🧡 5 Insanely Useful Apps every Motorhomer Needs

After 90,000 miles of touring around Europe, there are some apps that I go to every single time because they just make life so much easier. So in this video, I want to share with you 5 of my favourites, and hopefully that will make your touring in Europe that little bit easier. If we've not met before, hi, my name is Kat, and I'm here to help motorhome and campervan owners make the most of their time on the road. That includes touring around Europe, and I will help you figure out the best things that you need to put on your phone to make it easier for you. Now, obviously the most useful apps are gonna vary based on the type of travelling you're doing and where you're doing them. So for this video, I'm gonna be focusing on Europe. Some of them will be a crossover for when I'm motorhoming in the UK as well, but when I am specifically touring Europe, these are the apps that I use the most. So the most common one, and the one that I talk about all the time, is Park4Night. This I use to find a variety of things. I use it to find places to stay overnight and the campsites. So these are what the little red motorhome and The little black tent are, but I also use Park4Night to find services, to find service points to empty out my grey waste, my toilet waste, and also to get fresh drinking water when I'm not using campsites. I use it to find laundries and laundrettes. So using the filter, you can make sure if they're open all year, if you're travelling well out of season, you can find some that have got online booking, although they are not that common. So that will restrict the numbers that you find. They've got this new thing called GeoSpot, which are basically like wild Camping spots or approved overnight stopovers, I should say, and they can be reserved. So they're quite fun. And then you can find all these range of places. So nature parking lots for day and night. So if you're just gonna visit a place for the daytime, you can find a parking lot. You can also get parking lots that are daytime parking only. And then this is where these extra services are. So things like laundrettes, some of them have got gas, like LPG refill stations and things in there. Although I use a different app to find those. And if I'm using it to find campsites and things, I make sure that I've got the pets allowed on there, cuz not every campsite allows pets. And then if I'm looking to find, say, drinking water or even things like public toilets or showers. So when I was in Norway and I lost all of my water, I used this to find public access showers all across Norway. And a lot of them were in things like service stations where you can pay to use the showers and they were actually really nice. So yeah, that's really, really useful. You can use it to find things like swimming pools, like I say, laundry, bottled gas, LPG station. And so there's lots. This is quite a cool one actually. This washing for the motorhome because obviously the motorhome gets quite dirty whilst you are driving around. So if you apply the filters for here, this shows you you filtered it down to where they've got space that you can actually wash a motorhome. This one tells you that they can go up to 3.25 meters in there and 7 meters in length. So that's the sort of all the motorhome wash areas around wherever I am Netherlands in there. So that's how we use Park4Night. I've done a full in-depth video on this. I will leave the link for. For it here, but this is the one I use this most of the time. Now, if I was in the UK, I would tend to use one called Search4Sites instead. Very, very similar process, but because Search4Sites is British, it has a lot more British people using it. Search4Sites has got a lot of things like pubs or other stopovers, whereas Park4Night is European. It's used a lot by Europeans, and there's a lot more places in, in Europe. Then you'll find on search results. So the next one that I use a lot is this one, viaMichelin.co.uk, and this is a really good way of finding the best routes for you between places in Europe or between anywhere really. So if you wanted to create an idea of an itinerary, we're going to do, say you arrive in Calais and then you wanted to go to Venice. So this is as the crow flies, which is a weird expression. How do we know that a crow flies? Straight. But anyway, that is the Direct Line. So what you need to do is put the 2 points in and then search for an itinerary, and it will give you various options of driving routes. Now, this does not include traffic, it does not include roadworks. This is based on the speed limits for the roads that it is suggesting you go down, and then it gives you an estimated time for the drive and an estimated cost for the drive. So you can look at the various options and you can look— can I move? Yes, I can. Right, cool. So you can look at the various costs and the time of the route. So obviously this one is about 4 hours shorter than the other options, but it's the most expensive one. So you can see the mileage and you can see the reason that it is going to be so expensive because it's going through Switzerland and you've got to pay for the vignette and everything for Switzerland. So it tells you the cost of the trip, the toll costs, And the estimated fuel costs, and then the cost for the Swiss vignette here, which is €44, which is roughly at this time of filming about £38. And then these are the different toll roads that you'd be going down and through. So, if you wanted to do a route, you wanted to go on a cheaper option, you could just click on this and it will tell you the different options and all the rest of the stuff. So, ViaMichelin is really useful for finding the best routes. Now, the next one I use, I use all the time when I'm in Europe, and that's to find refillable LPG stations. So, when you have got refillable gas bottles, you need to find places to do them. And so, I look on a map, and again, I use the app for this one more than I use the website, because obviously I'm normally travelling whilst I do this. But say, let's say again, we're going to Venice. That's— somebody emailed me about Venice the other day, so that's stuck in my head. But it will tell you, say, there's an LPG station here. It tells you more about the station. It gives you the address of it. It gives you any information that you need to know. It tells you the dish connector that you need, but you can also on your phone, you can get a Google or a navigation thing using either Google Maps or Apple Maps, so you can navigate directly to it, or you can just put the station address into your sat nav and you can do it like that. So I do use this one all the time when I am touring around Europe. Now the next one that I want to talk about is petrol prices and petrol prices, finding out the best petrol for you. So you can find cheaper fuel around areas that you're going to be travelling in. So in the UK particularly, you