We have travelled to Spain and Portugal the last couple of winters, my husband has his little black book, he too writes down every penny we spend, he was curious how much the trip cost, we spent very little eating out. Sometimes we did think it would be nice to go out for a meal, but we then say, that money would pay for a night on a campsite. Our costs were similar to yours for our trip. We have been asked why don't we go out for meals, but we go away so much and eating out is so expensive.We both look forward to your vlogs, you are so easy to watch and listen to.We appreciate the info we get from you. 😊😊😊
Thank you - it is a fine balance of enjoying our travels - which we do very much and keeping a close eye on what we spend so that we can keep travelling as much as possible. I do like that it now feels like a proper treat if we do eat out as we don't do it very often. Happy travels 🚐
This was so useful. It's hard for people to understand how you can travel without it costing the earth. Many people think travel equals holiday and holidays are expensive. You've proved what a fab time you can have on a budget. We are very similar in terms of nit eating out but enjoying coffee and the odd drink. Look forward to your next video.
Thank you - we have become quite adept at making the most of our budget - it helps that we have our van Nelson to keep travel costs to a minimum. Happy retirement when it arrives
Great video, thank you. We're planning a month long trip to Europe in September so it's interesting to see how far our money will go on a budget. I also really enjoyed the recent packing video. I hope you had a great time in Shetland. I live in Devon but from the isles originally. It's a beautiful part of the world.
Thanks for this Melissa- good luck with the trip- September is such a lovely time of year to travel. It will still be quite busy, but nothing like the height of summer and the temperatures remain good throughout September. We have loved our time in Shetland- such a beautiful place. Have a great weekend👍
I love the trip cost videos. Your food spend was amazing considering your moving around and needing to shop wherever is available. I like people watching from cafe's, so that is definitely in the budget. Thank you for sharing your little black book with us!
Thank you - the little black book definitely helped us understand where we spend money on our trips and was actually quite reassuring when we went through it at the end! I do love people watching too with anime coffee and cake 😊
Hi guys fantastic blog Iam new to this just got a T6.1 I’ve done the NC500 and can’t wait to get away again your blog are very informative for me as Iam a lone camper and at 67 not sure how long I’ve got x
Hi, and welcome to the channel! Glad to hear that you are enjoying your first forays into van adventures. It really was a life changer for us and helped us realise what was out there in our big, wide world. Good luck with your future plans👍
wow - we are literally back from the almost identical route as you, 4 weeks but in peak summer! France all the way down to Croatia Istria also staying at Bled, Austria, Italy Venice etc on way down...sadly our costs came in at nearly 5.5K! family of 4 and we only ate out 3 times. Gave our 16yr twins a good final motorhome trip as they really dont want to travel with us anymore. Looking forward to getting our smaller motorhome for 2 and travelling a bit closer to the costs that you experience lol. thank you for taking the time to collate and share the costs. xx (we are over 3.5T so our tolls and go boxes for Austria and Slovenia were substantial)
Hope you have had a great trip - so many lovely places to visit - I think the biggest difference is costs of campsites at peak season and I am assuming it’s also much more expensive with 4 people 😬 but a fab trip that your children will remember 🚐
Very inspiring! 😊 I've really been enjoying watching all of your previous videos 👍😊 I love to hear all the details of the cost breakdown 👍😊 It looked like an amazing trip 👍😊
Great video. In just over a year I turn 55 and plan to retire. Both our cars are work salary sacrifice cars and when they go back we plan to buy a VW campervan and do a similar tour to yours. We have an apartment in the French Alps so will use that as base camp and set off on various mini tours from there. Our kids will be 17 and 19 by then and are already bored with our touring/hiking/cycling holiday preferences so it will just be the two of us and our springer spaniel. The campervan would also serve as our main ‘big’ car so a VW looks ideal. Edit. PS I had in mind doing something like rotating one night campsite, one night wild camping and one night hotel. My wife just watched your video and says she is blocking the “one night hotel” part of my planning. So, thanks for that, I guess 😂
Hi guys, great video. We love the cost breakdown videos, as it really helps us early Firees and wannabe Fires to gauge whether it's achievable or not. Please keep these coming :)
Our pleasure - I think its interesting for people who have followed our tour and seen how much we packed into 6 weeks in Europe to know how much that actually cost - we do try to keep everything to a tight budget so we can travel for longer 😊
Thank you for this video both. We've just returned from 16 weeks through Europe (France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Slovenia and a, week with family and friends in Austria and Bavaria) but have still to work out our costs. 🤞😬 We travel like you, inexpensively. It will be interesting to compare when we work things out. We definitely agree with some wild camping where possible, an Agricamping subscription of about €26 I think for some free parkups)in Italy, and sadly expensive sites in Croatia early on. I really value and appreciate all your videos. Well done.👏 We're avid followers and need some binge watching to catch up. Kapun kap. 🙏 (That's a Thai wai! 😂)
Wow what a wonderful trip you must have had 🚐 lots of beautiful destinations. Croatia is a strange one - with the ACSI card the campsites were very reasonable but wow in higher season when the card isn’t valid it would be so expensive to travel there! It would be great to hear how much your costs were for such a long trip x
Great information again. I learn such a lot from you videos. Didn’t know Austria, Croatia and Slovenia didn’t allow wild camping. See you in the next one, thanks 😀
Thank you - Croatia and Slovenia are really hot on cracking down on wild campers. In Austria we were in the Tirol region which does not allow it - I am not sure about the rest of the country. It’s just something to consider with costs - they all do have camping aires which are great if you have on board facilities 🚐
Spot on! Thank you Richard and Jackie. Superb bookeeping and highly relevant info - Great Tips ...eat out 'occasionally' and DIY Breakfast Lunches Dinners.
