🚌 YOUR Questions Answered - Motorhoming Q&A with Wandering Bird

Hey guys, I've not done a motorhoming Q&A for a while, so I'm going to take the opportunity to answer some of your questions. I'll get through as many as I can in the next few minutes. If you're new here, hi, my name is Kat. I run the motorhoming and van life website Wandering Bird, and I share tips for motorhoming and van life around the UK and Europe. Today I'm going to be answering some questions from my email subscribers. If you would like to get on my email list and get the opportunity to get your question answered, then Then the link is in the notes for you. Okay, let's dive in. First question: should I use a dashcam or a GoPro? This is a really good question. The answer is it depends. Dashcams are fantastic because they're constantly recording and overwriting themselves, so they record all the time as you're traveling, and then if something happens, if you have an accident, touch wood, you can press the button on the dashcam and it will save the last bit of the recording for you. So it's constantly going, and it's a really good backup slash insurance policy in case you do get into an accident. GoPros are slightly different. GoPros only work when you press them on. Now you can leave your GoPro just going on as you're driving, but it won't overwrite itself. What it will do is the SD card will fill up and then it won't record anymore. Now that might be a way of doing it, and of course you can record some beautiful scenery, but it will not be there as an insurance thing if you need it from an accident. So it entirely depends what it is you're trying to do. If you want it as just a backup in case something happens, go for a dash cam. If you want to make YouTube videos or record your adventures or just have it for your own bit of fun, then I would go with a GoPro. You can get it mounted on the top just in front of the steering wheel, which is what I often do, and it's a really nice way to be able to record the area that you are driving through, but it will not work in the event of an accident unless you happen to be already recording. Next one, I'm going to read this one. We're traveling to Sweden via Holland, Germany, and Denmark. Do we need different stickers for the green zones in each country, or will the Crit'Air sticker we have for France be sufficient? Hope you can help. Anne. Hi, Anne. Right, answer to your question, you need a different Crit'Air sticker for every country that requires them. So France, definitely, you only need one for the whole of France. You do then need a different one for Germany. Off the top of my head, I don't know the rules for Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, but if they do require them— and I will leave the link to the website that's got all the information for every country, it's also got the official sites to buy the Crit'Air stickers through— I'll leave that in the notes for you. So go through, you can check them, what you need for each country. However, I will say this: I drove and have driven around Europe for years, and I haven't had a single Crit'Air sticker on my van because I don't go into any of the zones. If you are just driving through the countries— I drove all the way up to the top of Denmark when I was on my route to Iceland last summer. I didn't have a single Crit'Air sticker on my van, and I avoided all of the zones. You only need the Crit'Air stickers if you are going to go into one of the zones. It's like driving around London and not going into the ULEZ. You don't need to pay. Exactly the same thing. Cat, where do you empty your wastewater when you are wild parking? Great question. I'm really glad you asked, and I'm trying to be responsible with your wild parking. Now, I do this in couple of different ways depending on where I am. If I'm in the UK, I admit wild parking over here is getting harder and harder, but if I am trying to do that, what I will do is I will book into a campsite for a night every 3 or 4 nights. Gives me an opportunity to empty out my toilet, empty out all of my waste, fill up with fresh water, and then go on my merry way the next day. Now there are places in the UK that have got filling stations. So Ireland had a couple of them, and I believe there are a couple around the UK as well. And these are literally just independent stations where you can pull up with your van, you can pay then a couple of pounds, empty out your waste, fill up with fresh water, and go on again. So they are there in the UK, but they are not anywhere near as numerous as they are in Europe. So in Europe, lots of the big motorway stations— I would never stay there for the night, but they do have motorhoming service points. You need a couple of euro coins, although I think some of them now have got the wireless Wi-Fi tap thing on your phone. But you need them, you fill up, you can pull over the drain, empty out your grey waste, empty out your toilet in the proper thing, and fill up with fresh drinking water. And you can just do that as you are then going via down the motorway to wherever you're planning to stop, which makes staying off-grid so much easier in Europe. But again, if I happen to be at a point— I know there was a place in Norway where we got stuck, there was a couple of the service points that weren't working, so we just booked into a campsite for a night and used their facilities. And that's what they're there for. Fitting your own gas bottles, what are the insurance ramifications of that? That is a brilliant question. I'm really glad you asked. This is really, really important. If you fit your own Gaslow bottles, which we did on our previous motorhome, you must, must, must get them checked by a proper approved gas fitter or gas engineer and then tell your insurance company. Really important, otherwise your insurance will be invalid. So you must make sure that you get that done and then get it updated with your insurance. Kat, I hope you can help me. I've been trying to find out if our dog's Romanian passport