🎯 Finding safe places to stay with a motorhome (using Park4night)

So I thought I would make a quick video sharing my thought process, how I choose places, how I find them and the sorts of things that I look for. So I hope you find it useful. So here we go, this is Park for Night and when I am looking to find places, particularly in Europe, this is the app that I tend to use whether I'm trying to look for campsites, approved places, paid places or free stops. And I'm going to walk you through my thought process on all of those, not necessarily the campsites but if we find any I'll share my thoughts on them. But I just want to show you how it works and also how I assess whether I want to stay at places or not. So the first thing we're going to do is pick an area and I'm going to do some research for my trip when I go down. So I'm taking part of the Wandering Motown Club, we're doing a group trip down to south of Germany and the trip is going to end in Nüchtenstein, which is down here. And I'm then going to spend some time exploring this area and probably into the Dolomites as well. Now if you know a place that you want to be around, so for example Innsbruck is obviously there, but let's say you want to be around... Then you just type it in and it can come up. But if you don't know an exact town or for example this area here, there's not a big town or anything, you can just bring the map to where you want it to go and then click search from this area. Now you will see lots and lots and lots of different coloured things here. These ones are like your helpful bits, so it's either public toilet or laundrette or a place where you can get drinking water. But when you're trying to find somewhere to stay overnight, they're not what you're looking for, so then use the filters. Now there are two main types of overnight stays. You've got the paid or approved spot or you've got the free, not necessarily winging it, but the free ones that people have found. And don't forget that on Park4Night and on Search4Science and on CamperContact, all of them are what's called user generated content, which means that it is all put in, so all of these spaces are put in by people like you and me. So you've found a spot and they've gone, oh this is good, I'll put it on Park4Night. And then they decide whether it's going to go in as a free motorhome area or a parking lot or a private car park. And there is a lot of inconsistency, particularly around those three. I mean, Surrounded by Nature is normally exactly what it sounds like, but the parking lot or a free motorhome area would be interchangeable. So the ones that I tend to look for when I'm trying to find somewhere to stay overnight is Surrounded by Nature, the parking lot. I don't ever choose to stay at the motorway rest areas. I will use the services there in the day. I'll stop there for lunch or to get fuel or whatever, but I don't ever choose to stay on them overnight. Purely because there are a lot of reports of people getting break-in at those stops and also they're noisy. You've got trucks coming day in, hour in, hour out, so it's always quite noisy, so I tend to avoid those. Picnic areas, free area, paid area, because I don't mind paying if it's somewhere safe. Private car park campers, obviously not the off road 4x4 because I have a motorhome. I personally don't like to be on the farms because the owners tend to be quite inquisitive or they tend to try and encourage you to come to their vineyard or come to their shop or whatever. So I would rather pay for somewhere than use those, but that's my personal preference. If that's for you, then by all means tick that. Obviously, we're looking for somewhere to stay overnight, so the service area of that parking is useful, but not for this. And again, home space is staying on someone in the driveway or field or something. And they can be brilliant, but there tends to be more interaction with the locals, which when I'm staying on my own, I don't particularly like. If I'm staying with Adam or whoever I'm travelling with, then I probably will use this one or the on-the-farm one a bit more. But on my own, I feel less comfortable with it. Now, you can also filter if you need specific things. So if you're going in winter, so between October and March, it will show you the ones that are open for that time. Pets are generally allowed on all of the free places, all of the airs, it's campsites. If I was just looking for campsites, I would select pets allowed. Obviously, if I'm travelling a lot, which I pretty much always am, to make sure that I find campsites that are pet friendly. If you need services, now don't forget you don't need these every single night. So only if you know you're going to need them or you think you're going to need them on that particular night, then that's good. And then, obviously, if you need toilets or showers, then you need to select those. I'm self-contained in my motorhome, so I don't need to worry about that. I also don't worry about electricity or internet access because I have got all that in my motorhome. And I will only select the laundry option once a week or once every ten days or whatever when I really, really need it. This one is one that is important to me, making sure that I've got decent signal. But not every person who puts in these places puts them in the same level of detail. So not everybody will say that dogs are allowed. They'll normally say they're not allowed, but you won't always get dogs allowed on the wild or free spots. Same as you won't always get an internet, even if there's a perfectly good internet connection. So I don't tend to select them. So we're going to apply the filters and you can see that immediately we've got rid of a few. There's still quite a few here though. So then it becomes a lot easier when you've got specific groups or you've got specific places you want to speak. Now me, for