Hi Richard and Jackie, loved this video! I was wondering what your amazing adventure had cost. I just did something similar with our trip to Banff,Jasper and Drumheller. It is so great to look back and see what we could do differently and what we did well. I have been making my way through all your videos. You two have just blossomed since the beginning. As you know I just love your channel. Kindest regards Tanya ❤
Ah thank you so much - I am glad you are enjoying some of the things that we do. Wow that will have been an epic trip - we went to Banff a few years ago on a road trip from Vancouver Island to Calgary with our kids when Luke (our son) was on a rugby tour. Richard was reading something this morning about the forest fires in Jasper?
Great information on the countries you've visited and also surprising as we seem to hear so little of countries like Austria and Slovenia. I've yet to view your videos of the trip but have read your blog so look forward to watching. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share this with us 👍🏻
Slovenia is a beautiful country we'd highly recommend. Similar to other alpine countries like Austria, but less busy. Lake Bled is gorgeous, but very touristy and can be crowded. Lake Bohinj close by might be a better bet, although when we were there the only campsite was about 3 spaces short of full, and it is big, but it doesn't have designated pitches so it's cheek to cheek living 🙄 One popular campsite in between was super expensive and sniggered when I asked for ACSI or pensioner rates, in early July. But, we found a fantastic little auto camper park up for €10 a night, or €15 with ehu and water, but no other facilities. Except the gorgeous swimmable Sava river only 30m away through a pub property. This was behind a service station called "Petrol" just outside Bohinjska Bistrica between Bled and Bohinj. Pics available. Can't wait to explore Slovenia more another time. Neat, pretty, interesting culture, less crowded.
Austria and Slovenia are 2 absolutely beautiful countries - well worth visiting. I am so glad some one reads my blog!! I enjoy making a record of what we have been upto and where we have been and it is a place we can use some of the lovely photos we take 😊 thank you x
Thank you this is really helpful. I would have taken away your normal weekly budget from the costings. Then it makes it easier to justify more travel later 😉🤔
Love your trade offs. We are still only holidaying, so do tend to spend something on eating out, but then rarely use campsites...except this year it was much harder as in Switzerland. We learnt a lot and will remember your excellent tips esp re Slovenia/Austria and make sure we're in Croatia when ACSI is valid when we can go for longer periods! Our CAMH membership pays for itself in ferries and 5 van CLs esp off grid ones.
We have not stayed on any of the CAMH sites yet as we have not really been in the UK this year! We want to stay at the Coniston one in the lakes. We can't use most of the small CL sites as we don't have a loo but look forward to using more of them when we swap vans in a couple of years time. Croatia ASCI goes on a little later until the end of June on many sites compared to Slovenia where most of them stop by mid June.
