Casual One-night Stops on English South Coast?

2CV67 · May 2, 2016

We have spent 3 seasons happily wandering in Europe.
236 nights in 208 different spots in 15 countries, largely found via GPS POI's downloaded from Campingcar-infos.com or found in the Camperstop handbook.
NEVER booked or pre-planned, usually within 15 minutes of wherever we were when we decided to stop for the night & mostly free.

We just started wondering about a first little trip to UK.
Visiting friends in Cornwall, so looking for a few overnight-stop places between Dover & Falmouth.

Panic! - neither CCI nor Camperstop seem to show any spots at all.
CCI has 185 aires for the whole of GB compared with 8433 for France...

How do you guys manage?

Can we hope to find casual stopping points in that part of the country?
What kind of places can we legally & safely consider?

Thanks for any encouraging answers!

Hotel California · May 2, 2016

Been only once in the UK and did one freecamp other days campings.
Guess they usually use campsites and britstops in the UK....and use spots they know to freecamp but think they are all in the midlle of nowhere ( witch is ok!)
In your own country it is convienient ....but for foreingers there's always a bit a fear of things going wrong and police showing up...
France is one big camperspot!

GrannyJen · May 2, 2016

Britstops are useful.

Which way are you travelling?

Look up worthing on the map, south coast west of Brighton, follow the coast west of Worthing and goring gap is just one big wild camp stopover. on the other hand, just keep going west for about 7km's and you can park in my drive if I am home

WelshGas · May 2, 2016

Where am I allowed to wild camp in the British Isles?
Strictly, all land in England and Wales is owned so you must gain permission before camping. However, wild camping within reasonable limits is often tolerated in many upland and remote areas, particularly in Snowdonia and the Lake District.

One exception is Dartmoor, where camping is allowed for up to two consecutive nights in the same spot or for longer in a permitted camping area, except within 100 metres of a public road or in any enclosure or other restricted area.

Wild camping in Scotland was made legal in 2005 after a campaign by groups such as the Ramblers. You can camp wild on hill land but should respect any nearby dwellings or livestock. The exception is the east part of Loch Lomonds National Park, where wild camping (and alcohol) was banned in 2010 due to antisocial behaviour such as noise, littering and vandalism, with a consultation held in 2012 to discuss extending the ban to four islands in the area.

In Ireland, wild camping is not strictly legal but is tolerated in many upland and remote areas, and the Northern Ireland Forestry Service issues camping permits at some of its sites.

larrylamb · May 2, 2016

If you are on Facebook join the "campervan overnight parking" group, lots of friendly advice and ideas.

MattBW · May 3, 2016

Sadly the UK is not as accomodating as France with regards to campervans and stopping places. We are a bit slow to catch on it seems but also don't have as much space. It is starting however.

Britstops can be good but they are often very basic and the carpark of a business. Wild camping is doable but as above not technically legal without permission. I also find the British have a habit of honking car horns at a parked wildcamping campervan at night I can only guess this is because some people are jerks.

We found a cheap way to camp but with basic facilities (shower, toilet etc) was via the affiliated sites from Camping and Caravan club. About £7-£9 a night and usually a very small site attached to a farm or similar. basic. Some of their other sites can be beautiful (Monkton Wylde for example) and still less than £15 a night. Obviously membership is required for CC&C and if its a short trip it may not be worth the expense. Their app has a lot of these sites which can be looked up on a phone. We have always found a affiliate site within 10 miles of anywhere we wanted to stay often at short notice or no notice. A few times we just turned up.

Sp0_0k · May 3, 2016

2CV67 said:
largely found via GPS POI's downloaded from Campingcar-infos.com

Can you give more details on importing pois and how it works? Website is all in french.
I've found a nice app with all the EU campings pois, it is just 3$ app.

WelshGas · May 3, 2016

Sp0_0k said:
Can you give more details on importing pois and how it works? Website is all in french.
I've found a nice app with all the EU campings pois, it is just 3$ app.

I can tell you how to do it for the RNS 510 satnav but for the new type I suggest the information is probably in the Handbook.

Here are the POI files from that site in .asci and TomTom format.

http://campingcar-infos.com/Francais/recherche.php

2CV67 · May 6, 2016

Sp0_0k said:
Can you give more details on importing pois and how it works? Website is all in french.

This is how I do it for my TomTom GPS - not sure how it works for built-in & other systems:

Start on this page
http://www.campingcar-infos.com/Francais/recherche.php

To get POIs for all countries in one go:

Click on the TomTom icon under "Téléchargement GPS de toutes les aires (regroupe l'ensemble des pays ci-dessous)" - MY RED ARROW

This allows you to download & save the Aires_CCinfos_totales_ov2.zip file with all the data.

When you unzip that file, you find:

Where:
AA_CCI.bmp is the icon for Autoroute Aires
AA_CCI.ov2 is the data for Autoroute Aires
AC-CCI....Aires in Campsites
ACF_CCI...Aires in Campsites on Farms
ACS_CCI...Services possible on Campsites
APCC...Aires reserved for Campervans wihtout Services
AP...Carparks tolerating Campervans in daytime
APN...Carparks tolerating Campervans day & night
AS...Services only
ASN...Services tolerating overnight stays
ATOTALES...All of the above
installation.pdf...instructions in French

You then need to introduce whichever of the above you want, into your GPS.
You could be tempted to try "ATOTALES" but in that case, all the different Aires will have the same Icon on the GPS, which I find useless, so I load each of the .bmp & .ov2 files EXCEPT the "TOTALES" ones, one by one, into my TomTom.

That's it!
Just remember to remove & replace with latest data every year or so.

CYCLOPATH · May 7, 2016

This link shows hundreds of places.....http://www.nomadgb.co.uk/
Some are just laybyes that I wouldn't dream of stopping in , as noisy roads and I feel less secure on a busy road for some reason