Overwintering in a motorhome in Southern Europe: anyone done it?

[pattihews]

Just that really. Trying to plan for retirement in a year or two. We've had a camper van for years (so we're familiar with vanning for a fortnight or so) and are hoping to upgrade to a smallish motorhome. One of the things we're considering do is going to Southern Europe for a month or two over the winter and we've been weighing up the AirBnB option versus living in a motorhome. We stayed in a house in Portugal in March last year and met a few motorhome travellers in the local bar. I got the impression that it wasn't quite the relaxing experience that one might imagine. One man's wife had got bored and flown home. Others had had difficult experiences with locals when trying to find places to park up or had had their vans broken into.

Has anyone here done it?

I'd go to a specialist website.

I have never done it, but I'm originally from Portugal and winters can be wet and cold, even down south.

Yep we did. Pre-Brexit. During my Mat leave. 5 months in Spain/ Portugal.

We never stayed anywhere more than 5 nights. We only paid for an overnight once. We paid to fill up our fresh water tank once. It was brilliant for a touring trip. I understand those that typically winter will stay predominantly in one spot. There are numerous long term stay aires in Southern Spain if that floats your boat. Seems a bit daft though for 'only a month or two' there's just too much to see and do. Spain is an utterly stunning country.

You'll need to consider your gas bottles. If you've not done longer trips you won't necessarily know that you can exchange British bottles abroad. Each country has its own fitting/ bottle. That's easily circumvented. We had either gas-lo or gas-it fitted. One was much cheaper! We went for that system! We only had one bottle done (we carry two 7kg). Basically we can fill it up at any petrol station which does LPG. Each country has its own fitting for the hose - but these were all supplied when we had the system fitted. It's dead easy, you just fill it up at a pump. It is actually well worth the investment as it'll pay for itself pretty quickly. Paying for LPG at the pump is waaay cheaper than the cost of exchanging bottles.

There are loads of groups on Facebook worth joining for advice on wintering. Unless one of you has EU citizenship you'll also be limited to 90 days. Although there are ways round it - eg head over to Morocco for 90 days. It's only a short ferry ride from southern Spain and sounds equally fab for motorhoming.

That should read can't exchange GB gas bottles abroad!