Very interesting. We’ve visited Norway this year on a 6 weeks trip in a large Motorhome and it cost us £3000 Plus our ferry from Hull to Rotterdam. Everyone says Norway is expensive but I do t think that’s too bad. Fuel and campsites cheaper than your trip but food was more - I think you’d enjoy it 🇳🇴
Thanks for this Julie- it's a massive reassurance to us, as it is no secret that Norway is firmly at the top of our bucket list. One of our concerns was the cost, but we had the feeling that everything would balance out as you suggest. We would much rather spend our money on food costs and the experiences rather than expensive campsites. We were pretty shocked at how much campsites cost on our latest trip, but luckily we were out of season and could use the ACSI card to make it more affordable. Thanks for the support👍
It was top of our list too ! If you want any more info I’d be pleased to help. We could have saved loads more as wild camping is super easy but it took us a while to get into it. I did a small blog on Hill’s & Beyond Facebook if you’re interested 🇳🇴
Interesting to compare your costs, we have just come back from Croatia, flew there and flew back travelled from north to south but staying in apartments every night, and ate out all the time total cost for 8 nights was around £1600,
Nice trip - did you get to Dubrovnik? That is somewhere I really want to visit but it was too far on this trip. It is definitely cheaper to fly to Croatia than drive 🤣 Richard had to fly back on one trip from Split to get into school for the GCSE results - it cost hime less than £100 return (and I had a great time on my own by the beach!)
Yes we ended our trip in dubrobnik, I had been tbe re before a couple of time so stayed in tbd marina in the new town, the old town is very expensive comparable to London possibly more. Return flight for us flying into pula and returning via Dubrovnik was about104
Hello both, yet another informative video, thank you. I was prompted to have another look at the Acsi Card for a trip being planned to the South of France, great I thought, the site being visited is a part of the scheme, but sadly a lot of the reviews pointed out that the pitches cover by the discounts were in a less desirable location of the site. Do you find that yourselves, that to make the best of the budget via acsi, that there is a compromise on pitches/facilities? Also if you would be happy to, can you recommend any good overnight stops in the Dijon or Lyon areas not to far off the A31.🙂🙂 our destination is Grimaud in the south and a stop at either one of these locations would break the drive up. Cheers
We found most campsites off season that they will give us an area or a few pitch numbers to go and check out and then go back and tell them where we want to stay. Generally if it is a lake or seaside campsite then these will not be on the front row premium pitches and we wouldn't have expected that anyway. We have never been particularly disappointed with where we have been pitched - there have been some 'dated' campsites that we have turned up at - there was one in the Italian Lakes which was nearer the top end of the pay range and the facilities were pretty awful - but we stayed one night and moved on. The big Croatian campsites gave a great choice of pitches and excellent facilities for €21. I have heard people say on Forums that some of the busier southern French sites and some Spanish ones are a little bit more precious with pitches and also with pre booking and using an ACSI. I am sure you will with a great trip - no matter what! We have stayed at the aire on P4N at Lac d'orient which is near Troyes and was fab. We also hade a great park up in a small village about 30 minutes south of Troyes in the village of Cour l'Eveque - it is also on P4N
We found most campsites off season that they will give us an area or a few pitch numbers to go and check out and then go back and tell them where we want to stay. Generally if it is a lake or seaside campsite then these will not be on the front row premium pitches and we wouldn't have expected that anyway. We have never been particularly disappointed with where we have been pitched - there have been some 'dated' campsites that we have turned up at - there was one in the Italian Lakes which was nearer the top end of the pay range and the facilities were pretty awful - but we stayed one night and moved on. The big Croatian campsites gave a great choice of pitches and excellent facilities for €21. I have heard people say on Forums that some of the busier southern French sites are a little bit more precious with pitches and also with pre booking and using an ACSI. I am sure you will with a great trip - no matter what! We have stayed at the aire on P4N at Lac d'orient which is near Troyes and was fab. We also hade a great park up in a small village about 30 minutes south of Troyes in the village of Cour l'Eveque - it is also on P4N
Brilliant breakdown, thanks for sharing. what is the (AXE?) discount card you refer to please? Your mpg for the trip was 35-38 mpg, correct thanks and atb
Thank you. The ACSI discount card can be ordered online for about €25 and it gives you considerable discounts at thousands of campsites across Europe in the off peak season. We did a video on this a few months ago if you want more information x
Hi Richard and Jackie, love the content but need to comment on the exchange rate you have used. Throughout your trip the exchange rate was nearer 1.18! We used Wise and Revolut on our trip to France and Spain which was in the same period and achieved this rate
Thanks for this we just chose the PO exchange rate on the day we filmed as this is the currency card that we used. Yay - that means that the trip cost us even less than we thought 😊
That's interesting. For some context we drove to Austria from Manchester and back using the tunnel visiting the Netherlands and Belgium on the way out and back. We stayed 39 nights in nice hotels and a self contained apartment and it cost £4100. Similarly we had just two meals out and two take out pizzas plus cake and ice creams. Our tourist tax covered the lift passes and hikers bus around the valleys. Thinking about your £2600 spend. You'd have spent on food and fuel staying at home.
