UKC

Alright all,

Hoping the hive mind can help out. I'm in the preliminary stages of planning an escape from adulthood for a year or so round Europe/Turkey in a van. No particular destinations in mind as yet but I'm imagining going to all the usual sorts of places like C. Blanca, Font, Dolomites, Germany/Austria/Greece et al (I mean, why should I be original). 

The basic plan is to travel about, dirtbag it in a van a chunk of the time (yes, it has a toilet) and use campsites and costa de wotsits where necessary. Thinking maybe 1/3 of the time in dedicated camping areas. Mainly cooking for ourselves but with frills like eating out and drinks periodically each week.

I've got an idea of cost for certain areas like Northern Italy but other areas I've no idea about. Just hoping that someone who has done this sort of thing recently can help out with a rough idea of what they were budgeting per day/week/month so we know where our finances are at. I appreciate that budgets will vary wildly according to where/what you're doing  - just looking for rough numbers to start from.

t.i.a.

Mike

Assuming UK passports you may need to budget for visas.

https://www.gov.uk/travel-to-eu-schengen-area

In the late 2010s I was spending about £5k to £6k a year following the seasons from the south of Spain to the Alps and back, always cooking for myself and never staying on sites. I'd guess with the global rises in prices, you'd probably be looking at more like £10k per annum minimum spend, plus whatever you want to spend on eating/drinking out and campsites; that's obviously quite variable depending on your tastes.

Good shout. This part hasn't been planned for yet but was thinking to potentially bail into places like Turkey/Romania/Bulgaria outside the Schengen area if over that way and Morocco over to the west. Just getting a visa would undoubtedly simpler and mean we aren't tied to any country because we can't re-enter the Schengen zone. 

Ace, this is the sort of info I was hoping for. Nice one.

In 2012 I took off for a year around Europe in a motorhome.  Budget around £1k would be my advice. 

Sorry chap, is that 1k per month? I'd love to think we could do a year on that but it's probably optimistic 🤣 

We are on a trip like that at the moment 😁 We're on day 91 and we have only spent £2000 so far, not including the tunnel to get to France, we cook in the van. Pretty much all the time, with the occasional ice-cream or cake if we are in a big town. 30 days of that were in Romania which is very cheap, obviously if you spend more time in places like Switzerland the cost will be higher. We mostly wild camp and use Aires, we've only used campsites for 5 nights, fuel is our biggest outlay as we have not stayed in one place for more than 2/3 nights this time. 

I saw a recent FB post in a motorhome group where a couple travelled from UK through France, to Spain, and back to UK over 5 or 6 weeks in a motorhome. The total costs were about £45 per day including travel, petrol costs and a few meals out, they didn't use toll roads, stayed on the free sites / Aires etc. 

This makes me want to go climbing! 

For £45 per day I think that must be with quite a few meals out, or a very uneconomical van. 

sounds like a bargain so far then. I'm not sure we'd be away from sites as much as that as the o/h likes a little luxury periodically but it's good to know it can be done well on the cheap if necessary.  What's the climbing like in Romania incidentally? Not really seen much info out there on it but looks like a very interesting country.

We didn't do any climbing, only via ferrata, we did quite a bit of hiking, it's a fantastic country lots of wilderness, we manged to see wild  bears 😎 the people are very friendly and it's moved to the top of our favourite countries list 😀 

Ha yes. Bleary eyed when I typed. £1K Per month. 

As i read this a few day ago i went and found the FB post to recheck it, they actually spent 45 euros per day (not GB pounds). Travelled 2800km across France, and spent 677 euros on fuel. 148 euros on eating out. 224 on food shopping etc. A few other items are listed in their expenses see the FB post linked below. Total 1190 euros over 26 days.

Note that Diesel isn't cheap in France at the moment. 

https://m.facebook.com/groups/vanlife.uk/permalink/3638495679766523/