🔴 The #1 mistake most people make on their motorhome trips (and what to do instead!)

When I first started planning my road trips, I had to have everything booked in advance. I needed to know where the campsites were, what time the opening times were, what time the showers were open on there, all of the really nitty-gritty stuff I needed to know. It made me feel a lot more confident. Then when we started traveling into places where we didn't have anything booked, that stress of not knowing I found really difficult and quite overwhelming, but Like anything, the more you do it, the more it makes sense. And I have come to realize through all my years of planning these road trips that when you have to know everything and you plan everything in such minute detail that you box yourself in so much that actually the best bits about the road trip— the freedom, the flexibility, the fun of it all— gets taken away. And without boxing yourself in, you find actually it's a lot calmer. I know That sounds completely counterintuitive and you can't possibly imagine that to be true, but let me walk you through how it can be just a little bit easier if you haven't got everything planned in advance. So this is video 3 in the mini road trip planning series. We've spoken about how you choose your destination and avoid the overwhelm, and we've spoken about how far you should go every day. But the next thing that catches people out is trying to book every single night in advance. Now, I touched on this briefly in a previous video where depending on whether you're in Europe Or the UK, it's not always easy to be laissez-faire about it in the UK. Sometimes you do have to plan the campsites in advance, and that's completely understandable. So firstly, let's focus a lot on Europe because that's where a lot of the flexibility and fun can come if you don't have it all planned out. Now, the first thing that freaks most people out is campsites— where to stay. Now, if you are not comfortable using Aires, and if you don't know what an Aire is, I will leave a link to that in the description so that you can learn more about what an Aire is. But they're Basically approved motorhome stopovers that you'll find around most of Europe, and they are places that you can't book in advance, that you can just turn up, and if there's a spot, brilliant, and if there's not a spot, then you need to move on elsewhere. I have to say, I thought I would be driving around at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'd never find anywhere to stop, and that has like— I think it happened maybe once, and it didn't even get to 2 o'clock in the morning, but like a couple of times I've had to move on because there wasn't space out the aire, but there's always another aire within like 20 miles or something. It's not anywhere near as panic-inducing as you think it might be, but I do understand how, how scary it can be when you haven't got all that planned out. So there are a couple of things that you can do. The first is obviously to book a campsite. If you're going to book campsites in, I highly recommend that you don't book your entire trip unless you're going in the very height of summer and you want to go down the west coast of France and all the rest of really busy popular places, the Italian lakes, all of that kind of stuff. But if you're just touring around Europe and you're quite happy to be a little bit flexible— so for example, if you're driving to northern Germany and there are 6 different routes that you could take, you can be quite flexible on how you get there, where you stop, all of that kind of thing— I wouldn't book up in advance. If I were going to do that trip, if I were going to go to northern Germany, And I was feeling a little bit anxious about not having anywhere, I would book stop number 1, so night number 1, and I would book a campsite about an hour or so away from the ferry or the tunnel, whichever you're choosing to use. I really like the campsite in Ypres, which is really near the Menin Gate. I've used that one loads, and it's a nice walking distance into the town, but there are a lot of campsites around that area that you can use. You can go further up into Belgium, you can go further down into France. There are hundreds that you can choose from. So I tend to find the campsite using Park4Night, and Park4Night will just show you normal campsites as well. And the nice thing I like about Park4Night is it doesn't just show you club campsites, or it doesn't just show you independent campsites, it shows you everything that's on there. Any campsite that has been registered on the app is on the app, so you can see all of them. And then from there, if you are a paid Park4Night member, which I strongly recommend, then you can click through and see the details about the campsite. You can see the facilities they've got, and you can also read the reviews on there, whether it was nice, whether toilets were dirty, all of that kind of stuff. So I find that quite comforting. So I would pick a campsite and I would book the first night or 2 nights if you've had a long drive coming down and getting across into Europe. Pick 2 nights so you've got a day to relax and just enjoy the fact that you are there and you've actually gone on your trip. And then from there I wouldn't book anything else up. Now, if that makes you anxious, you could maybe book the next night and see how far you get. If you are not traveling in the middle of peak season, the middle of summer, you will find that most campsites have got availability, so you can actually