The Best Motorhome Apps

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Here we’ve rounded up and categorised the very best motorhome apps to make planning and undertaking epic campervan road trips an absolute breeze.

What are your favourite apps and what wouldn’t you touch with a barge pole? Let us know in the comments at the end. 

The rest of our planning mini series:

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    The best motorhome apps for finding campsites, free and/or wild parkups and facilities

    park4night

    What is it:

    Surely the boss of campervan and motorhome apps. If you’ve not heard of this app then you need to get onto it straight way.

    It’s a massive directory of wild spots, campsites, free parkups and motorhome facilities across the UK and continental Europe. All reviews and helpful photos of parkups are done by fellow explorers so you know what to expect.

    How much does it cost:

    You can use it for free or pay £9.99 per year to help the developers maintain it. Paid membership also allows you to download the entire directory for offline use (extremely useful for when you’re exploring in a rural area with little or no internet reception) and save parkups to a favourites list for use in the future.

    Top Tip:

    Not just for overnighting we regularly use it to find daytime parking spots near to places where parking and driving a large vehicle would be difficult – i.e. old towns and villages with narrow and winding streets.

     

     

    What is it:

    A similar to concept to park4night so it probably comes down to personal preference, and we imagine, which one you found and started using first. Our preference is Park4Night but is purely that, a preference. 

    How much does it cost:

    The website is free to use or you can pay a yearly fee of £5.99 to use the app and get the data offline. 

    Top Tip:

    If you’ve already subscribed to Park4Night or another similar service then it’s probably not worthwhile paying for the app. 

    However if you haven’t yet committed to any other app then you can use the search for sites app for a free trial period (3 days at time of writing) to see if you like it. 

    Search For Sites also has a dedicated Facebook Group for support and the opportunities to ask the community questions about a site or parkup or to ask for recommendations. 

    What is it:

    Once again it is a similar concept to Park4Night and Search For Sites and probably comes down to personal preference. 

    Not so widely used in the UK so subsequently not as many stopovers listed – but it is fairly popular on mainland Europe and the USA so if you’ll be touring overseas then probably worth downloading and using. 

    How much does it cost:

    Free. Totally Free. However you can donate to help the dev team out if you use it regularly and fancy showing your appreciation. 

    Top Tip:

    You can download up to 2000 stopovers for offline use in a variety of formats – a great backup option for exploring off the beaten track. 

    What is it:

    A great alternative to Park4Night. Loads of stopovers and motorhome facilities listed. We’re yet to really use this app too much as it is very similar to Park4Night but we’ll definitely give it a proper go in the near future and compare our experience to using Park4Night.

    How much does it cost:

    Free to use basic functionality, or £5.99 a year for a pro membership – the usual features available with a pro membership – download for offline use, enhanced search and filter and the ability to save your favourite stopovers to a convenient list for future reference. 

    Top Tip:

    Use the search and filter functionality to look for things like waste disposal and fill up points. 

    google maps

    What is it:

    It’s Google Maps – we’re sure you know what it is.

    How much does it cost:

    Free, free and free. Zero pounds sterling. 

    Top Tip:

    Make sure you use all of the functionality that Google Maps provides. It is not purely a navigation system.

    • Save your favourite parkups
    • Search for cafes, restaurants, fuel and things to do
    • Leave reviews for other users
    • Read reviews from other users
    • Save things you want to go back and do because you didn’t have enough time
    • Save recommendations for future use or for family and friends 
    • Add notes to places you visited (i.e lovely pub but the landlord smelt of old vinegar)

    What is it:

    An online version of BritStops basically. Free stopovers, usually pub car parks where you are  encouraged to spend a little on the premises.

    So if a print based catalog is a little too old fashioned for you then check this site out for a whole host of pub stopovers listed online

    How much does it cost:

    £15 per year

    Top Tip:

    Our general rule of thumb for pub stopovers is to spend a minimum of half of what we’d normally spend on a campsite. 

    Although sometimes (more often than not) we’ll end up spending way more as we’ll ‘accidentally’ order a full meal and then spend the evening chatting with locals as the bar. A great way to find the hidden gems of a local area. 

    What is it:

    It finds you public toilets. Pretty simple right. Not only that but it’ll let you know when they are open, if they have disabled toilets, if there are showers available and how much the toilets cost.

    How much does it cost:

    Nada, nicht, nothing!

    Top Tip:

    Toilet getting worringly full? Stop using it and start using public services along your route until you can find a suitable place to empty your toilet. 

    Starting to smell like your Great Aunt Meredith? Find a public toilet with showers and get yourself feeling fresh!

    Facebook

    What is it:

    Little point in explaining what Facebook is…

    How much does it cost:

    Free

    Top Tip:

    Join relevant groups for advice and a community of like minded people. Get recommendations for specific problems you have, find destination inspiration or anything you else you can think of. 

    Are you a full time vanlifer – Vanlife UK is good starting point. A casual motorhome or campervan’er – Motorhome Happiness is a good one, or perhaps you’re planning a trip to continental Europe – get yourself signed up to European Touring and for a large, more generic campervan and motorhome group try Motorhome and Campervans.

    The best motorhome apps for navigation

    Google Maps

    Our default go to for directions. Some people prefer dedicated satnavs, especially when driving larger vans, but for us, google maps works just fine and avoids the cost of buying a satnav.