the purposes of this video, I know that I'm going to explore somewhere around here. I just don't know exactly where yet. So I'm going to just see what I can find. In fact, it's safe to say that in this video I'm going to take up a few spots now. I've already starred, so this star means that I've already staged it. And let me walk you through what I like so much about this particular one. So the first thing that I'm looking at is obviously motorhomes are fine to get there. You can see two big motorhomes there. I'm not going to have an issue getting there. I can immediately see the views around it are beautiful and again more pretty pictures. So the first thing I do when I look at a place is I look at the pictures. If they don't have any pictures, I don't say that at all. So we look at the pretty pictures. Then the next thing I do, I have a sort of cursory glance at this. And if they're really low, then I want to do some more digging. But it doesn't always put me off. I have a quick look at what services are allowed. And we'll see more of those shortly. I can see that it's free. And I look then at the different stars and things. I can immediately see good, good, good, good. And yet, what was this? A couple of weeks ago, somebody has put that a sign has gone up prohibiting motorhomes. Which is a great shame. It looks like this is no longer an option for staying there overnight. So we need to go back to the drawing board. So let's close that one down. I would probably remove my favourites as well, but I will do that another time. So let me then look. I'm not even going to start on that area. I'm going to start in this area. So I don't tend to like big cities and big towns. I tend to like being out in the middle of nowhere. So if I was going to explore this sort of area, this is the sort of road or sort of place that I would start looking at. No real reason. It's just the road I picked. I could easily have picked this area. But let's have a look down here and just see what all of these nice green bits are. So, I can see here, the first thing I'm looking at is, I've got a picture, yes, but it's a campervan. So is my motorhome going to be alright to get in there? The square for a vehicle up to six metres of my motorhome is six and a half. I think you could probably get that in there, frankly. But... Yeah, that's fine. So I probably could stay there. But I'm going to see what else is around. It doesn't immediately leap out to me. Small roads, suitable for vehicles. I prefer to go in reverse because it's difficult to turn around at the bottom. So although it looks lovely, not a cat in hell's chance am I going up that with my motorhome. Definitely not happening. So, then we get the wiggly, windy roads. The viewpoint of the waterfront. I mean, it's lovely, but that is quite small. And this is not looking good so far, is it? So this is exactly the thing that I go through. Forest road, quite bumpy, wouldn't recommend for a long van. Nope. And then, absolutely not. So you know what we said, we've started somewhere. I'm just going to move down a little bit more. Now this is a little bit more like it, although immediately I can see that it's quite built up. Well actually it's not as built up as the first motorhome makes it look. So this one I can see it's fairly flat. It's obviously got some decent spaces, but there are businesses and there will be people around there. So I expect there to be arrive by or leave by times. But it's got nice enough views. You can see they're decent sized motorhomes, so people are obviously staying there. So it's got okay views. Small parking, side-by-side road, no water problems. Great view of the mountains. Great parking. Camping obviously not allowed, but maybe possible to crash when too tired to go on your journey. So that's an interesting way of putting it. Great parking for a day or a night. Camping obviously not allowed, but possible to crash. So yes, it's fine to stay there, but you're not allowed to get all your bits out, but you're not allowed to do that anyway when you're using it. And that was a couple of weeks ago. Good, good, good. This one's only got three. Arrive late after the aqua zone. No problems on overnight stay. Nearby roads are quite noisy. Overall good stop considering the few alternatives in the area. And this is the problem. So Austria and then coming into the Dolomites is a really difficult place to stay off-grid. Not all of Austria, but this sort of area. Because A, it's busy, but there's also a lot of national parks. So just something to consider. So we've gone all the way down to here. I haven't really found anything. And that again looks like a teeny tiny little road. So I'm now thinking, all right, that way is not looking particularly brilliant for me. So you can see it's not always easy to find places. And it can be really, really a little bit stressful, but just a little bit time-consuming is probably the better word for it. So if you're getting to this point and you're like, oh, so literally there's nothing around here, then this is where I start going to campsites. Because you know with a campsite you'll be fine, you won't get in the way. It just means you're going to have to pay for it. And this is the balance. Sometimes you can find air, and sometimes you have to go to the campsite. So first thing, dogs, always good. And then after that, it's not bad. €30. Nice little campsite. Small little parking space. Makes sense to make a telephone enquiry in advance. And I do tend to do that if I'm looking at campsites and would tend to book. So if you go on the contact area, you can either do the phone, or you can go straight through to their website. And if I do that, then you can make a booking request. And this is what you'll find at a lot of European campsites. You type in the dates you want, and your vehicle details, and your name and everything, and your email address, and