In this informal instructional video, Kat Bird of Wandering Bird explains how motorhome and camper‑van travellers can obtain fresh water and safely dispose of waste while wild‑camping, i.e., staying off‑grid and away from mainstream campsites. She first outlines the simplest option – using a campsite – and recommends paying a modest fee (£5‑£10) at smaller independent sites or caravan club locations, noting that turning up in person often works better than calling ahead. She then details hygienic waste disposal: for grey water, use a drainage point or a disposable jug; for toilet waste, use quiet public toilets, tip‑and‑flush in small amounts, and avoid dumping in nature. She shares strategies to keep the toilet cassette from filling quickly, such as using separate pee bottles, storing toilet paper in a nappy bag, and opting for cheap, fast‑disintegrating paper. The video also covers UK‑specific water‑sourcing challenges, suggesting campsites, canal‑boat service points, occasional garage/fuel‑station taps, and community‑shared information on apps like Park4Night and Search4Sites. Throughout, Kat stresses environmental etiquette, warning against illegal dumping that harms natural sites and can lead to bans. She ends with a call to share tips, add campsite details to community apps, and join the Wandering Bird Facebook group for more motorhome advice.
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We don't do that. What we do do, do do. Ha ha ha. Okay, moving on. Hey guys, I'm Kat and welcome to Wandering Bird. This channel is all about helping you make the most of your motorhome and campervan, and knowing how to find water and safely dispose of your waste can go a long way to making your motorhome trips much more enjoyable. So let's talk about the different ways that you can find facilities, fill up with fresh water, and safely dispose of your waste as you're traveling. The first and most obvious one is to use a campsite. We tend to do this, especially at the beginning of a trip. When our motorhome was in storage, we couldn't get fresh water before we left home, so at the beginning of a trip we'd go to a campsite for a night, we'd fill up. If we had any waste, which we generally didn't if it was in storage, but if we had any waste, we could dispose of that. We could charge up everything that needed charging if we hadn't done it, and we could be ready to go if we wanted to stay off-grid for a few days. Of course, if you're staying on a campsite for the entire week, you've got water and waste disposal points at your fingertips whenever you want them, so that's easy. But let's assume for the rest of this video that you want to stay off-grid, wild camp, wild park, whatever you want to call it. You want to stay away from mainstream campsites. The way that I would recommend to get your resources is to pay to use campsites. Now, there are plenty of campsites around the UK that will allow you to pop in, fill up with fresh water, dispose of your waste, and go on your merry way. You'll probably pay somewhere between £5 and £10 to do this, but honestly, it makes life so much easier, and that's what we would recommend. Now, top tip for this, I would not— Oops, doing it again. We're beating the sun. We're trying to beat the sun. There we go. Now, I would not recommend turning up at a Caravan and Motorhome Club site or a Camping and Caravan Club site on a busy weekend, on a Friday, or before school holiday when they're crazy busy. They are not going to have time to deal with you. I would recommend using a smaller campsite, an independent site, a CS or a CL. Hopefully you'll find one that on their website say, hey, you can use our facilities, come on in and we'll charge you £5 to do so. If you can do that, brilliant, add that into your itinerary and you can use their facilities as you pass Buy. If you can't, it's worth turning up. We find turning up tends to be more effective than phoning in advance because phoning is so much easier for them to say no, sorry. But if you turn up and you're there, they tend to just say yeah, sure, bung me a fiver or whatever and you can do it. So that's how we would get around that. Of course, if you're in Europe, they have these amazing places called Aires and they have service points all over the place and it's so much easier. But assuming that you're in the UK, I would try and find campsites which will allow you to do it. However, if for some reason you really don't want to do that and you want to find other options. There are other ways of certainly disposing of your waste. Filling up with water is slightly more tricky, but we'll cover that shortly. So let's deal with how to dispose of your waste safely and hygienically. And while I'm on the subject, please, please, please, please do not dump your toilet into a river or a forest or a lay-by or any other place that's just not hygienic. Find a toilet that you can dispose of your waste properly. And the same for grey water— don't just open the tap and drive down the road with it spilling out behind you. Find a drain or ways of doing it so that it is hygienically placed down into the appropriate System. Sun is beating me again. I'm sitting on a bench and you're getting closer and closer. I'm trying to beat the sun. And right, so let's talk about grey waste. Grey waste is quite easy to get rid of, especially if you're in a motorhome and you've got an inside waste drain valve. One option is to find a drainage point that goes obviously in a road or a car park. Ideally don't block traffic by trying to do it in the middle of a road, but a lay-by or a parking point or somewhere where you can pull your van over and drain straight into the drainage point. Try and find one that's got a bit of an indent so that you're not making a big messy puddle of all your water in a car park or something. Nobody wants to see that, and that'll just get you in trouble with the locals. But you can find a drainage point and pull your van over it and drain down. It should only take a few minutes to empty out your tank. Alternatively, you can do what we do and you get a disposable jug. I'll link to the one that we've got below. It was just— I think it's a 10-liter or maybe 15-liter one that we got off Amazon. It's got a little spout thing on it, it hooks onto the bottom of the waste drain point, and we can fill that up and then we can dispose of the water somewhere safe. That's easy. Grey waste is quite Straightforward, and we tend to do that every couple of days or so to keep the tank fairly empty. Toilet's slightly trickier because obviously you need to dispose of it somewhere appropriate. If you don't want to use a campsite, you