would be accepted across the EU. The passport is valid, but the vaccinations need updating. I assume that means the vaccinations are out of date, which means that the passport isn't valid, which means sadly the only way that you can get a pet passport, like a proper one that is accepted around the EU, rather than having to use the animal health certificate, is go back to Romania with your dog. And the only way you will get your dog Out there is to pay for an animal health certificate. That's the only way of doing it. You've got to pay for the animal health certificate to get out there. If you can then get a pet passport when you're out there, get back new vaccinations, and basically get a whole new thing, then that's up to you. But there's no way of your dog leaving the country now without an animal health certificate because your passport has expired. Kat, I really love your piece on your website on wild camping and wild parking. Oh, thank you. Is there something that we can print off to keep in our vans in the event of being asked to move on? No. And again, this is really, really important when you are looking at staying off-grid or wild parking with your motorhome or your campervan, especially in the UK, which I'm assuming is what that was based on. You don't have any rights. If you want to not be worried about being moved on in the middle of the night, stay at a campsite, stay at an approved spot, stay at a pub car park, anything like that. There's plenty of options for you. But if you are going to park in the middle of nowhere, You could always be asked to be moved on by either the landowner or an official, which is basically the police. You are not breaking the law wild parking if you move on when you are asked to do so. It's breaking the law when you do not move on. So no, there's nothing that you can print off. That's the risk you take for staying somewhere that is an unofficial spot rather than staying somewhere like a campsite. Kat, I'm really confused. What items can we take to France legally? We want to take tins of baked beans. Yes. Tins of spaghetti, yes. Tea, yes. Coffee, yes. Coffee whitener, yes. Alcohol, yes. Crème de cassis— why would you take that to France with you? Buy it there. But anyway, yes. Bailey's, yes. Pimm's, yes. Good, you can take all of those things. Basically, you cannot take any products that are derived of meat or dairy, and I know Bailey's has got a dairy product. If you are worried about that, the worst thing that they're going to do if they have to go through your motorhome and see a bottle of Bailey's is throw it away. If you're worried about doing that, buy Baileys over there. They have plenty of Baileys over there. It's absolutely fine. Don't forget, of course, that now we have left the EU, we have got limits on how much alcohol and cigarettes, if that's your thing, you can bring back into the UK with you. All of that's on the UK Gov website. You can find out those limits there. But otherwise, you can take all of that stuff. Not a problem at all. Kat, if you're traveling through Europe and you know you're going to be there for longer than the 90 days within 180 rule, Is it straightforward to extend the visa, and can you do this in just one country or multiple? Who do we need to apply for this visa for? No, you can't extend it. It's the law. We voted to leave the EU, some of us. No, you can't extend it. I should really cut that out, shouldn't I? Never mind. No, you can't. You can't. You can get extensions for things like if you're writing a book. I know Mr. Martin Dorey did that. When he was writing his book about Spain, he applied. It cost him several thousand pounds, took several months to get through, and you have to do it from the UK. You can't do it whilst you're out traveling. So no, you now need to arrange your trips to be within the 90 and 180 days within the Schengen zone. And then if you were going to go above that, you either need to leave the Schengen zone, come back to the UK, go to one of the other countries that aren't in it, or you need to have applied for a longer visa and paid for a longer visa before you set off on your trip. Security. Should my van blinds be kept closed, and should you put a sticker on your van stating alarm, tracker, immobilizer, CCTV, etc.? I think this means when you are at home, but look, well, I'll answer it for both. I always keep my van blind closed when I'm parked up and I'm not leaving the van. Admittedly, I often leave it in a secure storage facility if, like when I went to Antarctica or anything like that, I have it all the blinds shut when I am in there. I do have stickers on my windows saying alarm because it is, saying a tracker because it does, and also I do have Cameras going inside the vehicle as well. There's no harm putting these stickers on there, not sure why you wouldn't. And again, I do the exact same thing when I'm traveling at night. I'll shut up all my blinds as well, and the stickers are all on there. I'm running out of time. I've already run overtime, but never mind. One more question is— oh, this is an easy one— where are you going on your next trip? I'm going to the Outer Hebrides. I don't quite know when this video is going to go off yet, but sometime in the next few weeks, certainly Uh, Maytime, I'm going to be out in the Outer Hebrides. I will be posting stories on my Instagram and my Facebook and perhaps a couple of Shorts on YouTube. So if you're not already subscribed, feel free to hit that subscribe and click the little bell because the YouTube algorithm has changed. And if you don't have that little bell on the subscribe button clicked, you won't get notified about any new videos or things that are coming out. So if you do want to follow along with my trip, by all means do that. I'm also heading up to Norway and Sweden and Finland later on in this year, but I will share more about that with you in coming videos. I hope you're all safe and well, and I hope you found those questions useful, and I'll see you very soon. Take care, bye!