book them up as you go. You could maybe book a night or 2 nights in advance and just see how you travel. If there's one that you love and like, I want to stay here for an extra couple of nights, you're not already committed and you haven't already paid for a campsite 200 miles down the road, which means that you've got to leave somewhere that you're really enjoying being at. So that is the biggest thing about not booking everything up really strictly before you set off. The next thing, or next reason that I wouldn't do this, is the weather. So I cannot tell you how many times I've changed my plans because of the weather. I did it really recently when I was in Austria and Germany a couple of months ago. I was going to stay in one area, the weather was awful, so I was like, oh, I'm gonna drive the Grossglockner mountain pass in Austria because I've always wanted to do that and I'm going to do it while I'm here. And then that weather was awful and I stayed in this incredible campsite that I booked on the day. So like literally I just turned up, I was like, do you have space? And they had like 3 people on a 100-pitch campsite. So yeah, it was fine. So it's really, really easy to do when you're traveling, like I say, well out of peak season. And then I just looked at the weather in the Dolomites. I used AccuWeather, I think. I probably also checked it on the BBC and saw that the weather there was beautiful, even though we weren't actually that far away in Austria. But then I just I decided to drive down to the Dolomites and had the most incredible couple of days. So I totally changed my plans based on the weather. Now, if you have got to be somewhere by a specific day, so perhaps you're catching a ferry across up to Norway, and so you've got to be up at the top of Denmark by a certain date, then yeah, absolutely, you can plan that because you've got a set stage. But if you've got some wiggle room or you've got just a meandering time, then I genuinely wouldn't book it. Now, if the aires are intimidating, another option that you can use are these things called camping car parks. Camping car park is actually a scheme mostly based in France, and they have bought up a load of the aires that the local council and things don't want to run or can't afford to run anymore, and the camping car park schemes are basically aires that you can actually book a pitch on. So if you go onto the Camping Car Park website, you can then find Aires that have got spaces and you can book one up for the night. So you could get up in the morning and be like, right, I wanna drive, I don't know, a couple of hours southwest. You could look on the Camping Car Park website, you can see where there might be some sort of availability there, and you can book a spot and you can head in that direction knowing that you have got a spot. It's a really lovely halfway house between the two. So I like using that and I recommend that to people who aren't confident going 2-3 hours down the road, and they may or may not get a spot at an aire that they have picked. Now, another way that you can know if a campsite is nice or not is to look on the club websites. So both the Caravan and Motorhome Club or the Camping and Caravanning Club have got affiliated sites in Europe. I tend to use the Caravan and Motorhome Club sites, and if they are affiliated with them, they're gonna be nice sites. They're gonna have decent facilities. They're really, really good. At the places that they affiliate with. I used that and found this fantastic campsite in Delft in the Netherlands, and honestly, the toilet block there, I've never seen anything like it. It was incredible. And I got that through the Caravan and Motorhome Club website. So that is another way that you can kind of decide if the facilities are going to be on a level that you are going to want to use. But again, I wouldn't worry about booking it up too far in advance unless you're going in the peak season, Easter or the school holidays, because otherwise you're going You're gonna lose all that flexibility. And even if you're tired, you then have to drive 200 miles down the road, which can be really dangerous. So I would definitely make sure you give yourself some flexibility to plan how far you wanna go each day, plan it around the weather, and also plan it around places that you find en route and give yourself time to go and see what the festival is that you drive past or what the market is or all of the good stuff that make road trip planning exciting. Now, I hope you found that little mini series useful. If you want to go more in depth about how to plan road trips, tips and advice to make it a lot less stressful. I'm doing a free road trip planning workshop that's coming up really, really soon by the time this video comes out. The details for it are all going to be in the notes. If you happen to be watching this video after the day of the live workshop, don't worry, the replay will be available. I will leave the details for that as well. If you do want to come, it is live. You will be able to ask your questions and I will be able to answer them for you. I might even be able to help you plan a little bit of your trip as well, depending on how much time we've got. But you do need to register for it. It is first come, first serve in terms of seats. So I hope to see you there, and I hope you found this mini series useful. If you did, a thumbs up and a follow is always very much appreciated. I will be back very soon with another video, but for now, take care and happy road trip planning. See you soon. Bye!