can use public toilets. Now, there are some definite cons to doing this method. I would suggest that you find quiet public toilets. Don't try and do this in the middle of the M6 services, but you can try and find somewhere that's out the way, ideally not somewhere that's next to a town hall or that's going to be really busy, a lot of people watching you take your toilet cassette out of your motorhome and go into the public toilets. We actually have got a really large rucksack that we can use for this purpose if we're feeling a little bit underconfident about how the locals might react to us emptying our cassette in their public toilets, but we do try and do this perhaps later in the night or first thing in the morning so that there aren't so many people around. It just makes it slightly less likely to upset anybody. Also, don't just do what you do at a campsite and just tip your entire cassette straight into the toilet and expect the toilet to deal with it. It won't. You'll block it and that will just cause chaos. So you want to tip a little bit in and then flush, A little bit in and then flush. Now, if you are going to be staying off-site a lot, it's really recommended to do things so that your toilet cassette doesn't fill up so quickly. I know a lot of people use pee bottles so that they only— I really hope you're not eating whilst you're watching this video, but hey, we're about to get graphic. Um, the only thing that goes into their toilet cassette are number 2s, and the pee bottles can be disposed of in a normal public toilet, and they do that. We don't do that. What we do do Doo-doo. Haha. Okay, moving on. Um, what we do is we don't put paper into our toilet cassette ever. We put paper into a nappy bag which sits up next to the toilet roll, and we've done this for years because we had to do this on the boat. Couldn't put toilet paper down into the cassette on the boat. Some people find this really odd. We find it normal because we've done it so long, but if it works for you, it stops the cassette getting filled up so, so quickly. So that really is a good option. Certainly we've done it the whole way through and it's never had Problem. The wind's picking up now. I've got wind and sun. We're not doing well with this whole thing. But that is an option that will stop it getting filled up quite so quickly. The other thing, whilst I'm thinking about it, you do not need to pay for expensive toilet— motorhome-appropriate toilet paper. Just buy the really cheap stuff from Asda and Tesco's and other supermarkets are available. Really, really cheap stuff that disposes really quickly. If you are going to put it into your cassette, you want stuff that disposes really quickly. And that's why the motorhome paper is so amazing, but it's not. It's just really cheap paper. Of course, if you're going to put it into a bag, it doesn't matter how quickly it disposes because you're going to throw it away in an appropriate bin. So you can use Andrex or whatever else your little bottom wants to use. So those are 2 different ways of dealing with the toilet. But again, please, please do not just dispose of your toilet wherever you see like, and certainly don't dispose of it into a river or a watercourse or lay-by or anywhere public. That is what is causing damage in so many gorgeous places around the UK. The NC500 has apparently got no end of trouble. There's no need to do that, and that is what caused places like Portugal, which was fantastic for wild camping and staying off-grid, to now ban it. And we don't want to have that happen in our country, so please, please make an effort to dispose of it somewhere hygienic and proper and that doesn't upset a load of people. Okay, getting water. Getting water is slightly trickier. It's not like Europe where there are Aires and service points all over the place. And yes, getting water in the UK is tough, which is why we tend to use campsites You used to be able to get water from the taps at garages and fuel stations. I believe most of them have been removed now. Very, very few are available, and most of them, when they are available, they're not appropriate drinking water. Now, we only drink stuff that goes through our Lifesaver jerry can tank thing that we've got, but most people put it straight into their tanks, and there's no guarantee on the quality of that water. So be careful if you do find a random tap and fill up. I've read on forums and Facebook groups over using graveyard taps. I have never done this. I don't know how I feel about that, I'll be honest. It feels really cheeky, and I don't know, but apparently that's what some people do, so that might be an option for you. If you're lucky enough to have a canal boat or access to somebody who's got a canal boat, they have these keys where you can get services from to fill up canal boats, and some of them are really close to a road. So if you've got one of those keys, you could pull up somewhere nearby and fill up your van tank from one of those. But of course, not all of the service points are near a road because it's Again, the easiest option for us is to pay for a night at a cheap CL site, £10-15 for the night, use all their facilities. If you're going to pay £10 to use the services anyway, you might as well pay £10 to stay in the night, get electric, charge everything up. But of course, it's your holiday, you can do it however you want. So I hope that answered all of your questions. If you have got any suggestions on how you fill up with water and dispose of your waste whilst you are traveling, please do drop them below. I would love to hear how you do it, and we can all learn from each other. Also, if you know of any campsites which are happy to let you pay to use their facilities, do drop their details below. That'll help other people find them and use them and encourage these places. There are details of some of them on places like Park4Night and Search4Sites, and I recommend that you use those and try them out. And of course, if you find any, by all means add them to the app so that other people can also share from your knowledge. If you're not already part of our community and you'd like to get more motorhome and caravan video tips like this one, then we'd love it if you hit subscribe. And if you're not part of our Wandering Bird Facebook group, which is where this question was first asked, then by all means come and join us. I'll leave the link in the notes below. Thank you very much for I'll see you on the next video. We are out, we're talking about a good time. We're chasing every moment, all the good nights. We're always looking out and it's a good life. We go around the world for a show.
