Europe GPS POI Files for Autoroute Aires, Wild Camping & Services

Our POI data in Autoroute

We have literally been inundated with requests for our Autoroute Data File and we apologise in advance if we haven't been able to get back to you with a link.

This information is now out of date. For the most recent version, please see this post here:

http://www.europebycamper.com/2013/12/2014-autoroute-motorhome-aire-campsite.html

We have been working to both collate and check our information and are pleased to be able to provide you with our first release which we believe to be as accurate as possible for now.

We have created two files, one which contains just our information and one which contains our information plus all of the information we used to help us along the way, the latter of which is available further down this page.

Our 2011-2012 Trip Information - 212 POI's

Our POI data in Google Maps

Our trip information contains a detailed description of the location, the co-ordinates, the cost, if we were able to obtain free Wifi and if it was an aire, wild camping or even a campsite.

The best way to quickly view all of our information is to check out our Google Map (click) from which you can download a Google Earth KML file from the left hand side should you so wish.

This information is hosted on Google Docs and you will need to press 'download the original document' in order to download the information. Don't right click, click the links and choose 'download'.

Download in Autoroute 2011 Format
Download in Autoroute 2010 Format
Download in CSV Format

Our Full Autoroute Datafile Database

The original incantation of this file is credited by Ryan from Do Your Dream and we have added our own information to this and redrawn the icons so that they are smaller and can fit more on.

We have provided the following information in this file:

EuropeByCamper POI's - 212
Full European McDonalds Location (for Wifi!) - 5,761
Full European Lidl Locations - 9,615
Womo Wild Camping Locations - 12,482
Camping Car Info Aire Locations - 12,200
Bord Atlas Aire Locations - 5,624
LPG Filling Stations - 20,540
ACSI Campsite Locations - 2,301

Because these files are a bit larger there is a slightly different procedure for downloading them. After you click the link below, within Google Docs, you just select FILE and then DOWNLOAD. Once downloaded you can extract the ZIP file and access the co-ordinates. Don't right click and Save As!

Click for Microsoft Autoroute 2011

Click for Microsoft Autoroute 2010 



Don't have Microsoft Autoroute?

You can purchase a copy from Amazon for £35.95* without a GPS receiver and £73.40 with a GPS receiver*.

*EuropeByCamper receives a small commission from Amazon for these items. To visit Amazon without earning us a commission click here.

Touring Europe for a Year - What does it cost?

Just some of the receipts we
accumulated!

One of the most popular questions about travelling Europe we get asked is how much does it cost. We've decided that in the interest in helping others we'll publish our detailed trip statistics to show you how we did. We did this trip on what we perceived to be a tight budget - perhaps if you are retired then you'll want to do more or if you have more time you will want to do less miles, but with hindsight there is very little we would have changed about our trip. Money management was crucial. Because of our budget constraints we carefully monitored and recorded all of our expenditure to ensure that we weren't over budget.

First, some statistics from our trip!

We travelled 23,044 miles over a period of 334 days from 7^th April 2011 until 6^th March 2012. We passed through 21 countries (stopping in 18) consuming 3,805 litres of Diesel from 62 fuel stations and 280 litres of LPG Gas. We paid 19 road tolls, 14 ferries, 5 vignettes and 4 tunnels.

We 'Wild Camped' for 219 nights (66%), stayed on Aires or other recognised motorhome parking areas for 45 nights (14%) and stayed on camp sites for 70 nights (21% with 29 of those nights being in Morocco).

Food wise we visited 115 supermarkets or other food shops and ate out for usually for lunch but sometimes for tea 101 times.

Our average miles per day were 78 miles and our mode fuel consumption (taking into account number of miles travelled between the calculations and averaging that out) was 33.4MPG.

Adam drove for 170 days (80% of the driving) while Sophie drove for 19 days (10%) and we shared the driving on a further 20 days (10%). There were 123 days (36%) where we didn’t drive anywhere at all.

The maximum number of miles we drove in a day was 372 on the first day of our trip getting from Calais to Dummerlolhausen. The only other day where we exceeded 300 miles was Asiliah to Marrakesh in Morocco (365 miles). The minimum number of miles we did in a day was 2 miles (leaving one place and arriving to stay at another) from Aghios Konstantinon to Gytheio in Greece.

With views like this available for free why pay to stay on a camp site?

Totals

Ok, so enough beating about the bush! What was our grand total?

£9,570.19 or £28.83 per day

Or in other words, two people, a little over 11 months full board for £14.41 per person, per day. This is how we broke down and recorded our spending:

Fuel (42%)We always tried to fill up in the cheaper country.

