• Download an app that will give you all the information you need about campervan services throughout the trip. We used the app called Park4night and it was honestly a lifesaver. Not only does it tell you where all the campsites are, but it also tells you where you can find laundry services, all parking areas, waste disposal and services to fill your water tank in the case of vans with toilets and showers and especially if you do wild camping, this will be invaluable. This app is also hugely convenient to help you to pre plan your trip too, you can decide which places you will stay each night rather than just leaving it to chance if you are the less spontaneous type. Each service will have lots of details and reviews from others who visited and is very useful to help you decide on your overnight stays. We also suggest you sign up as members, it won’t cost you anything and it will mean you have access to all sites and this will be handy. Think about some important things you need to pack or have for your trip. There are some things that can make your life a lot easier if you had them with you.

• Good phone Internet is key as you will be relying on Google maps like a newborn relies on their mum! (We highly recommend using google maps over GPS systems, its wayyyy simpler and more convenient). No use having good internet if you run out of battery, so stock up on your battery life, we suggest a extra phone, a battery pack both fully charged and a cigarette USB charger (don’t assume you will find charging devices in the van). Charging becomes more of a problem in the wild camping scenario where you will not be hooked up to electricity at camping sites. One other very useful gadget is the phone holder that you will hook up in the ac vents for comfort of the driver and the copilot who will be spared from holding the phone up for the driver for 4 hour drives…. something small but another great one to have if this is not provided in the van you are renting.

• Read about campervan road tripping in that specific country you will travel to You should be able to find blog posts written by travelers with campervan itineraries and tips for that specific road trip. I recommend you try find some to be more prepared for the kind of campervan experience you will have in that country, which by the way, can also vary by region and which will definitely vary by country. For example, in our Portugal road trip the experience in the North is quite different to the Algarve area in the south – much more campervan restricted areas in the Algarve. This can impact your plans and you may need to take certain country specific details into consideration when planning your trip. Of course we would highly recommended you read about any laws / rules on campervan use in the specific country and be sure to use official or trusted sources so you will have accurate information. Info on blogs can be outdated. Consider extra charges on this kind of trip

• We had to pay a few extra charges that we didn’t necessarily consider when budgeting and planning. Depending on how far you go, you will have to pay quite a few tolls. If you stay at camping sites each night, of course, there will be those costs. If you do more of the wild camping, depending on how campervan friendly the country is, you may find quite a few pitstops for caravan services – filling and emptying of waste. You may still need to pay for these services of filling the water tank and emptying the waste water. Luckily in Portugal we had lots of these sites all along that could be used for free which was awesome (these are also conveniently indicated on the park4night app)

On the trip:

• Ask, ask and ask – know your van! Its important you ask all the questions you need to the company / campervan owner who is renting you the van. Make sure you are comfortable with the functionality and how to operate everything in the van. Our experience was that they didn’t give us some useful information we would have benefited from knowing, especially being the first time using a campervan you just wouldn’t have the experience to know certain things. For example, we didn’t consider that the plugs will only work if you are plugged in to electricity, so no electrical devices can be used until you are hooked up at a camping site (totally dumb in hindsight dahhh!) So then you would want to ask them to point out USB charging capability in the van. We only had one and the cigarette port was not working so we couldn’t use our cigarette charger… this caused us some struggles with phone / device charging since we took the wild camping approach. Needless to say, we were the annoying tourists charging our phone at every outlet and the ones sneaking around the restaurants to make sure that the restaurant we chose had plugs by our table. TripAdvisor ratings were not the only criteria for us on this trip when choosing restaurants! Another silly thing was that I couldn’t find the showerhead. Luckily Thibaud knew that one, the sink shower head extended to become our shower head… I didn’t hear the end of that one, also good to know where the gas tank is and how to change it if it runs out. Ask about the tolls system, is it automatic? Have the details of the contact handy to ask any questions throughout the trip, we had many! Also ask for some useful numbers of breakdown services and other useful contacts to have. Another very important detail to ask is the van measurements. Very important to know the length, width and especially the height of the van so you don’t end up scraping off the bathroom skylight in the Lidl carpark like we did….. that was a stressful one. We went to have that temporarily fixed and the service center had already had a few other accidents that morning… the one just before us filled the water tank with fuel instead of the fuel tank! These can be the costs of your inexperience so don’t be shy to ask.

Others:

• Don’t try and see everything, better to cover less and see the places better and without the pressure of a very long list of locations to visit and even if you are a planner kind of traveler allow some spontaneity and flexibility in your plan so you can stay more or less depending on whether you like that overnight stay.
• Buying the right amount of food not to waste.
• Planning for the cleaning of the van afterwards.

We hope this was useful! Happy road tripping!