in the UK and Europe, with up to 120 days per European trip.

Logistics of travelling both UK & EU with it

There are several things to think about when taking a motorhome from the UK over to Europe. We wanted to tick these sort of things off before we made the decision to purchase a van, so we knew we would be ok after purchasing one. (More so that we weren’t going to be sunk by any unexpected expenses or delays.)

First thing, a European Driving Kit. We purchased this from the RAC. It included things that are legal requirements for driving in European countries. Hi Vis vests, 1 per person, First Aid Kit, Torch, traffic triangles, spare light bulbs and Right Hand Drive headlight conversion stickers. This was an easy purchase from 1 place, in 1 bag that covered us for all these practical/legal requirements.

Secondly, a Crit Air Sticker from France. This is a tricky one, and is a requirement to be displayed in the windscreen of the vehicle if you are driving in any of the many low emissions zones in France. This sticker can only be ordered from the official French website, the cost is minimal (7 Euros?) and is very annoying because you can only order it once you have received your V5 Certificate from the DVLA in the UK, which took 3 weeks for us. Once we received the V5, we ordered the sticker and it was received about 2 weeks later. In the mean time we had left for France already. Luckily we haven’t been to any Low Emission Zone cities yet, we will try and avoid them until we pick up the sticker and can put it in the windscreen.

Norway Toll Pass – We weren’t able to order one of these, again you needed the V5 Certificate to order one, and they say you then need to wait 10 weeks until you will receive it. This gives you half price ferries in Norway and a discount on tolls. We signed up with Epass instead, to receive digital billing from our number plate and automatically pay our tolls.

Gas – Gas is difficult in Europe and the UK. each country has their own brands and type of gas bottles, and each one has a different fitting, can’t be exchanged with another bottle from a different country and each country/brand requires a deposit of the cost of the bottle plus the gas. To simplify this, we installed a Gaslow system ourselves, the day we picked up the motorhome. We had it shipped to our AirBNB, and purchased the tools required for the job, as we would need them anyway, and the dealer quoted an insanely high figure to do the install. Gaslow lets you refill your gas bottle from pretty much anywhere in Europe that sells LPG, provided you buy a few extra adapters from them. A much, much easier system than trying to sort gas bottles out. Also a plus, LPG in the UK is much cheaper than refilling Calor bottles.

Electricity – We purchased a kit from an Ebay seller in the UK that included a 15m power lead, and a set of different power adaptors for use in Europe, that meant we could connect to a variety of different outlets, and also a polarity tester, because apparently some countries and areas have the polarity of the plug backwards (???). Another thing to think about is that campsites in Italy, Spain and France regularly have limits to the amount of power you can draw. (3 Amp, 7 Amp, 10 Amp, 16 Amp) with some campsites charging you more for the higher amperage. (Craziness!) This meant we had to have a way to limit our incoming power draw from our battery charger/inverter.

Water – We purchased a roll hose from Facebook Marketplace, that luckily included the standard sized threads, but also a Very handy rubber fitting that lets you put the hose onto a non threaded or oddly threaded tap head and still secure it. This has been a godsend!

Right Hand v Left Hand drive – Lastly, there are a number of people concerned with driving on the wrong side of the vehicle in Europe if they take a UK car there. There are so many people that do this (and vice versa from EU to UK) and from our experience, this really isn’t a problem, you get used to it within a matter of hours and it feels completely normal.

Looking and Deciding on a Motorhome

This was, not a joke, a massively overwhelming and intimidating task.

New or Used? This is a tricky one. COVID and inflation have massively hit prices, and motorhomes that sold for 60k new in 2020, were selling for 65k in the second hand market, while new 2024 models that were practically identical, were going for upwards of 85k. (British Pounds) What this meant, was that prices were crazy and all over the shop for motorhomes. Dealers that had a rental fleet were trying to sell their 4 year old rental motorhomes for 10k more than they paid for them originally. But it didn’t mean for us that we should buy new. New had waiting lists, teething problems and was very expensive, considering that on new purchases in the UK you are paying VAT, whilst second hand purchases don’t. Warranties and the age of the vehicle also have to be taken into account.

Seats/Layout/Type – This is a tricky one, and you won’t know exactly what you need until after your first month of living in it on the road. From our Caravan, and then our Motorhome hire in Canada, we were able to make a fairly educated guess. There are so many different types and sorts of Motorhomes and Campervans available that you really, really need to see them in person to try and figure it out. We chose our Chausson 720 because we walked into one at a dealer, (after initially discounting drop down beds as tiny) and were just blown away by the lounge space. We dropped the bed down and it was a full size King bed. We were pretty much sold just then!

After you’ve found something you click with, is the comparison stage. At this point, you have decided new or used, and you have found a model that you like for X Y or Z reasons. Then we jumped on to AutoTrader in the UK and compared the model that we found. We compared it to a few other alternatives that we had found, and we compared it to the same model across the UK. We ended up purchasing from Highbridge Caravans – They had the exact model that we had decided on, and when we phoned they were able to do a cheaper price than the other dealer we originally saw it at. We went back and forth with each, and got a small discount off the sticker price. We overpayed compared to the original new price, but the whole market was like that at the time, so there wasn’t much choice.

Dealer or Private? An interesting question. Normally in Australia I would have said private with an independent inspection, however in the UK the dealers are at a pretty high standard, and Highbridge in particular has a very good reputation of standing behind their motorhomes and caravans. Chausson have a 7 year damp warranty (providing you do yearly habitat checks with a dealer), and buying from a dealer gives you a 1 year everything warranty. This gave us a fair bit of peace of mind. Just saying that though, we would still Never buy without physically seeing a motorhome ourselves. There are way too many potential problems like mould or wear and tear that you will never see in a photo.