Food (26%): Food bought from a supermarket / shop. Includes Wine / Beer but not eating out.

LPG (2%): Our gas for cooking, heating and running the fridge when not on sites.
Transport (11%): Tolls, Vignettes, Ferry’s, Bridges, Public Transport & Parking when not overnighting.
EO&E (14%): Eating (and drinking) Out and Entertainment / Entry fees.  Also includes personal items such as clothes, shoes, laundry etc.
Overnight (5%): Cost of sites, aires or parking overnight where a cost applied.

Where the money went, 42% of our expenditure was on Diesel.

What is not included?

Items which we viewed as being outside of our living costs which are: Vehicle Insurance (£500), Vehicle Road Tax (£195), Travel Insurance (£200), Mobile Phone / 3G Internet (£180). We also didn’t include our ‘side trip’ to St Petersburg (£500) as we left the van in Helsinki and felt it would unfairly skew the results. 

Comparing Countries
In the below table we have broken down our expenditure for all of the 18 countries that we stayed in. The biggest factor influencing costs was if we stayed on a camp site or not, which made expensive countries like Norway (where we only spent £2.78 a day on food over 4 weeks, but spent £0 on campsites) appear comparative to Latvia, where we opted to stay on camp sites because of a lack of wild camping opportunities. All of the figures below are laid bare for you to view and dissect and are of course only representative of what we chose to do on this trip and not necessarily of that country as a whole!

Click to enlarge and view a clearer version

So what's our strategy on keeping costs down? 

Our next blog post, Europe on a Budget will be published shortly and a link will appear here!

Check out the April Edition of Motorhome Monthly!

Check out this months edition of Motorhome Monthly, we're taking over 11 pages (54-65) with our travels through Sweden and Norway! More to come next month which will be covering The Lofotens and Finland!



Click this link to view the April copy of Motorhome Monthly Magazine in full.

Whistle Stop Tour of France & We're Home!

Montreuil-Bellay 

From Spain we entered France and our first French overnight stop of Capbreton. It's actually quite shocking how much prices increase as you cross over the French/Spanish border. Not just fuel and wine (and the total absence of any beer worth drinking) but just general produce as well. Lidl is 20-30% more expensive on most items and we find ourselves wishing we had stocked up. The perils of crossing a border on a Sunday.

Capbreton Fortifications

Still, Capbreton makes for a nice overnight stop right on the beach with its eroding and toppling WW2 fortifications. Most of our stop over points here on in are chosen for convenience and because they are free; Contis Plage, Roullet-Saint-Estephe and Montreuil-Bellay. This method doesn't always yield a spectacular aire but the small town of Montreuil-Bellay proved a worthy stopover and a fantastic location next to a river and a few minutes walk from the town.

Back on the motorway we keep seeing decorated Renault 4's hurtling past at breakneck speed. It turns out they are all returning from a 6,000km charity rally to Morocco, the Tous En Pour Le Trophy, where each car must carry at least 50kg of goods to donate to local causes. Much of their route in Morocco is off piste which could account for the poor state of many of the cars. Yes, that's right we couldn't not mention Morocco even though we're in France!

We're aiming to get 200 miles a day under our belts as we head up towards Calais and our next stop is Le Mans. A big city it might be, but it has a free aire right in the center with free water and waste. A grey day contributes to a relatively uninspiring walk around and back in the van for tea. We're really not fans of big cities, it has to be said.

Gace Aire infront of the Chateaux

Our overnight aire of choice this time is Gace, with it's impressive Chateaux where motorhomes are allowed to park only between 5pm and 10am it can't really be anything else. The bells fortunatly stop chiming at 11pm and resume at 7am to ensure we are on our way the next day.

We arrive at Saint-Valery-en-Caux and then realise it is in fact a weekend and the aire is no longer free. Still, we've managed to avoid paying for the last 6 nights so we cough up €4.50 a van for the privilege. The aire is a prime location right on the harbour walls and we watch fisherman bringing in their catch followed by a swarms of seagulls. Wrapped up in our winter coats which have been unpacked from the depth of our van, we walk up to the top of the cliffs. Why can't the French clean up after their dogs?

The rain is belting down the following day as we edge ever close to Calais and Le Touquet Paris Plage want €14 for the privilege of staying overnight. I don't think so. We settle for an aire in Bologne Sur Mer where we chance that the appalling weather and gale force winds means the man won't come to collect his €5. We're right and we escape without paying the fee.