Sounds like you had a great trip - we really enjoyed Austria and how clean, fresh and easy everything was. We will do more research for next time we go because as you say - some regions include a transport pass with your accommodation tourist tax (camping Tirol gave us a train and bus pass for the 2 days we were there but we didn't have time to use it!) Yes we think it probably cost us about £1200 ontop of our normal living expenses to be away for 6 weeks so not too bad at all and we had such an amazing time 😊 🚐 🚠🥾
Great Value for money I’m going to double check our 3week trip as I think we spent that for 3 weeks. We did have to pay the higher price in some camp sites eg Camp Spik was €50 a night and as we are in a car/tent we couldn’t use Aires. Brill breakdown
Hope you enjoyed the Kranjska Gora area? It’s probably one of my favourite places in Europe 🚐 camping fees are the one cost that can spiral quite quickly on a road trip!
We loved Slovenia and the kranjska Gora area. It’s definitely an area to explore more. We travelled 3700 miles in the 3 weeks (@2ontour4x4)and plan to revisit some countries but stay longer in one place. We are already missing being on the road so just planning a week in September 👏
Hi Richard and Jackie, good video but are you missing some other costs, you need to portion the cost of joining the club across your 3 trips. Servicing and maintenance of the camper van (for example if a set of tyre last 10k miles and you travel 2k miles on this trip then 20% of a cost should be allocated) and monthly depreciation and sunk costs of purchasing the campervan and all the camping accessories. Also do you have travel insurance?
Hi - some good points but for the purpose of this video we just wanted to breakdown the immediate costs of the 6 week trip. Our travel insurance is a yearly policy - one thing I did mean to mention was our phone data roaming for 6 weeks. We are with EE and it cost us 2 lots of £25 roam abroad pass monthly charges each - some of that will be refunded as we only did 6 weeks.
Thank you. The ACSI card is a discount card that you order online for about €25. It gives you considerable discounts at thousands of campsites in Europe (not many in the UK) in the off peak season. Most campsites will let you use it until the first week in July and from the beginning of September and it is well worth getting if you travel then. We did a video on the card system with some examples earlier in the year if you want any more information 😊
We don't, and most of the time it isn't a problem - we do avoid busy city type aires and use park ups in remote areas where we can have a quick wild wee at bedtime 🤣 Its surprising how many places have public loos close by - especially on the trip we are at the moment up in the Shetlands 🚐
Great video, thanks for all the handy hints and tips. Surely the food (supermarket) is about same as what you would have had back home so that cancels out.
Thank you - we think the trip probably cost us about £1200 extra to our normal living costs for that period so not too bad at all for a fab 6 week European road trip 🚐 😊
Very true - we are on the Shetlands now for a few weeks and apart from food shops, honesty boxes for the odd camping fees and contributions for showers at community centres we are living very cheaply and loving life (it helps that the sun is out)
We have travelled to Spain and Portugal the last couple of winters, my husband has his little black book, he too writes down every penny we spend, he was curious how much the trip cost, we spent very little eating out. Sometimes we did think it would be nice to go out for a meal, but we then say, that money would pay for a night on a campsite. Our costs were similar to yours for our trip. We have been asked why don't we go out for meals, but we go away so much and eating out is so expensive.We both look forward to your vlogs, you are so easy to watch and listen to.We appreciate the info we get from you. 😊😊😊
Thank you - it is a fine balance of enjoying our travels - which we do very much and keeping a close eye on what we spend so that we can keep travelling as much as possible. I do like that it now feels like a proper treat if we do eat out as we don't do it very often. Happy travels 🚐
This was so useful. It's hard for people to understand how you can travel without it costing the earth. Many people think travel equals holiday and holidays are expensive. You've proved what a fab time you can have on a budget. We are very similar in terms of nit eating out but enjoying coffee and the odd drink. Look forward to your next video.
Thank you - we have become quite adept at making the most of our budget - it helps that we have our van Nelson to keep travel costs to a minimum. Happy retirement when it arrives
That’s great value for money given the experience and time away. Really helpful - thank you 👌🏻
Yes we felt we had a fantastic roadtrip without breaking the bank 😊🤣
Great video, thank you. We're planning a month long trip to Europe in September so it's interesting to see how far our money will go on a budget. I also really enjoyed the recent packing video. I hope you had a great time in Shetland. I live in Devon but from the isles originally. It's a beautiful part of the world.
Thanks for this Melissa- good luck with the trip- September is such a lovely time of year to travel. It will still be quite busy, but nothing like the height of summer and the temperatures remain good throughout September.
We have loved our time in Shetland- such a beautiful place.