could— oh, can't spell, obviously— Salisbury, and it will tell you the cheapest places. Now that is for leaded. Most motorhomes will be diesel, but let's say we look at Yes, so here, and it's got the diesel price in there, and you can filter it all out and through. So that's really quite useful as well. And you can also— I wonder if that will tell you in Europe. Yes, it does. So there you go. So you can use that in Europe as well of finding cheaper fuel. A lot of sat navs do this as well though, so that is an option that you could use rather than going directly onto the app. Now another app that is Absolutely, like I use it every day when I'm touring around in Europe, is Google Translate. And this again, I use mostly on the app on my phone rather than on a website, because on a website it doesn't do as much as the app does on your phone. So I'm just gonna show you quickly on the website and then I'm gonna move over onto my phone and show you, if I can, things that you can do. So on the website, you can copy bits of text. So somebody sends you an email from say a campsite or a booking and it's all in French or whatever, you can paste it directly into here and it will just translate it into the language of your choice. You can do the same with images. You can drag and drop an image of say campsite rules or something like that, and it will translate it for you. Same with documents. And you can also, I've got it set up, if I go to a foreign website, it will translate it for me, which is really, really useful. So those are the 5 apps that I use mostly when I'm touring around in Europe. Now, what I'm gonna do is try this, is show on my phone some of the other apps that I also use and also how I use Google Translate. So let me see if I can get This up here. Right then, this is gonna be interesting. So this is let me show you some of the other apps that I really like using. These aren't necessarily ones that are just for touring around in Europe. These are apps that I use all of the time. So starting off with the weather app, I have four, sometimes five. The one that I use the most when I'm touring is normally AccuWeather, and this one does all sorts of things. But the thing that I use it for the most is it tells me the rain. So if I want to say walk Mac and I want to know when the next rain. Is going to be, then I can see exactly when that is, and it's normally pretty accurate. The other thing that I really like about AccuWeather, if you click onto daily, and it can tell you the predicted weather for the next— I think it's 45 days, so— oh no, 30 days. So you can actually see what's coming, and you can— so for example, say you had a massive storm coming in and you were going up to Nordkapp, you could either go a few days earlier or a few days later, and I use this a lot when I'm planning, and I don't always look for just where I am, I look for where I'm going going to be and seeing on the best day. So I did this a lot when I was in Lofoten Islands in Norway. There's a lot of outdoors, a lot of hiking. As it turned out, there was no good time when I was up there, but that does adjust. So I made sure that when I went up to Nordkapp, I was up there when there was some sunshine as well, which is, is good. Oh, this is going to be midsummer. It's a really busy day up in Nordkapp, and there's rain predicted, so hopefully they get some sunshine when they are up there. But this is AccuWeather. I use that all the time. I also use the Met Office occasionally, and Windy's really good. I use that mostly when I'm on ship just to see exactly how bad the weather is going to be. Now, a couple of other apps that I use all the time are Polarsteps. Polarsteps is brilliant, and Polarsteps is a way of tracking your actual trips. You can upload photos, you can see like where you've been and stuff. Say I clicked on— so this is the Svalbard trip, I think. There we go. So this was a Svalbard trip that we went on last year. So I've got like all the photos uploaded, or when I've bothered to do them, and you can actually go back and you can see like the map of where the ship went and everything, and you can put in notes and things. And yeah, it's a really, really good app. So I use this all the time. It's completely free. I keep mine locked down just for friends and family, but you can share them with whoever you want to. So yeah, it's quite a good way of sharing your adventures. Another app that I use all of the time. So this was Part4Night. This is MyLPG. Search for Signs, like I said, is the one that I tend to use when I'm in the UK. This is the Google Translate app. So let me open it up. Now, again, you can enter the text, so you can just copy and paste stuff and it will detect that language and translate it. You can push on this big speaker button. If you're talking to someone, you can talk in English. It will translate it for them in whatever language you're in, and then they can talk back and it will translate it back into English for you. I use this camera all of the time when I am in— oh yeah, I can't do it from on my computer, but you basically, you open your phone, open Google Translate, select that camera button, and then you can point it at a sign or a menu if you don't understand, and it will translate it on your phone for you. It's really, really clever. So yeah, Google Translate, I use all the time when I'm touring in places with a foreign language. Another one I use a lot is this Drone Assist, which tells me where I can and cannot fly the drone. Very useful. And then, Ones that I use an awful lot whilst I am travelling are these pay on your phone for car park things. So Ringo gets used quite a lot. Pay by phone seems to be very popular in Europe. JustPark, not so much. And then these ones are for like when you want to hire like those little scooters or little bikes around cities. Ryde is a really popular one of them. And Starlink I use a lot. Now, another thing that I use all the time when I am traveling is a VPN. So I use NordVPN. I've also got ExpressVPN on there. No real difference between the two. I just had a year's subscription to both. So I have them both on there. And What3words can be useful as well when you are traveling. That's the ViaMichelin one that I spoke about earlier. And then the other apps that I use a lot are Audible and my Kindle as well. I think I've got a deal on those actually. So if I have got a deal on, I'm going to leave the link if you want to get a deal on either ebooks Or on audiobooks, then you can get a discount on those. I hope you found that useful. If you did, a thumbs up is always very much appreciated, and don't forget to follow if you'd like to see more videos like this. I also want to let you know that at the moment my Europe book is on sale. I will leave all the details for that in the notes for you, and if you do want to know more about touring in Europe, you'll find this video helpful. I'll see you there. Take care. Bye.