🛑 6 Weeks. No Campsites. Here's How! (Water & Waste tips when motorhoming off-grid)

So it's all well and good finding places, whether they're Aires or off-grid spots, wild park-ups, whatever you want to call them, but if they don't have facilities, how do you deal with your waste or getting fresh water when you're not using campsites? Well, a lot of that is going to depend on whether you're touring in the UK or in Europe. Europe is infinitely easier than in the UK. So in Europe, as well as all the Aires that have got facilities, and a lot of them you can just go into and And use the facilities. You obviously have to pay for the ones that require paying, but you can just go in. You don't actually have to stay at that aire to use the facilities. But in Europe, they've also got motorhome service points. Now, you'll generally find those— if they're not in the aires, you'll generally find those on the rest areas of the big motorways. You can find them on the apps like Park4Night, and all you do is you filter for the motorhome service points. And it will show you the ones that are around you, or you can find one on your route, or however it goes. So that makes it so, so easy in Europe. You often can empty your grey waste, so that's all your sink water and everything that goes into the tank underneath your vehicle. So you can generally drive over the dump point, you'll see the big drain griddle, whatever it's called, there, and you can open your grey waste tank and empty that, normally for free everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen Seen anywhere pay for that. If you haven't had to pay to get into it, then you haven't had to pay for it, so you can do that pretty much anywhere, but the 2 that you generally need to pay for everywhere are emptying your toilet, which is black waste, and then also getting your fresh drinking water. So I would save your €1 and €2 coins for those just to make it easier to open up the more spots available to you when you're in Europe, and then all you do is you pull up, you find the space, again some of them are free, so there might be one of these little holes in the ground, it might look a bit like a pipe so that you could just sort of take the top off and then tip your toilet into that. Do not— if the hose is right next to the toilet emptying point, do not use that hose, even if it says it's drinking water. You do not know that somebody hasn't used that hose to wash out their toilet cassette, so please don't do that. If they're suitably far apart and if it's got the little tap drinking sign on it, then yeah, you can use drinking water. When I fill up with drinking water, I always put in a capful or 2 of Aquasol. Do not mix Aquasol up with Purosol. Purosol is a tank cleaner and it's toxic, whereas Aquasol is safe to drink. The other thing that I've got to make the drinking water better in my vehicle is I've got an inline filter fitted in the cold tap, or the cold side of my kitchen tap, so that when I put it onto cold, the water has been filtered. From the tank. So I do drink the water out of my tank. One thing I do when I am not using the motorhome for a couple of weeks, in fact anything longer than a day or two, if I'm leaving it for longer than a day or two, I drain out the freshwater system completely. So you can also do that over a grey waste griddle as well, you can use the same there, and you can just drain it all out completely and that way there's no sort of dirty water or sludge building up in your freshwater tank, but I would suggest at the start of every season and maybe every few months if you use the system a lot, putting some sort of tank cleaner into your freshwater tank, rinsing it through properly so that the water is safe to drink again, and that way you're not going to get any contamination or any issues with that. Now, if you're in the UK, it is sadly a different kettle of fish because the UK just does not have the same infrastructure that Europe Does. So if you are trying to stay off-grid as much as possible in the UK, there are a couple of things that I recommend doing. So for me personally, I tend to book into a small campsite that's got facilities I need every 3 or 4 nights. Now obviously I travel the majority of time on my own, so I can actually make things like the toilet last a little bit longer. The other thing I don't do, whilst we're talking about making the toilet last longer, is I do use it for both systems, but I don't put paper in there. Now, this might be disgusting to some people, but I think having lived on a boat for 15 years, it was perfectly normal not to put paper down the system, and it goes out into the ocean and all the rest of the stuff. So I've been used to putting paper in little nappy bags and disposing of that in the trash in the normal way that you would with a kid's nappy or something like that. So that's what I do. I know some people find that weird, and I know some people don't want to use their toilet at all for number 2s or anything like that. You need to do what works for you, but the longer you can make it last without needing to empty it, the longer you'll be able to go between needing to use campsites or things like that in the UK. So, like I say, I try to find a campsite— I tend to prefer the smaller campsites— every 3 or 4 days. Occasionally, I'll book into a big campsite and I can use things like their laundrette and stuff like that, but normally I go for a CS/CL site or a site like a field site that has got facilities for emptying your toilet and getting fresh drinking water. If I am somewhere like in Ireland, Ireland brilliant for this, they actually have got a few service points around and there are a few popping up around the UK as well. So again, you can find those using Park4Night or Search4Sites in the UK I tend to use as well, and you can go and use those. Pretty much all of them in the UK are paid. The other thing you can do is find a big campsite which will allow you to pay to use their facilities to empty out your waste and get fresh drinking water. Now, there are some that are very happy to do that, and there are some that are less happy to do that. Some people will say, or some campsites will say on their website, that they're very happy for you to turn up, use their facilities, and it will cost you £7, £10, whatever it's going to cost you.

One brilliant example of this is the Camping and Caravanning Club, who have introduced motorhome pit stops or service stop-off points. on some of their club sites. Current pricing is £7.65 per unit, and it enables you to use all of the facilities on the site. So that could be emptying your toilet, getting fresh drinking water, and they will also allow you to use their showers as well, which is an absolutely fantastic scheme. Not all of their sites offer this. You can find out the ones that do on their website, but frankly, just this alone is worth the price of membership, and I think it's such a good idea.

If it's gonna be £15 or £20 for a night, remember again, I'm travelling solo, so it's always a little bit cheaper for me as one person than it would be for 2. But if it's like a little bit extra to stay a night, I tend to just stay the night. If I'm gonna have to pay £10 to empty my stuff anyway, then that's what I prefer to do. But some campsites won't allow you to do this. I have had greater success turning up and asking them very politely if I could pay to use the facilities, to empty the toilet and get fresh drinking water. I have had better success doing it face to face because people don't like to tell you no to their face. So as long as you go in politely and offer to pay, very obviously, I'm happy to pay, then most places I've been to have said yes. So that's how I tend to manage water and waste when I am off-grid. I hope you found that helpful. If you want to know more about how I stay safe and how I find places, then I am running a live off-grid parking workshop. All the details will be below in the notes for you if you would like to join in on that. And also, I've just updated the Off-Grid Parking Toolkit. Again, information will be in the notes for you along with a cheeky discount. If you'd like to get more videos about motorhoming and van life, feel free to follow along, and I will see you in the next video, which you can find right here.