Have a great weekend👍
Really appreciate the cost break downs 👍🏻
Thank you - we actually thought it would have been more so we’re really pleased we kept the costs quite low and still had a wonderful trip 🚐
I love the trip cost videos. Your food spend was amazing considering your moving around and needing to shop wherever is available. I like people watching from cafe's, so that is definitely in the budget. Thank you for sharing your little black book with us!
Thank you - the little black book definitely helped us understand where we spend money on our trips and was actually quite reassuring when we went through it at the end! I do love people watching too with anime coffee and cake 😊
Hi guys fantastic blog Iam new to this just got a T6.1 I’ve done the NC500 and can’t wait to get away again your blog are very informative for me as Iam a lone camper and at 67 not sure how long I’ve got x
Hi, and welcome to the channel!
Glad to hear that you are enjoying your first forays into van adventures. It really was a life changer for us and helped us realise what was out there in our big, wide world.
Good luck with your future plans👍
wow - we are literally back from the almost identical route as you, 4 weeks but in peak summer! France all the way down to Croatia Istria also staying at Bled, Austria, Italy Venice etc on way down...sadly our costs came in at nearly 5.5K! family of 4 and we only ate out 3 times. Gave our 16yr twins a good final motorhome trip as they really dont want to travel with us anymore. Looking forward to getting our smaller motorhome for 2 and travelling a bit closer to the costs that you experience lol. thank you for taking the time to collate and share the costs. xx (we are over 3.5T so our tolls and go boxes for Austria and Slovenia were substantial)
Hope you have had a great trip - so many lovely places to visit - I think the biggest difference is costs of campsites at peak season and I am assuming it’s also much more expensive with 4 people 😬 but a fab trip that your children will remember 🚐
Very inspiring! 😊 I've really been enjoying watching all of your previous videos 👍😊 I love to hear all the details of the cost breakdown 👍😊 It looked like an amazing trip 👍😊
Thank you - we had such an amazing time and saw some beautiful places 😊
Great video. In just over a year I turn 55 and plan to retire. Both our cars are work salary sacrifice cars and when they go back we plan to buy a VW campervan and do a similar tour to yours. We have an apartment in the French Alps so will use that as base camp and set off on various mini tours from there. Our kids will be 17 and 19 by then and are already bored with our touring/hiking/cycling holiday preferences so it will just be the two of us and our springer spaniel. The campervan would also serve as our main ‘big’ car so a VW looks ideal.
Edit. PS I had in mind doing something like rotating one night campsite, one night wild camping and one night hotel. My wife just watched your video and says she is blocking the “one night hotel” part of my planning. So, thanks for that, I guess 😂
Hi guys, great video. We love the cost breakdown videos, as it really helps us early Firees and wannabe Fires to gauge whether it's achievable or not. Please keep these coming :)
Our pleasure - I think its interesting for people who have followed our tour and seen how much we packed into 6 weeks in Europe to know how much that actually cost - we do try to keep everything to a tight budget so we can travel for longer 😊
Thank you for this video both. We've just returned from 16 weeks through Europe (France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Slovenia and a, week with family and friends in Austria and Bavaria) but have still to work out our costs. 🤞😬 We travel like you, inexpensively. It will be interesting to compare when we work things out.
We definitely agree with some wild camping where possible, an Agricamping subscription of about €26 I think for some free parkups)in Italy, and sadly expensive sites in Croatia early on.
I really value and appreciate all your videos. Well done.👏 We're avid followers and need some binge watching to catch up. Kapun kap. 🙏 (That's a Thai wai! 😂)
Wow what a wonderful trip you must have had 🚐 lots of beautiful destinations. Croatia is a strange one - with the ACSI card the campsites were very reasonable but wow in higher season when the card isn’t valid it would be so expensive to travel there! It would be great to hear how much your costs were for such a long trip x
Great information again. I learn such a lot from you videos. Didn’t know Austria, Croatia and Slovenia didn’t allow wild camping. See you in the next one, thanks 😀
Thank you - Croatia and Slovenia are really hot on cracking down on wild campers. In Austria we were in the Tirol region which does not allow it - I am not sure about the rest of the country. It’s just something to consider with costs - they all do have camping aires which are great if you have on board facilities 🚐
Thank you for a great insight. You guys sure know how to get value for money. Well done. Great trip.
Thank you - if we can eek the money out - we can stay away longer 😊🚐
Great information guys.Having the real world cost breakdown is really useful to get an idea of potential costs. Thanks Dave
Cheers - we were pleasantly surprised at the total costs considering how much we had to use campsite in Slovenia, Croatia and Austria.