Saint-Valery-en-Caux 

We're getting nervous now, the winds have not let up and we sail tomorrow back to blighty. The Dover Port website describes sea conditions as "Rough" and "Gale Force 8-9 winds". Sophie starts looking pale. Adam's mum, despite her not long conquered fear of ferry's, seems game for anything. We arrive at Cite De Europe, all the motor homes are abandoned at funny angles all over the car park and we soon see why as we are buffeted in danger of being toppled over unless we do the same. We do the only sensible thing - buy as much wine as possible to weigh down our vans! After which we head for the ticket office in Calais where the winds rock us to sleep.

The next day the wind subsides but the ferry is still running late as a result. This gives the dog patrol longer to inspect the waiting cars and it's not long before 4 illegal immigrants who get bundled out the back of a French curtain-sider alongside us in the queue for the ferry, sniffed out by a playful black Labrador. The crossing is like a mill pond and somewhat surreal given the previous two days weather.

The beautiful Montreuil-Bellay

We roll off the ferry and towards customs. We don't actually know how many bottles of wine we have or if the limit is 90 liters per person or per van. As we snake through the checkpoint 8 customs officials stand with arms folded and weigh us up. Adam almost makes the decision for them, since we always get stopped here anyway. But not this time! We get waved on through, maybe we're looking too respectable in our old age?

Despite 23,000 miles on the 'wrong' side of the road and it feels like we've never left home. Roundabouts feel a little strange though, but apart from that all seems fairly normal and we cruise back up to York in a little bit of a daze. Nearly home we stop for for Fish and Chips. Well you have to, right?

So that's it. We're home. Or is it? Over the next few weeks we will be writing about all sorts of topics which have been asked by our readers that we would like to share for the benefit of others.

The BIG question - did we manage to spend 334 days and 23,336 miles away in Europe for under our budget of £10k? Find out next week as we start to blog our breakdown, tips and a little bit about how many people have been in touch with us during our trip.

Is there anything you would like to know? If so please don't hesitate to e-mail (you can reply to our blog subscription e-mail), comment, tweet @EuropeByCamper or post on our Facebook timeline.

Thank you all for following, it's over for now but not for long!

Adam & Sophie
EuropeByCamper.com

Burgos & San Sebastian

Burgos Cathedral

To us, Salamaca is just a stop over point on the journey north and we don't enter into the city. We do however queue for 20 minutes at the fish counter in Leclerc for a huge hake which cooks beautifully in the oven, nearly but not quite as good as fish from M...Mor...no, we can't do it anymore. We ban ourselves from mentioning the country south of Spain beginning with M and try and focus on enjoying what time we have left in Spain.


Keen to get back into our usual rythem we break out our wild camping database and head straight for the center of Burgos where we find an incredibly central car park with free parking 6pm-10am. Result. The town itself has a nice feel to it, with the centerpiece being the Unesco World Heritage Cathedral and bustling side streets lined with modern cafes with a quirky edge.

Parking in Burgos

After a restful and free nights sleep we press on to San Sebastian. The money saving tip, it seems, is to arrive after 2pm when the parking is free and most of the retail stores are closed but the cafes remain open. We park at the edge of the marina and wander in. San Sebastian has a beautiful marina and town square which is surrounded by brightly coloured facades painted on every balcony which date back to the times when the square was used as a bullring and it's balconies were rented out as boxes.

San Sebastian Colourful Facades in the Plaza

We visit the aire near the university, it's full with about 25 motorhomes but has the feel of a gypsy camp, with a scruffy Italian van running a loud generator we decide we don't fancy spending the night. We make a late dash for Hondarribia. The marina has the barries removed and motorhomes have taken over, but there is so much parking available that it has a much nicer feel about it. From here the water down the middle of the harbor divides French and Spanish territory. We'll soon be onwards and upwards into France so we need to choose our route carefully as the weather is set to turn.

Caceres

Beginning the route north, we head to Caceres. Our tanks are full of Moroccan Diesel and somehow our van is running better than ever. These vehicles really do need some miles on them and despite travelling at 110kph for 300 miles we still average nearly 30mpg. If only we'd known, we could have done this trip in half the time!

In Caceres we pull into the campsite to meet up once again with Adam's parents who themselves have been travelling Spain for the past 3 months. It's a fantastic achievement for them, my mum especially who only very recently overcame her fears of ferry's and dislike of being away from home for more than a couple of weeks at a time. They both look well and we spend hours talking about our Moroccan stories including our hard-won Moroccan carpet which looks great down the centre of their van.


We venture into Caceres and it's here where we realise the true effect that Morocco has had on us. We want to buy some tomato's and red onions to make a 'berber salad' but can't find a vegetable shop, nevermind a supermarket. There are too many shops and even the impressive old town seems somehow uninspiring, perhaps it's just too normal and civilized compared to what we are used to and instead we sit in the square and talk for another hour about our time in Morocco!