Finding Motorhome Aires

Update: We wrote this article in 2011 and it’s way, way out of date. You can find loads of articles about how we currently find places to sleep in the How To section of this blog – see the main menu above.

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As we’re travelling around in our motorhome we’re using two main sources of information for our parking spots. We us Vicarious Book’s ‘All the Aires’ printed books, coupled with an offline copy of the www.campingcar-infos.com database – check out our reviews section for more details.

All the Aires Books

The All the Aires books have the advantage of being printed books, so you never have to worry about their battery going flat. They also give you a good overview of how the various types of service points work, include photos of the aires, GPS co-ordinates, prices and a list of the services available. They only include official locations which have a service point of some description, so don’t include hundreds of non service-point locations. The Spain and Portugal book also gives information on LPG (GPL in Europe) points, as these are few and far between in these countries; we’ve only used one of these in A Coruna and all info on it proved accurate.

Our view of these books is:

• • They’re in English. We have some basic French between us, but having books in our native tongue is obviously a big help.

• • They are a fairly safe bet in terms of the locations included: you’re not likely to turn up to a place which isn’t actually a recognised motorhome parking spot.

• • Lots of Brits seem to pop up in the aires in the books, so if you want to bump into compatriates then you have a good chance of doing so.

• • They’re a bit out of date in terms of prices; we were asked to pay 5 Euro in one place which the book stated as 2 Euro.

• • You only get the author’s opinion on the aires. There is no ‘comments’ section so you can’t get a range of fellow motorhomer’s views.

• • Some of the aires are highlighted in orange as being ‘very nice aires’. We found these usually have a good view from your parking spot, but may well not have much else going for them. One place in France for example was right next to a canal, but the adjacent town was tiny and a bit dull.

You can buy the All the Aires France, and Spain and Portugal from Amazon; we’d suggest you have a copy of these as well as the campingcar-infos.com database if you plan to travel around much:

Campingcar-infos.com

You can get free information from www.campingcar-infos.com on thousands of aires spread across France, and about 42 other European countries. The website (pretty much all in French) can also be bought as an offline copy, either on a USB stick or just as a direct download for a few Euros.

Our view on this website:

• We paid to download the offine copy and have this on an iPad (using the Goodreader Application); it was the best few euro I ever spent as Internet access is expensive and WiFi hard to find. You can also use it on any PC, so if you have a netbook that would also be ideal.
• The majority of the aire entries are in France (6153 locations in our version) and Germany (4460 locations). However, there are still hundreds of locations in other countries; Spain for example has 350 locations, which compares with 91 Spanish locations in the All the Aires Spain and Portugal book. In total we got 14,675 locations in our copy.
• The book lists out comments submitted by fellow travellers. These are mainly in French with a few English or other language entries.
• Apart from being in a non-native language, the main downside to this database is the fact it’s electronic, so you have to make sure you’ve got a charged battery to read it. Having it on an iPad helps, as the battery lasts for 10 or 12 hours and since we pretty much only use the iPad for this use now, it hardly ever needs charging.
• The aires are categorised as (a) Aires de services publique ou privees; which means a place with a service point of some sort which you may have to pay to either park, use the services or both (b) Aires de service sur camping; which seem to be just campsites, charge campsite prices and we’ve not used them and (c) Aires de stationnement; which are basically parking places with no service point and unless it states otherwise you can stay overnight in them, sometimes with a parking charge but we’ve not found any paid ones yet.

To help with the fact the database is all in French; a few basic terms to look out for; in no particular order!

• Stationnement: parking (usually refers to how much it costs to just park up and not use the services)
• Jeton: token (we’ve not found one yet, but some service points need you to wander off somewhere and buy a token. All the ones we found took a credit card or coins)
• Plein d’eau potable: ability to fill with drinking water (some have the water disconnected in winter; check out the comments for other traveller’s experiences in winter)
• Vindage WC: black water (elson) toilet cassette emptying point
• Vindage eaux usees: grey water emptying point
• Branchement electrique: 230V hook-up (note that this can mean paying for an hour’s charge and having to park up next to the service point for that time)
• WC Publics: basically indicates whether there are public toilets nearby. As you need a toilet on your van to stay in most aires, not many aires have toilets.
• Aire overte: opening periods for the aire: some close over the winter.
• Bruyant: noisy (if it’s next to a main road, its reasonable to expect traffic noise until late into the night and early in the morning; not many are though)
• Eclair: bright (we’ve had a few nights where it’s been like daylight due to huge overhead lights!)
• Ombrage: shaded
• En pente: sloping (some are very sloping – chocks are not enough to level the van)
• Pas loin: not far
• Propre: clean (almost all the places we’ve stayed so far have had at least one bin; many have had multiple recycling bins in easy reach)