Touring Spain by Motorhome

On our first motorhome trip to Spain we were amazed to find the beautiful Picos de Europa mountains in the north, having just come from the bay and pintxos bars in the proud sea-side city of San Sebastian (Donastia in Basque). Since then we’ve been wowed by the architectural wonders of Seville, Barcelona, Córdoba and Grenada, been welcomed into the white hill towns of Andalucia, put our feet up on the beaches of the costas and squeezed down the mountain roads of the Pyrenees. Still, we’ve barely scratched the surface of sunny Espagne.

Here are just a few of the places we’ve visited. Click on the links below to get the full blog post, with the GPS co-ordinates of where we stayed overnight.

1. San Sebastian – Donastia (blog post here)
2. Salamanca (blog post here)
3. Benarrabá, a hill town in Andalusia (blog post here)
4. Sierra Nevada (blog post here)
5. Ronda (blog post here)
6. Granada (blog post here)
7. Seville (blog post here)
8. Mojácar (blog post here)
9. Benidorm (blog post here)
10. Morella (blog post here)
11. Barcelona (blog post here)
12. Picos de Europa Mountains (blog post here)

Like many countries in Europe, once you’re there, Spain can be toured in a motorhome without breaking the bank. While there are toll motorways, there’s also a good network of fast free roads. Diesel and petrol prices are relatively low (rough prices here). Free (wild) camping is possible outside of heavily visited areas in summer (have a look at ourbumble.com’s wild camping map). There’s a network of low cost motorhome aires, and over 200 campsites are listed in the out-of-season discounted camping ACSI CampingCard scheme (park4night.com lists over 10,000 places to stay in Spain). Supermarket prices are relatively low, easpecially for wine! By eating the incredible value menú del dia at lunchtime, you can also eat out for as little as €10 a head for 3 courses, often including wine.

One of the major costs for a tour of Spain is getting there and back from the UK. The obvious choices are to either take a ferry across the Bay of Biscay, or drive across France. As a general rule, it’ll be cheaper to drive across France, especially if you have the time to avoid toll roads, and you use aires to overnight (avoid aires directly on autoroutes, which have a poor security reputation). That’s a decent drive though! In 2019 we drove from San Sebastian to Calais using a mainly toll-free route, adding 1000km to our motorhome’s mileage (kilometerage?) and costing us €270 (£230) for the one-way trip. This was made up of fuel of €209, tolls of €42 and €20 for the paid aire at Capbreton. It took us around 20 hours of driving.

To get an idea of ferry crossing costs, have a look at a comparison site like www.aferry.co.uk. Using this for our motorhome, crossings for two adults from Portsmouth to Santander in our 6m long Hymer B544 allowing 0.5m for the bike rack come in at roughly £800 return (£400 each way), depending on what cabin option we have, the time of year, the time of the crossing and so on. Note that Brittany Ferries have a ‘no frills’ economy sailing at weekends, which can bring the ferry cost down if you’re not looking for the cruising experience.

If you have a pet, there are pet-friendly cabins but word is they sell out quickly, so book early.

The coastal Mediterranean area of Andalusia, in the south-west of Spain, is a popular over-wintering area due to the mild out-of-season climate. Even in the coldest months average lows on the coast are around 10°C, with average daily highs of roughly 16°C. The Costa del Sol between Málaga and Gibraltar sees around 5 hours of sunshine on average in January.

Andalusia in Spain. Source: WikiPedia

The winter weather stays reasonable further north along the coast too, with many motorhome travellers enjoying the region around Benidorm, south of Valencia. Be aware that mountainous areas of Spain can be snow-bound at times during the winter. The Picos de Europa in the north, the Sierra Nevada around Granada and the Pyrenees are all obvious examples.

If you’re looking to head south for the winter and locate yourself in one spot, it’s worth doing some research into medium and long term reduced rates. While the ACSI Camping Card scheme is great for getting costs down for short out-of-season stays, some sites will offer even lower nightly rates for stays of a month or more. Consider booking in advance if you plan to do this, as the best sites are often reported to be full during the winter.

It’s also worth knowing that southern and central Spain can get seriously hot in summer. We once unwittingly stayed too long into spring at a house sit in Andalusia, planning to head across the centre of the country. By the time we set off, temperatures were knocking on 40°C in the cities we wanted to visit. Our pooch wouldn’t cope with that kind of heat, so we found ourselves sticking to the coast and higher altitudes looking for cooler air and shade.

Finding places to overnight in your motorhome in Spain is easy. There’s a good network of aires and campsites – but be aware than many campsites close in winter. Here are some of our favourite resources for finding places to stay:

• Other blogger’s maps (see more info)
• The Camperstop book of aires (see more info)
• The campercontact.com database and app of motorhome aires (see more info)
• The park4night.com database and app listing aires, campsites, free camps and businesses who allow overnight stays (see more info)
• The ACSI CampingCard out-of-season camping discount books (see more info)
• Websites like camping.info are great for finding campsites (see more info)
• All the Aires Spain & Portugal book (see more info)

Note that free (wild) camping in Spain is entirely possible (ourbumble.com has a good database of free camping spots they’ve used), but the legality of it’s not entirely clear to us, and seems to vary with location and time of year, with some places being OK one year but actively policed the next. It also seems to be fine to be parked in some spots with nothing outside the van, but if you use ramps to get level that’s not OK.

If in doubt, ask the local police or tourist information office if it’s OK to stay. We’ve done this in some more remote areas and being made very welcome by the police, while being politely asked to move by the police while free parked (with nothing outside the van) in Benidorm and Mojacar.

Right – some stuff to know about driving in Spain before you arrive! Here we go…

• You’ll need some mandatory bits and bobs like headlamp deflectors and spare glasses if you wear them – check out the AA PDF of equipment.
• Speed limits and and distance signs are in km, not miles. We switch the units on our satnav to kilometers when we’re waiting for the ferry.
• You can’t drive in open-backed shoes.
• Motorway signs are in blue, like the UK. If a sign says ‘peaje’ on it, it means it’s a toll road so you’ll have to pay to use it. On a map or sign, toll roads have the letter P in the number.
• You can get up to date information on road conditions at this official website.
• You’ll see yellow diamond shaped signs, these mean that you have priority. If you see one with a black line through it, you no longer have priority, traffic from the right does – this is usually on approaches to roundabouts. Sometimes drivers entering the roundabout have priority, if we’re not entirely sure we just take our time and give way to anyone who looks like they aren’t stopping.
• Trams always have priority and if you are driving in the mountains you must use your horn on the approach to blind corners.

A handful of Spanish cities have ‘clean air’ restrictions over which vehicles can enter their centres, including Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. You can find up-to-date information on the areas affected, when the LEZs are enforced (some are permanent, some only apply when air pollution is high) and which vehicles are affected at this website: urbanaccessregulations.eu.

If you do plan to head into these zones (personally, we avoid them), you’ll need an ‘environment badge’ sticker for your windscreen. You can obtain these from Spanish post offices, as outlined here.

Service points, are areas where you can take on fresh water, and empty your grey water tank and toilet cassette (black water). They’re normally a drive-over drain, with an installation off to one side with two taps: one for taking on fresh water and one for rinsing your cassette out. A few tips for finding and using service points in Spain:

1. Unlike in neighbouring France, service points in Spain are almost all ‘artisan’, meaning they’re not commercial machines.
2. Spain uses three different tap sizes, so it’s worth carrying ½”, ¾” and 1″ thread Hozelock adapters.
3. Almost all campsites have service points. If you pay to stay on a site, the services are included. If you don’t stay, some sites will still let you pop in and use the services for a few Euros.
4. There are thousands of service points outside of campsites in Spain. You can find them using apps like campercontact.com and park4night.com. Many of them are free.
5. In winter water supplies may be turned off at times when the supply might freeze, so plan to visit a few aires or nip into a campsite from time to time.
6. In some areas of the country there are fresh water springs provided away from service points where you can take in water using a carrier.
7. Some folks unwittingly use the fresh water tap for rinsing their toilet cassette: we use anti-bacterial wipes to clean the tap before attaching a hose pipe or using a collapsible water carrier.
8. We drink Spanish tap water and have had no ill effects.

As long as you have a valid Pet Passport (details of the PETS scheme here), you can travel to Spain with your pet dog, and return into the UK without your pooch having to go into quarantine. We’ve done this many times, and have had no issues. A few hints and tips if you want to tour Spain with your dog or dogs:

1. If you don’t have a pet passport, contact your vet early as it can take some weeks/months to get them arranged.
2. To return into the UK you’ll need a vet on the continent to administer a worming treatment and then allow between 24 hours and 5 days before re-entering the UK.
3. You’ll need to declare your pets when booking the ferry or Channel Tunnel, and pay an additional fee for them.
4. Spain doesn’t generally allow pets onto public transport. This can limit your ability to visit cities and other attractions, particularly in summer, unless you have air conditioning in your van to enable you to leave your pet inside.
5. Although Spanish supermarkets have wide ranges of pet food available, don’t assume your specific brand will be on the shelves. Either take enough for your trip, research ahead to see if it can be bought in Spain, or plan to transition your dog to locally-available food.
6. Leishmaniasis is endemic in Mediterranean Europe, so plan to get either a Scalibor collar or Advantix treatment which protects against sand flies, as well as ticks and fleas.

Note that when the UK leaves the EU, it may be necessary for your pet dog(s) to have a rabies blood test which, depending on how the UK is treated post-Brexit, could delay your departure from the UK by up to four months (check the official government web page here). We’d recommend talking to your vet as early as possible so you’re up-t0-speed on what you need to do.

If you’re new to motorhome touring, then we wrote The Motorhome Touring Handbook just for you. It’s got all the info you need to quickly get up to speed choosing a motorhome and using it to take the biggest adventures of your life!

The Motorhome Touring Handbook is available as a paperback or Kindle eBook. You can read more about the book and buy it from Amazon.co.uk.