How Does Travelling Europe in a Motorhome Compare to Australian Caravan Travel?

Basically it is same, same but different! We get asked “How does travelling Europe in a motorhome compare to Australian caravan travel” all the time so I thought I would write up some more details to help you out!

In ‘mainland’ Europe (e.g. Germany) there are quite a few cheap or free Aires which are basically car parks or parking areas where you can park and sleep overnight in your MH/Camper. There are usually services available for a fee (occasionally free) at the same place. There are other carparks which have non restrictions on camping/parking/sleeping which you basically use at your own risk and have absolutely no services – similar to a ‘gravel pit’ in Aus. We do use these and we haven’t had any issues yet. They are always almost all clean with very little rubbish etc.

Now there are also ‘caravan parks’ which are the same as in Aus however each site has a power connection point, but no water connection or grey waste point. You still have to drive to the service point in the park to dispose as required and fill up your water tanks. We haven’t used a single caravan park in Europe as we don’t need to and all the other services are available without.

Some aires are really busy and fill up quickly, but usually the ‘gravel pit’ style spots are quiet unless near a popular town. We haven’t had any problems finding a suitable spot to park up each night.

We use an app (or 2) to find free camps / cheap camps just like most do in Aus. The app we use the most is Park4Night. It has filters for almost all the different options you could need, it is very user friendly, has photos and reviews and even ways to save into your own different folders. It is a small fee to use the app and you can have multiple devices use the same one log-in. We usually find a few campsites and save into our ‘possible places’ folder. We do the same with dump points and service fill stations. After we visit a location, we change the folder it is saved in to ‘used and liked’ or ‘used and didn’t like’, we also try to review the location on the app to help others if we think an update is needed or more information is helpful.

There are other apps such as Search4Sites, StellPlatz and iOverlander. We find Search4Sites is another paid app and is good too but it mostly has legitimate paid campsites. StellPlatz is mainly for paid campsites / caravan parks, with a few free spots and aires, with less of the ‘free carpark’ style camps. It also doesn’t have as many reviews on it. Now, iOverlander is good too but we think this one is more focused to the overlanding 4wd / truck style campers so we don’t use it unless we are looking for a back-up / struggling to find something suitable for us, but we do need to read the info carefully to make sure we can access the site being a 2wd with not much clearance.

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Services can vary either at a service point or at an aire, sometimes at fuel stations too. We use the same app to find services which are available at service points, aires and campsites – sometimes free, sometimes charged, and the amounts and what is charged varies.

Just like in Aus really, you drive to the ‘dump point’ or ‘water fill point’. A lot are paid to both dump and fill (some are just pay to fill, free to dump), but we have managed to only pay twice as we seem to be able to find the free ones quite well haha.

Even your grey water is dumped at at service point for a charge or free. Sometimes it is just a drain point you drive over, others is a tray that gets pulled out of the service ‘pole’, others you need to have a hose (we haven’t done any of these as we don’t carry a hose. We have managed to not have to any issues with this either).

Also the MHs here are designed a bit different where you cannot connect a hose to your MH at a campsite, you have to open a hatch, and the tank spout and fill, before closing it again. With the fill up points, if they are paid they can be paid for with either a time limit or a Litre limit. We have had both.

Some refill stations have a hose already connect for you you use, however I don’t trust people not to use it to rinse their toilet cannister and stick it inside so we always change the hose to our own. We carry a cheap UK roll up hose on a plastic reel but would much prefer to have our Flat Out International Reel and hose with us (we are working on getting it over here to us haha). I should also note that the tap connection size varies so we have 2 sizes and a rubber adaptable kind of thing that has managed to work for us a couple of times.

Oh the dump points look different here too. They’re not like the big blue lidded things we have in Aus. Some of them are a hole in the ground, others into a metal pipe/tray, others are a fancy auto cleaning machine that does it all for you.

Rubbish disposal is hard at times. We are always on the lookout for rubbish bins at playgrounds, supermarkets and public recreation sites to dispose of rubbish as this is not common at service points and at only maybe 50% of the aires. Recycling is even harder, even though as a country household recycling is down really well. Our go to is normally Supermarkets for bins.

Washing machines inside motorhomes and caravans don’t exist in UK/Europe like they do in Australia. Even the newer models like our Motorhome doesn’t have the space and weight or the design to include one, also the water tanks aren’t as big and you’d probably use your whole tank on just two loads of washing if you did.. It really does seem more of an Aussie thing to have the 3-4L washing machines (top loader, front loader or even wall mounted one) in these vehicles and therefore you need to be more organised with your clothes and washing in UK/Europe, we are yet to come across anyone with their own washing machine.

We do small bits of hand washing and hang it inside the van on a stretch pegless line but it does get annoying sometimes. This is because when we did this in our Aussie caravan we did it while driving and we were in a different vehicle and we could always transfer it outside to under the awning once we arrived at camp. This isn’t as doable in UK/Europe, so it hangs inside for longer. The weather also isn’t so hot so it takes longer to dry.