    Mappy

    The great bonus of Mappy is that if you drive a larger van you can put in your weight and dimensions and it’ll try to find you the best route for your van. 

    Via Michelin

    This is our go to for European road trips. The very best feature on this app is that you can use it to work out an estimate (fairly accurately) of any tolls on your route – very handy for traversing through France. 

    You can also enter your vehicle details and it will estimate your fuel costs.

    So while we rarely actually use it to navigate us along, it has a big part to play in route planning. 

    The best motorhome apps for finding inspiration and places to visit

    Facebook

    As previously mentioned the best way to use Facebook for anything van related is to get yourself into as many relevant groups as possible. 

    That way you can search for previous entries to see what people have been up to, or directly ask for inspiration – for example “whose been to the Auvergne region of France, what was it like for campervans. Any must sees and anything specific we need to know?”

    Some groups to get you started:

    Motorhome Happiness

    Motorhome and Campervans UK

    Motorhome & Campervan UK Owners Advice

    Motorhome Adventures

    European Touring Caravan, Campervan and Camping Friends

    In addition to groups you have pages you can follow as well, to get you started:

    The Weekend Warriors (great, really great page!!)

    The Gap Decaders

    Wandering Bird

     
     

    Instagram

    Instagram is a treasure trove of inspiration for finding places to visit and things to do. Find van-lifers or travel channels that align with your sort of travel and have a look back through their feeds at places they’ve visited and what they got up to. 

    Some of our favourites:

    The Weekend Warriors (another really awesome account…)

    Kinging It

    The Expawers

    Overlanding Sophia

    Jits Into The Sunset

    JohnMandyOnTour

    Pinterest

    If you’re not on pinterest then you really should be. 

    Go ahead and type in “motorhome trip to …” or “… road trip” to the search bar and see what comes up – there should be a plethora of ideas and itineraries.

    Oh, also check out our pinterest account whilst your at it!

    YouTube

    YouTube is another invaluable resource and filled with vanlifers, you get information on places to go and what to do and they are also very entertaining. 

    One of our favourite times of the week is a Sunday evening as we normally get treated to new episodes from Kinging-it, Overlanding Sophia and The Expawers

    Eamon & Bec have a huge backlog of vanlife films covering everywhere from the States, to the UK, Europe and Morocco – well worth checking out. 

    They don’t publish as regularly as some of the other vanlifers but check out Jits Into The Sunset’s channel as well for some beautifully shot films across Ireland, Scotland and mainland Europe (there’s even a crossover with Jits and Overlanding Sophia (see below) – how cool is that!)

    Culture Trip

    For a less social media-ey resource we often turn to Culture Trip as well. 

    This website is filled to the brim with travel articles from across the globe – spend ten minutes browsing on here and there will be 15 new places on your motorhome travel bucket list. 

    The best motorhome apps for finding hikes, mountain bike routes and cycle routes

    All Trails is a really great app for finding awesome hikes. You can filter by area, length, rating difficulty and more. Most hikes have plenty of photos and user reviews for you to decide if that hike/walk is for you. 

    It is especially good if you are a dog owner (check out our tips for road tripping  with a dog). 

    The map is extremely easy to read, and in our opinion it’s the best hiking app purely because its so easy to see any upcoming roads (in relation to where you are courtesy of a GPS track) that you’ll need to cross so that you can put your dog safely back on the lead. 

    Not so good for road cycling and there are a few trails around for mountain biking – but Komoot is probably the better choice for these two activities. 

    The basic version is free to use or you can pay £18 per year for offline use – well worth it in our opinion. £18 is nothing for the convenience of using the app in the middle of nowhere with no 4G signal (note – you’ll still require GPS signal but we’ve never been anywhere in the UK or Europe where GPS has failed us).

    Komoot has wonderfully curated lists of activities for you to browse to find what’s up your street really easily. 

    Similar to All Trails you’ll be able to filter and search, and each trail will have plenty of user reviews and photos for you to check out. 

    At a basic level Komoot is free, but has several pricing tiers for more data and functionality. The best value by far is ‘The World’ package priced at $29.99 – so about £23. 

    Other Useful Motorhome Apps

    Rain Radar

    Very short term forecast but pretty damn accurate. We use this to check if it’s going to rain in the next 30 minutes if we want to quickly shoot out somewhere on foot. This app has saved us from numerous soakings.

    Compass

    Never used it, but it just feels right to have it installed… (so no, not really essential or useful but we thought we’d include it – not sure why now…)

    Spotify

    Get your tunes on – no road trip is complete without a ridiculous sound track.

    Google Translate

    My Italian is not so good, so trying to ask an Italian anything can prove a little troublesome. 

    Enter Google Translate. 

    Massively improved over the last few years it now allows us to hold a somewhat broken but perfectly functional conversation with almost anyone speaking in any language.

    The only time it’s failed us was when the Gendarmes were at the van at 11pm… Typical! But that is a story for another day.

    You can translate using text or voice input – an invaluable tool for travelling anywhere where you can’t speak the language very well. 

    However this does not replace the good manners that is to try and learn some basic phrases of the native language before travelling anywhere -it’s just polite to try. 

    Summary

    All the very best apps rounded up in one place just for you – how handy. 

    If you’re new to Motorhomes and Campervans then we have an article dedicated just for you – check it out.

    So now, no more excuses not to get after it – Go Explore!

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