Spot on! Thank you Richard and Jackie.
Superb bookeeping and highly relevant info - Great Tips ...eat out 'occasionally' and DIY Breakfast Lunches Dinners.
thank you - glad you have found some of it of use!
Hi Richard and Jackie, loved this video! I was wondering what your amazing adventure had cost. I just did something similar with our trip to Banff,Jasper and Drumheller. It is so great to look back and see what we could do differently and what we did well. I have been making my way through all your videos. You two have just blossomed since the beginning. As you know I just love your channel. Kindest regards Tanya ❤
Ah thank you so much - I am glad you are enjoying some of the things that we do. Wow that will have been an epic trip - we went to Banff a few years ago on a road trip from Vancouver Island to Calgary with our kids when Luke (our son) was on a rugby tour. Richard was reading something this morning about the forest fires in Jasper?
Great information on the countries you've visited and also surprising as we seem to hear so little of countries like Austria and Slovenia. I've yet to view your videos of the trip but have read your blog so look forward to watching. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share this with us 👍🏻
Slovenia is a beautiful country we'd highly recommend. Similar to other alpine countries like Austria, but less busy. Lake Bled is gorgeous, but very touristy and can be crowded. Lake Bohinj close by might be a better bet, although when we were there the only campsite was about 3 spaces short of full, and it is big, but it doesn't have designated pitches so it's cheek to cheek living 🙄 One popular campsite in between was super expensive and sniggered when I asked for ACSI or pensioner rates, in early July. But, we found a fantastic little auto camper park up for €10 a night, or €15 with ehu and water, but no other facilities. Except the gorgeous swimmable Sava river only 30m away through a pub property. This was behind a service station called "Petrol" just outside Bohinjska Bistrica between Bled and Bohinj. Pics available. Can't wait to explore Slovenia more another time. Neat, pretty, interesting culture, less crowded.
Austria and Slovenia are 2 absolutely beautiful countries - well worth visiting. I am so glad some one reads my blog!! I enjoy making a record of what we have been upto and where we have been and it is a place we can use some of the lovely photos we take 😊 thank you x
@juliancowburn4091 it is probably still my favourite country - for me the area around Kranjska Gora and Soca river are my favourites 🚐
Thank you this is really helpful. I would have taken away your normal weekly budget from the costings. Then it makes it easier to justify more travel later 😉🤔
@@earlyretirementwanderlustI read your vlogs too.
you did really well...wonderful experience for a small price. Thanks for the financial reckoning.
Thank you 😊 It was the most amazing trip with lots of beautiful places discovered 🚐
Very useful information in this video - many thanks both of you.
Thank you 😊
Love your trade offs. We are still only holidaying, so do tend to spend something on eating out, but then rarely use campsites...except this year it was much harder as in Switzerland. We learnt a lot and will remember your excellent tips esp re Slovenia/Austria and make sure we're in Croatia when ACSI is valid when we can go for longer periods! Our CAMH membership pays for itself in ferries and 5 van CLs esp off grid ones.
We have not stayed on any of the CAMH sites yet as we have not really been in the UK this year! We want to stay at the Coniston one in the lakes. We can't use most of the small CL sites as we don't have a loo but look forward to using more of them when we swap vans in a couple of years time. Croatia ASCI goes on a little later until the end of June on many sites compared to Slovenia where most of them stop by mid June.
@@earlyretirementwanderlust There are plenty of CLs that do have a loo, and even a shower. Not necessarily the expensive ones.
Really helpful video. Love you both
Thank you 😊
Very interesting. We’ve visited Norway this year on a 6 weeks trip in a large Motorhome and it cost us £3000 Plus our ferry from Hull to Rotterdam. Everyone says Norway is expensive but I do t think that’s too bad. Fuel and campsites cheaper than your trip but food was more - I think you’d enjoy it 🇳🇴
Thanks for this Julie- it's a massive reassurance to us, as it is no secret that Norway is firmly at the top of our bucket list. One of our concerns was the cost, but we had the feeling that everything would balance out as you suggest. We would much rather spend our money on food costs and the experiences rather than expensive campsites.
We were pretty shocked at how much campsites cost on our latest trip, but luckily we were out of season and could use the ACSI card to make it more affordable.