So in saying that, we do most of our washing in paid laundromats or at paid campsites (also paid machines) like you would in a caravan park in Australia. Laundromats are generally everywhere, even in supermarket car parks, the motorway service centres and in small towns. In Norway and Sweden however, self-serve laundromats (not in campgrounds) are rare. We had to really stretch our clothes and washing and had to visit a town specifically for an extra day just to do all of the washing. We do have to consider where to park when visiting laundromats too, as we don’t want to be lugging all the washing too far to and from the MH, so parking as close as possible is best. This is why we generally like the supermarket car park ones, usually we can find a car park, put the washing on, do our groceries, and hang in the MH without being in the way or on a timed parking restriction.

In does unfortunately generally take us a full day to get it all done, as when we are stopping to do the washing we do ALLLLL the washing – towels, sheets, doona covers, clothes, the LOT. So by the time you put it all through the washers, and then the dryers it is almost a full day (well at least a good 4-6 hours).

Costs can vary too, sometimes we pay $4au a load to wash and $4au to dry, another was $7 each, and another was $1 per 6 minutes in the dryer (which was hard to know how long it would take). I’ll also note, we haven’t found a dryer that will dry a load completely in less than 1.5 hours. So on average we can spend about $40 on washing every 2 months – roughly. We have found most take card payments too which is great, however we had to research for one in Denmark that was card as we didn’t want to get cash out on our 3 days there and not know how much we would need.

Caravan Park Laundry in the UK

French Outdoor Laundry in a supermarket car park

Denmark Laundromat in a town

Europe is more suited to Motorhomes / Campervans / Campingcars rather than Caravans which is different to Aus. The size of the roads, carparks, park-ups, aires and services are more suited to MHs. Caravans exist and are used but we think more for van park to van park use, not road-trip style exploring. Also, 4WD isn’t really necessary here, yes you could have a bit more clearance and 4WD to do more farm stay or ‘off road’ but there really isn’t much ‘off-road’ or ‘off the beaten track’ available, as above everything is close to towns and villages and owned land.

We think the biggest difference is the expectation of a quiet, scenic, spacious campsite that you can stay at for a few nights as in most of Europe it doesn’t really exist. Europe is so dense, there is always another town within 20 minutes. You won’t ever find a forest/lakeside/riverside camp / park-up that you won’t have someone come and use while you’re there. It is not the same in Aus.

With park-ups you can either have a nice enough view (we’ve had some good ones, mostly in Scandinavia rather than mainland Europe) but you’re in with many others; or you’re in an aire carpark; right in a town near houses; or in a dodgy forest type camp, and they ‘will do for the night’. We are yet to find any that we would stay at for more than 1 or 2 nights, so we are always moving which is tiring, which leads to a faster pace of travel than we are used to or would like.

Even on the app a campsite might sound and look good and you may think it will be good for a couple of days, but you get there and it is not what you expect. We always need a back up plan or two.

~ We use an app to find free/cheap campsites/park-ups, just like we did in Aus

~ We use the same app to find services which are available at service points, aires and campsites – sometimes free, sometimes charged, and the amounts and what is charged varies.

~ Rubbish disposal is a little tricky but most playgrounds, parklands or supermarkets have bins.

~ We think a lot of the camps/park ups are similar to what we call a gravel-pit in Aus, except there are usually forests around them.

~ Some aires are really busy and fill up quickly, but usually the ‘gravel pit’ style spots are quiet unless near a popular town.

~ The expectation of a quiet, scenic, spacious campsite that you can stay at for a few nights doesn’t really exist unless you pay.

~ Europe is so dense, there is always another town within 20 minutes. You won’t ever find a forest/lakeside/riverside camp / park-up that you won’t have someone come and use while you’re there.

~ Europe is more suited to 2WD MHs / Campervans rather than Caravans.

~ Each country is a little different to each other but there are still a lot of the same ways. For example aires are really common and popular in places like Germany, France, Spain etc, however in Norway or Sweden it is more free gravel pit and caravan parks and a few aires. Services in Scandanavia were dotted around in rest areas and were almost always free, where as it is mostly paid in Germany/France etc at designated town run places or aires.

~ School holidays means more people are out and about. They are something to really consider around Europe, and stretch from the beginning of July to mid September, with the busiest period being August as more countries overlap then. You are even less likely to find anything quiet in this time. Also if you were wanting to stay in a campsite during this time you may need to book well in advance.

These might sound like negatives, but they are not, it is just the differences and the expectations around what to expect if you were to travel Europe in the Motorhome or campervan.

So in short, how does travelling Europe in a motorhome compare to Australian caravan travel? Simply, it’s similar but different, and anyone can do it!

If you’re thinking about buying a motorhome to travel Europe, take a look at our guide for How To Buy a Motorhome as an Australian in the UK/Europe, it has everything you need to know!

Oh & if you’d like to find out more about Our Motorhome of Choice to travel the UK & Europe full-time, we wrote this full detailed blog explaining it all!

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