Explore europe in a campervan

Now that we’ve lived in a motorhome in France for a month, with no prior experience, we thought we’d share a few of our learnings and observations.

Motorhome tips

• Levelling - we don’t think it’s vitally important to spend money on buying a levelling system and loads of time roaring the engine to drive up the blocks when you park up. As long as it’s reasonably flat, the bed is flat or heads slightly raised, and the incline stops trays falling out of the oven, we can cope. We do use chocks when the temperatures are really cold, leaving the hand brake off and engine in gear to prevent the brakes freezing.
• There’s no need to run the blown-air gas heating all night. It doesn’t seem to be necessary. As long as you’re warm enough in bed - sufficient covers and warm nightwear if it’s really cold. When we wake we put the heating on before getting up, but we’ve never woken up uncomfortably cold or needed to wear hats in bed. And our gas comsumption is very reasonable as you’ll see below
• Both occupants need to be on the ball. There’s quite a lot to remember, especially when ‘locking-down’ to go driving somewhere. Fridge locked, cupboards locked, roof-vents closed, gas off, everything secure including the table and it’s pole, battery charger on ‘touring’ mode, waste bucket emptied and stored in the garage (ours got left behind in La Rosiere)
• How to be smart with our resources - you only need the bowl one third full to wash up, when it’s only what you’ve used for one meal - then you save it to rinse the sink after brushing your teeth - and you can reuse the water in the hot water bottles every night when you’re heating it up in a pan
• Use every bit of electricity available to you - stopping short of plugging into the street lights like some of the locals do- we alternate when we’re driving between charging only the leisure battery and charging a laptop or mobile phones. We like to go to a campsite every 7-10 days to get everything fully charged.
• Don’t blindly trust the sat nav. Check the route for narrow, unsuitable roads and, more importantly, mountain passes that may be closed for the winter. It is possible to get a sat nav where you can specify the type of vehicle ie. a lorry, so that it will avoid narrow routes. We didn’t
• The oven is a bit slow - everything WILL take longer than expected, so be prepared to wait till 11pm for your jacket potatoes - or plan better of course!
• Condensation is not a big issue (for us anyway). We get very little in the living area. Some in cupboards, so would avoid storing damageable items like books next to the van floor. When we occasionally use our silver screens internally in the cab, to be discreet, we generate much more condensation inside than when we use them externally

Things we’re glad we brought with us

• A small pan with a pouring lip - much more useful than a kettle - you can’t boil your eggs in a kettle, or your mulled wine
• A motorhome with a large, separate ‘garage’ - keeps wet equipment, tools, dirty laundry, kites, boards, summer clothes etc…out of our living space
• A comprehensive tool kit and a roll of duck tape - called into use for many small repairs and construction of the snowboarding boots-warmer
• Bathroom or kitchen sealant - as recommended by many books and sites, and meant we could confidently take the bathroom apart to make essential repairs knowing we could re-seal it
• The Haynes Motorcaravan manual - invaluable in helping us to understand particularly the 12 volt electrical system, but also the gas system, water supply and general maintenance and repairs
• WD40 - for sliding side door and rear door padlock - will have many other uses I’m sure
• Car sponges - bought cheaply to fill spaces in cupboards to prevent rattling or things falling over. Have also been used for filling the gap to stop the bathroom door knocking, emergency washing-up sponge when we threw the last one away, wiping down snowboards to prevent metal edge rusting, and for washing the van
• Multi-meter - for checking the level of charge in both leisure and engine batteries, and checking flow of electricity when appliances don’t work
• Head torches - how to convey just how useful these are?! You can see in the dark wherever you’re looking! These were used daily even before we left home - for running up and down the garden in the dark to and from the van and shedding light just where you need it when sawing and drilling
• Cookbooks - we have BBC Good Food magazine books with cheap recipes and one-pot dishes, and Delia Smith’s ‘How to Cook’ which has been useful for basics
• Silver screens - we considered making them ourselves from silver insulation bubble wrap, but it worked out around the same cost as screens made for a Sprinter - albeit for the newer model than ours. We paid around £70 for basic screens and the bubble wrap cost around £35 for about 8 metres. The biggest loss of heat is through the vehicle windscreen and having external screens also reduces condensation on the inside of the window
• A Nationwide Flex Account. As far as our research showed the only way to get or spend money abroad without paying commission on card transactions or cash withdrawals. As most banks or credit cards charge at least 2% commission we’ve saved around £40 in our first month away. The exchange rate is also favourable at average of 1.34 Euros to the pound compared with Marks and Spencer or the Post Office both around 1.28. This has saved us a further £110!!
• Thermos flask - for storing hot water for hot water bottles when we return to the van late after an evening out and for keeping the mulled wine hot for after dinner!
• Funnels of varying sizes - for draining waste water into a big bottle when it’s not possible to use the bucket outside, filling the water tank, filling hot water bottles from a pan AND to make a stand for the high gain wi-fi antenna.
• Silver bubble wrap - not cheap but used to make a very effective, insulating curtain for the window in the living area, lagging the gas bottle to keep it’s temperature up and making a boot warmer using the hot air from the engine vents
• A 15 litre water container AND a food quality hose. It’s not always possible to fill the water tank using a hose - but a much less miserable, cold task when you can. Also there have been times when the water pipes are frozen for the early part of the day - despite being within the van, so we always keep the container full to avoid needing to use bought-water