Thanks for the support👍
It was top of our list too ! If you want any more info I’d be pleased to help. We could have saved loads more as wild camping is super easy but it took us a while to get into it. I did a small blog on Hill’s & Beyond Facebook if you’re interested 🇳🇴
@juliehill5938 fab thanks we will have a look 😊
Great video guys, with some great information. You certainly wouldn’t get 6 weeks abroad at that cost from a holiday provider. 😊
That’s true! Thanks for watching 😊
Interesting to compare your costs, we have just come back from Croatia, flew there and flew back travelled from north to south but staying in apartments every night, and ate out all the time total cost for 8 nights was around £1600,
Nice trip - did you get to Dubrovnik? That is somewhere I really want to visit but it was too far on this trip. It is definitely cheaper to fly to Croatia than drive 🤣 Richard had to fly back on one trip from Split to get into school for the GCSE results - it cost hime less than £100 return (and I had a great time on my own by the beach!)
Yes we ended our trip in dubrobnik, I had been tbe re before a couple of time so stayed in tbd marina in the new town, the old town is very expensive comparable to London possibly more. Return flight for us flying into pula and returning via Dubrovnik was about104
Great vid as always….Thanks for the numbers ……Always my favourite type of info ;))) 👍🇬🇧❤😀
Thanks Jason- loads of people seem to like the numbers...and it keeps us on track too😂
Hello both, yet another informative video, thank you. I was prompted to have another look at the Acsi Card for a trip being planned to the South of France, great I thought, the site being visited is a part of the scheme, but sadly a lot of the reviews pointed out that the pitches cover by the discounts were in a less desirable location of the site. Do you find that yourselves, that to make the best of the budget via acsi, that there is a compromise on pitches/facilities?
Also if you would be happy to, can you recommend any good overnight stops in the Dijon or Lyon areas not to far off the A31.🙂🙂 our destination is Grimaud in the south and a stop at either one of these locations would break the drive up. Cheers
We found most campsites off season that they will give us an area or a few pitch numbers to go and check out and then go back and tell them where we want to stay. Generally if it is a lake or seaside campsite then these will not be on the front row premium pitches and we wouldn't have expected that anyway. We have never been particularly disappointed with where we have been pitched - there have been some 'dated' campsites that we have turned up at - there was one in the Italian Lakes which was nearer the top end of the pay range and the facilities were pretty awful - but we stayed one night and moved on. The big Croatian campsites gave a great choice of pitches and excellent facilities for €21.
I have heard people say on Forums that some of the busier southern French sites and some Spanish ones are a little bit more precious with pitches and also with pre booking and using an ACSI. I am sure you will with a great trip - no matter what!
We have stayed at the aire on P4N at Lac d'orient which is near Troyes and was fab. We also hade a great park up in a small village about 30 minutes south of Troyes in the village of Cour l'Eveque - it is also on P4N
We found most campsites off season that they will give us an area or a few pitch numbers to go and check out and then go back and tell them where we want to stay. Generally if it is a lake or seaside campsite then these will not be on the front row premium pitches and we wouldn't have expected that anyway. We have never been particularly disappointed with where we have been pitched - there have been some 'dated' campsites that we have turned up at - there was one in the Italian Lakes which was nearer the top end of the pay range and the facilities were pretty awful - but we stayed one night and moved on. The big Croatian campsites gave a great choice of pitches and excellent facilities for €21.
I have heard people say on Forums that some of the busier southern French sites are a little bit more precious with pitches and also with pre booking and using an ACSI. I am sure you will with a great trip - no matter what!
We have stayed at the aire on P4N at Lac d'orient which is near Troyes and was fab. We also hade a great park up in a small village about 30 minutes south of Troyes in the village of Cour l'Eveque - it is also on P4N
Brilliant breakdown, thanks for sharing.
what is the (AXE?) discount card you refer to please?
Your mpg for the trip was 35-38 mpg, correct
thanks and atb
Thank you. The ACSI discount card can be ordered online for about €25 and it gives you considerable discounts at thousands of campsites across Europe in the off peak season. We did a video on this a few months ago if you want more information x
@@earlyretirementwanderlust thanks, just found the vid
could you do a bit more detailed overview of the recommended airs and campsites please
Hi - we have covered details all the campsites and aires that we stayed at in our vlogs on each country as we went through if that helps at all
Can offset the fuel costs by presumably lower energy costs at your home!
Altho bills are not particularly high this time of year!
