Camper Stop Aires Guides on Review

Camper-stop guides

The Contenders

CamperStop Europe
Bord Atlas 2006 Reise Mobil International
Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping CarLe Guide National des Aires de Service Camping-cars

CamperStop Europe
CamperStop Europe has 6200 camper-stops in 14 countries. This guide provides text in four languages including English. Information is not limited just to camper-stops as valuable tourist information, including market days and local attractions is included.
Finding the desired camper-stop is easy as the maps have pictograms on them identifying what type of camper-stop, they are. The second option it to look at the index, which is divided into regions; each camper stop has a map reference.
The town titles in CamperStop Europe although in bold, can be hard to spot. Once you have familiarised yourself with the book it becomes simple to use. A simple users guide is also included when you buy your copy from Vicarious Books.
For Holland (179 listings), Belgium (183), Luxemburg (21), Portugal (143), Denmark (98), Switzerland (64) and Greece (37) the information is fantastic and invaluable detailing every style of camper-stop, from sani station, municipal to farm site. This excellent information continues for the 1642 entries for France, 1119 for Germany, and 889 for Italy. The information on Spain and Croatia is disappointing to dedicated camper-stop users, but this is because camping outside of campsites is illegal in Croatia and there are very few camper-stops in Spain, however plenty of motorhome suitable campsites are detailed instead.

Bord Atlas 2006 Reise Mobil International
Bord Atlas 2006 Reise Mobil International is very clearly laid out, each camper stop is clearly defined with title, GPS, and photo. It also boasts 29 countries. This publication is available in German only.
Although it looks fantastic when you flick through Bord Atlas it isn’t that user friendly. Camper-stops are indicated by dots on the maps so you have no idea what kind of camper-stop it is. All the camper-stops for a whole country are listed alphabetically so you have to keep searching backwards and forwards just to look at camper-stops in the same area. On a recent trip back from Germany I needed to find a camper-stop just before the German/Belgium boarder. Using the front maps I had to randomly search around 18 camper-stops. I was looking for a free night halt and I found several restaurant stops before I settled for Wiehl.
There is limited tourist information provided for each camper-stop. Dumping at a German Stelpllatz
Finally Bord Atlas promotes 3400 camper-stops in 29 countries. However it is primarily a guide for Austria and Germany, detailing around 2500 German camper-stop and 120 Austrian ones. The only other useful country is Poland, after that information is limited with only 283 listings for France and 202 for Italy. Some countries such as Finland and Portugal only have one or two listings.

Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping Car
Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping Car boasts 6500 camper-stops for Motorhomes in 9 countries, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Croatia, Greece and Switzerland. This guide is written in French.
Included with the aires guide is very good fold out map showing the location of the French aires this is easy to misplace and would render the guide useless. There are no maps for the other countries. The French camper-stops are also indexed at the front of Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping Car detailing what kind of camper-stop they are and whether they are free. However the index has no page numbers, so you have to find the region. Unless you know where regions are, or the name of an exact town you need to refer to the map to find the camper-stop. The directions are generally good, but there is no GPS or photographs to help. A small amount of tourist information is provided. First timers will need to be careful, as many of the listings are campsites that do not necessarily offer any motorhome discount.
Outside of France the book becomes very disappointing. Most countries have very limited information, the exception being Italy. There are no maps but the country regions are clearly identified.
A small, but useful point should you need a repair or part is Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping Car has many dealer adverts listing their addresses across France.
Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping Car lists 1,732 aires in France, 517 stellplatz in Germany, 81 camper stops in Belgium, 1,268 Aree di sosta in Italy, 71 in Portugal and 106 in Switzerland. Also listed in France are 735 France Passion stops and 1,683 French campsites. Croatia and Spain only have campsites listed due to the lack of camper stops.

Le Guide National des Aires de Service Camping-cars
The 2006 edition has 1600 stops in France only. This comparison is made with the 2003 edition, as I am yet to find the 2006 edition for sale – everywhere has sold out! Le Guide National des Aires de Service Camping-cars is easy to use if you have a little French. The maps at the rear are colour-coded so you can identify which type of camper-stop they are. The camper-stops are also indexed by region. There is no tourist information in this guide and very few photographs. Le Guide National des Aires de Service Camping-cars has fewer entries for France than CamperStop Europe.

Overview
If you intend to travel to in The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, and Denmark CamperStop Europe offers the most information and ideal for new users of camper-stops. Although Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping-Car looks better on paper for Greece and Switzerland, far more information is provided in CamperStop Europe. If you would like information in English CamperStop Europe is your only option.
However if you are heading to Germany, Austria, Hungary or Poland Bord Atlas offers the most information. If you need GPS then this guide is the only one offering this information at present.
For France Le Guide Official 2006 Aires de Service Camping-Car is a good choice but interestingly it only has 90 more camper-stops than CamperStop Europe. It does have significantly more listing for Italy.
As an overall guide to Europe, CamperStop Europe is more favourable than the two other Europe guides as it covers countries in better detail, and although it might lack a few listings for France, Germany and Austria it has plenty to keep the average motorhomer happy.

If anyone knows of any other camper-stop books please let us know so we can add them to the overview.

You can order CamperStop Europe From www.vicariousbooks.co.uk for £13.99 = P&P

www.go-motorhoming.co.uk home page.