Read all about our chosen Family Motorhome to Travel The UK & Europe full time here.

The purchase process

So you have decided. You have made contact with the dealer or private seller you have chosen, now is the time to seal the deal. How do you actually complete this process without it costing you an arm and a leg? We used Wise to do our bank transfers. When I ran the numbers it was the cheapest consumer option to transfer a large (100k+) amount. We set an account up, completed the verification and when it was time to actually transfer the balance, we did it in a single transfer with Wise, AUD to GBP, then GBP to the dealers bank account. It cost us about AUD $400 in fees.

Modifying it and kitting it out

Power – UK and European motorhomes in general, are woefully underequipped in the power department for people that actually want to travel or wild/free camp in them. They mostly come (if you are lucky) with a 120W solar panel, 100AH AGM battery and a split charger from the vehicle alternator. This was what ours had, and we decided we wanted to be comfortable on the road, and not stressed about power.

We rang and emailed around, and got some quotes for equipment and install. I (Dan) knew what we wanted, but it was a complex install and we didn’t even own a ladder in the UK, let alone all the other tools required to do a self install.

We ended up using Arum from RollingHousesEnergy in Devon, to do our motorhome power install. He understood what we wanted from the start, was able to talk to Dan in technical mumbo jumbo and impressed Dan that he knew what he was talking about. Arum and Dan designed the system together, and we payed a deposit to start ordering the equipment. 3 days later and we were staying at the farm Arum is based out of, and he was doing our install on site. 8 days later, a few hiccups and a lot of working things out, and the power system was fully installed. We opted for 900W of solar on the roof, a Victron 100/50 MPPT Solar controller, Victron 50Amp Orion DCDC charger, Victron Multiplus 2000/80 inverter/charger, Victron battery shunt and a custom 600AH, 12V lithium battery that Arum made to fit in the space under the passenger seat.

This system was large enough to give us a few days off grid if necessary, a bunch of solar power when the sun is out, and charging from the vehicle alternator when we drive. It’s overkill for some people, but we have Starlink running almost 24/7, plus laptops, phones etc, Toaster and we even run the 3 way fridge off the inverter for a lot of the time when the sun is shining, it keeps our gas bill low.

Gas – I spoke about this above, but basically to make this a pain-free as possible as we explore as many places as possible, we decided to install a Gaslow System. This is a self-service refillable gas bottle system that lets you use the LPG hose nozzles at service stations to refill the onboard gas bottle. This is generally much easier to find in locations around UK & Europe.

After being quoted over $1000 to have it installed by the dealer (plus equipment cost) we did some research and decided we could do it ourselves. $100 of tools later, an hour of time and 1 hole cut into the side of the MH, Dan installed the system successfully and it looks like it has always been there! (about 20minutes of the hour was measuring over and over again the position of the hole, and gaining the courage to actually saw into the Motorhome.)

So far we would rate it 10/10. The system is easy to install, the only DIY work is the hole for the refillable portion of the gas bottle, and it took about half an hour to install total. This is a great system.

Tracker – Unique to the UK, they have so many vehicle thefts, that for high value vehicles, the insurance underwriters actually require the vehicle to be fitted with a tracking device. This cost us quite a lot, (500 GBP) plus a yearly subscription to Scorpion Track, and we could have had it done cheaper without the dealer, except that our insurance was explicitly not covering us, until the tracker was installed and a certificate of installation was received by the insurer, so we paid the extra to have the dealer install the system.

Internet – Mobile internet in the UK sucks. SUCKS. If you plan on doing any travel in the UK, we suggest Starlink. We knew we would be travelling both in the UK and Europe, both in towns and remotely, so we decided Starlink would be the best solution for us. Coincidentally, Starlink just released the Gen3 Dish in the UK, which is smaller and lighter than the Gen2 dish we used in Australia. If you only plan to travel in Europe, an Esim or a physical Sim in a modem would be adequate 95% of the time, however we just love having unlimited data and high speeds everywhere there is a view of the sky. We discussed permanently mounting it on our roof, however decided against it, as again there are quite a few camp sites where there is significant tree coverage over the top of where you want to camp, so we wanted the flexibility of moving it off the roof and around our camp site.

We actually tried it the first night we got it on top of our parcel shelf in the motorhome, underneath the low profile skylight, and to our surprise it worked perfectly. A new home had been found!

Weight – We looked into our vehicle weights, as it is a big deal in Australia, and we knew we would be close to our vehicle weights here. (3.5t) We did some research, and the Ford chassis that the Chausson is built on, is capable, without any upgrades of 4.2t with just an engineers certificate. We looked at doing this upgrade so we wouldn’t have to be concerned with weights, however after extensive research, we discovered that our Australian truck licenses would not be valid in the UK, and we would only be licensed to drive up to 3.5t vehicles. I will briefly touch on this in regards to other reasons we didn’t buy a truck (as much as we loved our Aussie adventures in our Iveco) but in UK/Europe not only we couldn’t insure or drive it with our licences, they are over our budget and we thought a MH was going to be big enough with some of the smaller one-lane roads, anything bigger may have been even more stressful.

Thanks for stopping by! I think that covers everything and I hope that helps you understand Everything you need to know about buying a Motorhome in UK/Europe as an Australian. If you missed it, read all about our chosen Family Motorhome to Travel The UK & Europe full time here.

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