Planning a trip by camper is like starting to travel already, do you agree?
We usually start months earlier to think about our destination for the summer, even if only for a week off:
- Monica thinks about her destination to ride a motorbike
- Angela thinks about the ideal one to ride a camper with her trusted dog friends
Of course, you too will be aware that the camper and motorbike are synonymous with freedom, and therefore we would want to never organize anything before, but some information and landmarks of the areas we would like to visit seem fundamental.
With this in mind, we have drawn up a series of suggestions, the ones we use to organize ourselves when we think about a trip: sites, FB pages and Apps.
Planning a trip by camper: gathering information
Years ago to organize ourselves we mainly used to consult the sector magazines, which for some time have offered travel ideas and itineraries, some specialized magazines on foreign tourism, guides and of course the road maps of the various countries, and the much consumed and beloved Road Altanti.
Today, on the other hand, the online magazines and sites of the various traveler bloggers, or the FB pages of regions and travels, are always there, fast and easy to consult, just a click away.
Some bloggers, even if they are not campers, have a look at the trip and the visit closest to us, and from them maybe we can take the cue for the area to go to. In addition, the official sites of the region that we would like to visit give us more information, such as events, festivals, museums or castles. If we think of a site like Visit Berlin, you can easily plan your stay and visit.
In addition, there are specific guide sites for campers and non-motorhomers who for years have been publishing extremely valuable and important material on a trip, such as friends of:
- Rough Guide to discover the cultural and artistic side of destinations
- The Chat @ Win guides for travelers who return to visit an already known destination and for those who want to get out of the usual tourist routes.
- Lonely Planet Italy and other states
Angela then, loving the stop at the producers, has long been enrolled in the France Passion circuit and from them she also takes the ideas for the stop in France.
Once all this information has been collected, it is easy to start planning a trip by camper.
Obviously we usually find a compromise between the reality of an itinerary studied in detail and the desire to wander around in total freedom and divert at the first opportunity.
For this reason, we prepare the most detailed itinerary with Google Maps, our old road map. Here they mark the main stages and roads with the average daily distances.
Plan a trip with the Apps
And planning can be fun at this point. There are many paid or non-paid apps that can be downloaded and used; technology today provides us with many means to better organize and plan a trip by camper, car, motorcycle or on foot. Here we point out the ones we liked the most.
- CoPilot is very useful because it offers world-class map technology, and is paid at a cost of € 29.99 for 12 months for the camper and there is also the car and truck version. Very convenient because it calculates the itinerary based on the actual size of either the caravan or the camper.
Then there are the Apps where you can interact by leaving reviews, and proposing personal itineraries.
- Campercontact, available online and with the free or paid App, can be downloaded for satellite; it is updated on 70 countries and you can also find unusual stops. At a cost of € 5.99 per year you can have the full version.
- Caramaps, also available online and with the App; it is comfortable and well structured for any type of stop: from the campsite to the rest area, to the parking lot at the gas station. It also offers a lot of other information. You can become a guest to welcome campers and has a blog where you can find many travel proposals.
- Park4night is very simple to consult, like others it can be used for free or for a fee. Its peculiarity lies in very often proposing places to stop free. Once registered in the free version you can add stops, reviews and photos. The paid version provides for the cost of € 9.99 to download the entire database of stops on your device.
And to plan a trip to Italy we have the possibility to use the camper apps created for campers. We are talking to you about our friends of:
- Camperstop: an application with more than 11,000 verified motorhome parking areas in 27 European countries
A must-have for any motorhome trip! The Camperstop-App makes it easy to find motorhome stops and contains up-to-date and detailed information, pictures and reviews of other motorhomes. With detailed information and reviews from others, find out if the stopover meets your overnight needs. It is paid and costs € 5.49 per year.
- Moovit: deals with mobility, and helps to navigate the public transport networks of large cities, even abroad. It also helps to understand if the camper area or the campsite is well connected to the city. Moovit, the free multilingual app is available for Android and iOS, reports maps and timetables of buses, metro and trams in over 2,200 cities around the world. As if that were not enough, it will guide you to the nearest stop step by step, with notifications when it is time to get off the vehicle, at the stop chosen as a favorite or interesting place. It also proposes where to find bike-sharing at the stops, and even connections with cycle paths and possibly on which vehicles you can load the bike.
Our personal conclusions
So far we have proposed the ones we normally consult, but obviously there are also others not indicated here and equally useful.
However, for us the support of one of our notebooks remains equally valid in which to organize visits, excursions, stops for taste and much more.
Important note: before planning a trip in a camper, remember that we must also think about our camper from the point of view of maintenance, accommodation work and special cleaning, and for this reason many of our colleagues can help you with the mechanics and interiors.