Rasing Urgent Funds

Hymer Camp 4x4 for sale

Those of you that have been following our growing pains, will know we sold our Swift Sundance motor home to get Go Motorhoming the book and website published. Well growth and developement are hurting a little more and we now need to sell our Hymer motorcaravan. I can tell you this is not a happy disision as we particually like this motorhome, and were really looking forward to testing the 4x4 capability.

The advert is as follows;

Hymer Camp 55, Manufacturers special order 4X4, 2.5D, 1991, 72400 miles, awning, Excellent 740 kg payload with driver, fuel, water and gas accounted for. 5.53m 18’2” long, 2.95m 9’8” high, 2.24m 7’4” wide.

100l water, 10l hot water, roller blinds/fly screens, blown air heating, bike rack. Satellite dish.

Absolutely amazing condition with the best layout possible. 10 months mot and tax. Suitable for daily use Europe or overland tour. £9500, 07989 277873, 0131 208333 Minehead. www.go-motorhoming.co.uk Home page.

Importing a Motorhome Fun & Farce

www.go-motorhoming.co.uk

Its funny how things workout. After what seems like an eternity, we finally took our first delivery of the Go Motorhoming Books. The excitement was heightened when our web designer gave me £10 for what was the first book sold. He had an advantage, as he had kindly allowed us to get the books delivered to his shop, as we were busy.

Writing and publishing a book is neither easy, nor cheap, and our Swift motorhome had to be sacrificed to pay for print and web design costs. Curiously when we advertised for free in the Motor Caravan magazine we had a poor response. We had about four enquires from the advert placed on UK Motorhomes.net. Perhaps being February March time had an effect, I guess this is a good time to buy a campervan for early bird buyers. In the end we sold our Swift motorhome to our web designer, who appears to have suddenly taken great interest in motorhoming since designing our website. Ironically as I knew would happen, we started getting plenty of calls from the adverts in the Motorhome Motorcaravan Monthly magazine, MMM, and its sister publication Which Motorhome.

So our web designer got a cheap motorhome and we were able to pay our bills. Having calculated what money we had left the search began for our next camper. Within four days, I am reminded regularly, I found our next camper a 1991 Hymer Camp 55. The thing that clinched it was it was 4x4 and probably now the only one in the UK. Two weeks later we collected our motorhome from Germany.

So how is it possible to find and negotiate importing a motorhome from Germany so Quickly? Simple, really, I searched the German equivalent of auto trader, http://www.mobile.de/. By chance the sellers were Palmowski Hymer main dealers who regularly advertise in the Motorhome Motorcaravan Monthly magazine. They have a policy of ensuring their campers are in the first couple of cheapest adverts. Certainly our Hymer seems to be a bit of a bargain and in very good condition.

The logistics of getting out to Germany took three days of research. Not only were we travelling from a difficult destination, Exmoor, we also wanted to spend as little as possible. So a complicated timetable of walk, bus, walk, train, tube, B&B, walk, train, plane, hire car and walk were carefully mapped. Amazingly it only cost £300 for both of us including ferry and all worked like clock. We arrived at our dealers at midday.

The first thing they said was ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ Not exactly the welcome we were looking for and we optimistically assume this was a joke lost in translation. It is always interesting seeing the camper van you have purchased blind for the first time. Thankfully it was in better condition than we thought, but being a 4x4 you do need a stepladder to get in. The German DVLA equivalent was closed so we would have to wait for the morning to start the importation process. So our first night was spent sleeping on the dealer forecourt (in the motorhome).

You do have to take your brave pills when importing a motorhome. We have done it before, arriving in Bremen at 5pm and being back in Kent at 5am. This time things weren’t so quick and we didn’t get away until 7pm the following day and had a hard drive to make our ferry. Although spending the night on the dealers forecourt is very unglamorous, we do recommend this as we discovered some problems, primarily with the water heater that needed to be resolved. Unfortunately we were at the dealers at their busiest time and it took to us prowling around like demented caged animals for it to get fixed.

So you would think that once in the UK things would go smoothly. The process of importing a motorhome from Europe is actually quite simple but is not necessarily that easy. Thankfully the motorhome sailed through its MOT. Having sent off documents to DVLA, after spending many hours cross referencing and double checking, we completed our drive extension to fit the motorhome. Our neighbours had been very interested in our recent activity but were very disappointed with the continental large white flower that now adorns the front of our property.

The DVLA in their wisdom posted back all the documents, this includes sufficient information to make a clone of me, a worrying thought (Very worrying, one of you is quite enough – Ed). The only problem was, one of the many boxes in the registration form lacked the registered keepers address and I had not made the cheque for the tax disk out for enough. You would have thought a phone call could have sorted this out, but I suspect its policy.

I had a little fun getting the number plates made, as you can if you ask, have in very small writing some words of wisdom printed along the bottom, normally reserved for ‘Dave’s Discount Motors’ or the equivalent. So one day, probably sooner rather than later, someone will buy a motor caravan from me, with the words Go Motorhoming on its plates. The reason for selling is I want to import a motorhome from either Belgium or Holland to see if that is more viable. (There is more information on importing on the forum www.go-motorhoming.co.uk/forum and full details are in the book www.go-motorhoming.co.uk/ordering.htm - Ed)

So there you have it an exciting week followed by our maiden motorhome voyage over the weekend on British number plates, I will try to get some romantic pictures of campers in their element on Exmoor, to brighten up this blog.

Happy motor caravaning
From the Go Motorhoming Authors

www.go-motorhoming.co.uk