Good point. 👏
Yes the house costs were about £45 which was mostly standing daily charges 🤣
Hi Richard and Jackie, love the content but need to comment on the exchange rate you have used. Throughout your trip the exchange rate was nearer 1.18! We used Wise and Revolut on our trip to France and Spain which was in the same period and achieved this rate
Thanks for this we just chose the PO exchange rate on the day we filmed as this is the currency card that we used. Yay - that means that the trip cost us even less than we thought 😊
@@earlyretirementwanderlust - it did! Need to upgrade from the PO card though😉
Great video thank you 😊
You’re welcome 😊
Very very interesting trip however what is the name of the Camping Card please for which many thanks Hugh
Camping card ACSI - we have done a video on it earlier in the summer
That's interesting. For some context we drove to Austria from Manchester and back using the tunnel visiting the Netherlands and Belgium on the way out and back. We stayed 39 nights in nice hotels and a self contained apartment and it cost £4100. Similarly we had just two meals out and two take out pizzas plus cake and ice creams. Our tourist tax covered the lift passes and hikers bus around the valleys. Thinking about your £2600 spend. You'd have spent on food and fuel staying at home.
Sounds like you had a great trip - we really enjoyed Austria and how clean, fresh and easy everything was. We will do more research for next time we go because as you say - some regions include a transport pass with your accommodation tourist tax (camping Tirol gave us a train and bus pass for the 2 days we were there but we didn't have time to use it!)
Yes we think it probably cost us about £1200 ontop of our normal living expenses to be away for 6 weeks so not too bad at all and we had such an amazing time 😊 🚐 🚠🥾
Great Value for money I’m going to double check our 3week trip as I think we spent that for 3 weeks. We did have to pay the higher price in some camp sites eg Camp Spik was €50 a night and as we are in a car/tent we couldn’t use Aires. Brill breakdown
Hope you enjoyed the Kranjska Gora area? It’s probably one of my favourite places in Europe 🚐 camping fees are the one cost that can spiral quite quickly on a road trip!
We loved Slovenia and the kranjska Gora area. It’s definitely an area to explore more. We travelled 3700 miles in the 3 weeks (@2ontour4x4)and plan to revisit some countries but stay longer in one place. We are already missing being on the road so just planning a week in September 👏
Hi Richard and Jackie, good video but are you missing some other costs, you need to portion the cost of joining the club across your 3 trips. Servicing and maintenance of the camper van (for example if a set of tyre last 10k miles and you travel 2k miles on this trip then 20% of a cost should be allocated) and monthly depreciation and sunk costs of purchasing the campervan and all the camping accessories. Also do you have travel insurance?
Hi - some good points but for the purpose of this video we just wanted to breakdown the immediate costs of the 6 week trip. Our travel insurance is a yearly policy - one thing I did mean to mention was our phone data roaming for 6 weeks. We are with EE and it cost us 2 lots of £25 roam abroad pass monthly charges each - some of that will be refunded as we only did 6 weeks.
Great video. Can you explain what an axe card is please. I’m thinking it’s a pre paid travel card .
Thank you. The ACSI card is a discount card that you order online for about €25. It gives you considerable discounts at thousands of campsites in Europe (not many in the UK) in the off peak season. Most campsites will let you use it until the first week in July and from the beginning of September and it is well worth getting if you travel then. We did a video on the card system with some examples earlier in the year if you want any more information 😊
@@earlyretirementwanderlust I’ve never heard of it. I will definitely take a look at it. Thank you x
Do you have a toilet in your van? We've got the smallest Porta Porti model but it allows us to stay in the most basic (hence cheapest) camp sites.
We don't, and most of the time it isn't a problem - we do avoid busy city type aires and use park ups in remote areas where we can have a quick wild wee at bedtime 🤣 Its surprising how many places have public loos close by - especially on the trip we are at the moment up in the Shetlands 🚐
Great video, thanks for all the handy hints and tips.
Surely the food (supermarket) is about same as what you would have had back home so that cancels out.
Thank you - we think the trip probably cost us about £1200 extra to our normal living costs for that period so not too bad at all for a fab 6 week European road trip 🚐 😊
You make it sound affordable, now i have to convince Lady Rough Diamond that we don't have to eat out twice a day, every day !
🤣 I suppose it depends how long you are wanting to travel for! It's a small trade off for us to have longer in amazing places 🚐
@@earlyretirementwanderlust could you forward me a doctors note explaining this for me to hand in to head office (kitchen) 🤣
Great video - how do you get an "acsi / AXI" card please?
Hi you order it on line on the ACSI discount card website - we have done a video about the card and ordering it earlier in the year 😊
@@earlyretirementwanderlust Thank you so much x
Sometimes you spend more, and sometimes you spend less then your budget permit.
The average is what counts
Very true - we are on the Shetlands now for a few weeks and apart from food shops, honesty boxes for the odd camping fees and contributions for showers at community centres we are living very cheaply and loving life (it helps that the sun is out)
£67 per day is great value…..
We thought so considering how far we had travelled and how often we stayed on campsites 😊🚐