Britain has two cards and you are done. The continent has a sticker for the air, a badge for the tolls, a vignette for some countries but not others, a card for the campsites and an app for the overnight stops — and several of them are posted to you, so they want ordering weeks before you sail. This page covers the pattern once rather than repeating it on every file.
01 / EMISSION ZONES
Most European countries now restrict older vehicles from city centres. The schemes are not interoperable, they are enforced by camera, and several of them require you to register or display something you cannot buy on arrival.
02 / TOLLS + VIGNETTES
Broadly: the west charges you per barrier, and the centre and east sell you a time-based sticker. A tall van is treated differently from a car under both.
The height line matters more than the weight line. On French autoroutes a vehicle over 2 m high and under 3.5 t is Classe 2, not Classe 1. At 2.98 m the Landship is comfortably in it. The class is read automatically and displayed overhead as you approach the barrier — read it rather than assuming.
| Country | System | What a motorhome needs to know |
|---|---|---|
| FRANCE | Barrier tolls | Pay per section. Over 2 m puts you in Classe 2. A télépéage badge removes the reach across a right-hand-drive cab entirely. |
| SPAIN · PORTUGAL | Barrier + free-flow | