Madrid by Motorhome, A Practical Guide

We’re currently parked in our motorhome on the outskirts of Madrid, and have spent the past couple of days exploring the city. This post runs through some of the motorhome-specific, practical aspects of visiting Spain’s capital. Hopefully it’s of some use if you’re thinking of coming here yourself.

Update August 2021: since we visited Madrid a new motorhome aire has opened which is only 4 miles from the centre of the city. You can get into the centre on a cycle path, or take the metro, bus or train. It has optional electrical hook-up, and is located in the Casco Histórico de Vallecas. That’s to the south-east of the centre, off the M-31, here: N40.370316, W3.641619 and gets great reviews on park4night.

Getting to Madrid by Motorhome

As shown on this map from about-spain.net, most of the motorways leading into Madrid are free. The city itself has a sort of Picasso-inspired mis-shaped dartboard of orbital and radial motorways covering it, which are again mostly toll-free. Some of the radial ones are charged but we avoided the lot by coming south on the A-1 and then taking the outer-most orbital, the M-50, to head around to the south of the city. We arrived on a Sunday and the traffic was very light (almost nothing) until we reached the A-4 (again free) which had some traffic but nothing much.

Bear in mind there are mountains north of Madrid which the motorways climb over, and which might be snow-bound in winter. We passed lots of snow ploughs and signs for several emergency parking areas, presumably for use when the motorway was impassable. Best check ahead before driving over these hills in the colder months folks.

Where to Stay in Madrid in Your Motorhome

This is the big question for most of us: where can we park which is secure, quiet enough to sleep and not so far from the city we’ll have grown a beard on the train or bus into the centre. We used the park4night.com database to look for options and found there’s a motorhome aire south of the city which had good (4 from 5 stars) reviews (N40.238402, W3.690751). The parking area’s been here at Pinto since 2014, charges €8 per 24 hours and has all the services except for electricity. There’s a train station a mile walk away, which heads directly into the centre of Madrid, an E. Lecerc supermarket and shopping centre opposite for supplies and diesel (which is the cheapest we’ve seen on this trip). There are a few trees on the aire for a bit of shade in summer.

Being a big city motorhome aire it’s not plush, we should point out. It’s separated from a motorway by a bank of earth, so there’s steady background noise 24 hours. It’s not been enough to bother either of us, and although we’re also next to a supermarket and car park we’ve had no trouble sleeping. In terms of security the area is lit, covered by CCTV and fenced, but there’s no guard and nothing to stop anyone from walking into the area. While we’ve been here in mid January there have been a handful of other motorhomes knocking about. It feels pretty secure, and is alongside a lovely park, but nothing like as secure as using a campsite with a manned reception.

Which brings me onto some other options. One reader told us they stayed at a campsite in Toledo and got the high speed train into Madrid. We also spotted that the train we’ve been using goes out to Aranjuez, which also has a campsite. That site is two miles from the Aranjuez train station and takes about 50 mins to reach the city, about 20 mins longer than the train from Pinto. Park4night.com also has a ton of car parks which are near metro or train stations, and friends told us they used one of these without issues. There’s also a campsite to the west of the city which is an hour by bus from Madrid, at Villaviciosa de Odón. So, plenty of options.

Getting Into Madrid From The Motorhome Aire at Pinto

It’s a mile walk from the motorhome aire here at Pinto to the train station. There are maps on the building at the entrance to the aire, or you can use maps.me (or another mapping app) on your phone to plot out the zig-zag route across the streets to the station, as shown below.

At the train station we took one look at the ticket machine before deciding it would be easier to go see the man at the ticket office. We started in Spanish but he quickly switched to English and asked how many days we planned to go to the city. We told him two days and he helpfully pointed out a card with ten journeys pre-loaded for €19.05 was cheaper than buying eight individual journeys at €2.60 each. Sorted. He gave us a single card which we had to pass back to each other when going through the barriers to get onto and off the station platforms. The ticket was checked by inspectors at one point who could see two people were travelling on it and they were happy. The line we used was C-3, and there were lots of displays showing which platform (vía) to use. While on the train, screens and announcements in Spanish and English told us which station we’d arrive at next.

The train took about 30 minutes as it stops at every station so never gets much above 50mph. It was very clean and comfortable, although we had to stand for parts of return journeys as we came back at rush hour. Signs at the station told us dogs were allowed on the trains but not at rush hour Mon-Fri, and they had to be less than 1.5m in length (we have no idea where they are measuring from and to!).

Once in Madrid you’ve a choice of stations to get off at: Puerta de Atocha is first and is near the Prado, while Puerta de Sol is next up and is right in the centre of the city.

Both days going into Madrid we got off the train at Puerta de Sol station. For the trip home we were close to Puerta de Atocha station, so thought we’d catch it from there. We walked into the station from the end closest to the city centre and found it was very plush, with palm trees in the middle of a huge atrium. The trains on the departure boards were all going long distance to the likes of Barcelona and Valencia. After asking at an information office, we were pointed further into the station to where the local trains run from. The local train company is renfe and things tend to be white and purple coloured. The long distance trains were on boards with Adif displayed on them and green in colour, so if the station is plush and green, keep walking until the carpet stops and you’ll find the local train platforms. If you are heading back to Pinto from the Puerta de Atocha you’ll need the C3 train to Aranjuez on platform 7 – it shares the platform with another train, so check the information boards or destination on the train itself.

Getting Around Madrid

We found Madrid to be a fairly compact city and simply walked around once we were in the centre. That said, we covered 5 or 6 miles each day, plus a couple of miles in Pinto to the train station and back. If you don’t want, or aren’t able to do that, Madrid has a metro system covering the city to get you around. The city also has lots of electric scooters for rent using smartphone apps, with various companies competing for you business including Lime, Eskay, Taxify, Scoot, Rideconga, Mobike, Flash, Ari, Tier, Alma and Wind (phew!). Finally there are loads of taxis riding around the city, white with a red line up the side, making me think of Red Stripe lager all day.

Things to See and Do in Madrid

Nah, I’ve only been in the city for two days so I’m no expert and I really can’t tell you what there is to see and do in the city. Once we’ve recovered from all the walking we did we’ll do another post with the places we personally visited and the food we ate, just to give some kind of flavour for the place. We’ve enjoyed our days here in Madrid and have found it a safe and clean place, a pretty easy and inexpensive capital city to visit by motorhome.

Cheers, Jay