I am not a fan of lounging by a pool in the heat, but the last few years I have braved driving on the continent to visit relatives posted out there.
It was wonderful. Glorious. Not too hot (except for a few days) lovely food, great people, lots of adventures. Cheap to stay places, easy to travel. We went all over France, Italy and Switzerland and had a blast.
So much less hassle than the UK. No snooty parking where the camper wasn’t allowed, lots of free stopovers in lovely little towns with water and waste facilities. Lovely roads, hardly any traffic. Lots to see and do from Pompeii to Disneyland. I enjoyed it immensely. And not having to plan for rain constantly was very relaxing. I don’t think I even took a sweatshirt out with me once. Being able to try out and bring home lots of local produce, but also feed my fussy kid easily was wonderful. I bought huge cans of olive oil, cases of wine and lovely cheeses.
I’ve been very lucky, I have lots of flexibility and I can (usually) go away a few times. It’s not very expensive if you’re using free stops; using and cooking local food with occasional meals out and doing lots of free activities. But in the UK, a lot of that infrastructure doesn’t exist (there is talk of the national trust doing low cost park ups, but it’s been talk for two years). Campsites are ludicrously expensive and campers are simply not welcome in many places, as they are viewed as dirty, messy and scrounging and there are no waste and water facilities outside of paid sites. The most I ever paid for an aire was 10 euros, and that was with electric, showers, shop, toilets, laundry etc. in the UK in high season a campsite with those facilities would be around £40 a night. You can pay more for campsites abroad (not usually that much though) but they will usually have restaurants, pools and leisure facilities for that sort of price.
Campsites in the UK are also built for caravanning. They are usually miles from anywhere. On the continent there is a whole culture of motorhoming where you can park locally and stay near where you want to go, or at pretty places, or working farms or vineyards for nothing or next to nothing. And they aren’t full of rubbish or yobbish behaviour as campsites in the uk can be. It was much nicer and I wish I’d done it years ago. Camping is a great deal more pleasant in Europe. You can live outside.
I love the UK, and I have travelled a lot here, and look forward to travelling more. There’s nowhere I’d rather live. But Europe was a vastly different and in many ways superior way to motorhome across.
A free aire in Reims, France. A couple of minutes walk outside of the village with a bakery, couple of cafes and a shop. It’s a fairly standard stopover. (I think it only had water). Many are corners of the town car park, which are not so pretty, but usually have waste water dumps and often paid electric for a few pounds.