it's a booking request. And they will then email you back. So you don't always book people immediately online like you might in the UK. So I wanted to just have a quick look at that one So red means it's a paid air, basically. And as you can see, that looks absolutely beautiful. It's got stunning views. It's got decent facilities. But you can see there, it hasn't got a dog in it. Now, it doesn't mean that dogs aren't allowed, but it means that I need to do some further investigation. Because it could mean that dogs aren't allowed. Oh, no dogs allowed. There you go. But it's not always consistent, sadly. The first thing I'm looking for are photos. So this is a photo of a approved motorhome area. It's obviously got proper parking bays, which are long. Then I look at the different things. So it says one mobile is allowed. That's fine. Obviously, caravans generally not, and good for buses are. So it's got the price there. So between six in the morning and 10 at night is eight euros. And then from 10 to six is another seven. And then, I think that must be students, maybe. Now, here we go. Quick tip for you. If you're faced with a sign like that, and you're like, I do not understand what that means. You want the Translate app on your phone. So you just put that on. I've called my screen for you. You can see what I'm doing. There we go. So you find the Translate app on your phone. Let me just do that. You open up the camera app. You point it right in the mirror. You point it at that, and it will translate it all for you. And then you can actually press the little button, and it will translate it. So the student tariff actually means hourly rate. Yes, so that's how you do that. So it's got three out of five stars, which is right. Obviously, very basic accommodations. That's fine. Swimming late, the restaurant and bar, kiosk and bar between and by. Got the drainage, which was fine. So I looked then to see why it's got such, and it's got some really not brilliant reviews recently. Parking in a city, credit in the empty, not possible to enter, 31 Euros for two nights. I don't think it's bad, actually, but that's what, just 15.50 for a night, which I think is pretty good. Impossible to get in. I don't know if it was full. When trying to get a ticket, I was charged two times 25 Euros without being able to get in. Okay. Not a nice campsite, not really well organised. No way to dispose of. So it's not a campsite. This is where you have to keep these reviews with a pinch of salt, because these aren't campsites. This is an air. They're much closer to what you get. And again, people aren't realising where they are. So this isn't the middle of rural France. You are going to be paying 15, 17 Euros for the night. So I actually don't think that's that bad. Okay, so this one here hasn't got any photos. Not a single one. And it's also a motorway service, but I wouldn't park there. But no photos. I wouldn't ever go there. So those are the kind of things that I think about. I look at the photos. I look at the reviews. I look at, obviously, things like if dogs are allowed or facilities, if I need them. And then I look from a personal point of view. Am I happy to stay in this area? So, for example, Innsbruck, big city, I would not be happy to stay on my own because you're going to have a lot of opportunities for passing trouble. And that's what I tend to look at. I would rather stay in the middle of nowhere because the likelihood of somebody coming by who is going to be aggravating is very, very low. Whereas in big cities, more people, more opportunity, more possibility. So that's what I kind of think. If I'm going to stay in a city, I will stay on a campsite or an approved air, somewhere like that. If I am going to stay in somewhere like the Tyrol National Park or the Dollarite National Park, I would tend to stay in an approved place as well purely because, I think it was this one that had a comment about, yeah, this one here. Stopped by the police. It is generally forbidden to spend the night outside a campsite in the Tyrol. So if you are going to stay somewhere like that, then I would start looking at the ones with the red. So I would change my filters and I would remove the nature. I'd remove the parking lots. I'd remove the picnic areas. Free motorhome areas are absolutely fine, although you get very few of them as well because it just means that it's an approved place to stay. And you can see immediately how much quicker that has made things to narrow it down. If I didn't want to stay at a full-on campsite, I can now look at this one here. Pictures are good. Views are good. Price isn't bad, actually. And then you would just start looking through all of these different reviews. And it can take a while. Some days it's really easy and some days or some areas it can take you a little while. But those are the kind of things that I think about and hopefully that helps. I hope you found that useful. If you want to know more about wild parking or staying off-grid with your motorhome or your campervan, don't forget to grab your free checklist. The link for that will be in the notes for you. If you do want to know more about staying off-grid or how you figure all of these places out, I am doing a workshop at the end of this month all about wild parking, staying off-grid, gear you need, how to set up your vehicle, how you can figure out a whole route when you're not planning any campsites. All of that kind of stuff, all the details for that will be in the notes for you. And if you happen to be watching this video after it's gone, you'll be able to get access to the replay on that same link. So check that out in the notes. If you'd like to get more videos for motorhoming and campervanning, then by all means click subscribe. And if you are planning to do some trips across into Europe, you will find this video useful. I'll see you there. Take care. Bye.