Things we wish we’d brought with us

• A generator. We could avoid the need for campsites altogether at a push. If we had a generator it would be easy. Keeping the leisure battery charged alone would not be a problem, but when you add in MP3 players, sat nav, mobile phones and laptops it’s not enough to run the engine or go for a short drive each day. We’ve seen many motorhomes running suitcase-type quiet generators and we’re looking into getting one now
• Potato masher - they don’t seem to be available here and you can’t get the best consistency mashing with a spoon
• Mercedes Sprinter handbook. We did look before we left but couldn’t find one readily available on the internet. Maybe we should have tried Mercedes direct
• A periscope - not vital I suppose, but when all the screens are down you just can’t see what’s going on outside (apart from peaking out of the bathroom window!)
• A USB cigarette lighter adaptor - now we’ve bought one from Carrefour we can charge phones, ipod, cameras without the need for the laptop being switched on
• Waterproof footwear. It’s true you don’t see many people wearing wellies in the Alpine towns we’ve stayed in, but there have been times when the snow’s deep or the campsite is a bit soggy when proper waterproof ‘apres-ski’ boots would have been ideal. Also Simon’s trainers don’t have much grip on ice!
• Essential food items. The shops all sell a selection of British food items at understandably over-inflated prices. There isn’t much that we simply can’t do without - no need for Heinz baked beans at €1.70 a tin! If we do get desperate we could buy bisto granules, mint sauce and peanut butter. The one thing I miss that isn’t available here is sugar-free orange squash - the French alternative is a very sugary ’sirop’ that doesn’t make a good bedtime drink - bad for the teeth!

Things we brought but didn’t need

• Wine stopper - no need to be frugal with the wine at £1 a bottle!
• TV - we honestly don’t have time to watch it. Also, without a satellite dish we haven’t been able to receive any channels - even French ones. We’ve watched the occasional DVD on the laptop, as a treat, when we can spare the power. That will be a little more often when we get a generator. A lot of our spare time is spent blogging and trying to get internet!
• Too many clothes. ‘Your luggage is your enemy’, we were told by a seasoned back-packer. We thought we’d heeded this advice but have worn around 5% of the clothes we brought with us. A new wardrobe, other than jeans, hoodies and snow-boarding gear will be needed in the summer, but we certainly could have travelled much lighter.
• Battery powered LED lights. I think these were for when we had no power. Now we realise it would be pretty silly to run the leisure battery down to nothing - and you can always get some charge from the engine alternator by going for a drive. Maybe they will come in useful further down the line.

You can find out how much we spent in our first month by clicking here

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Travel, Campervan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.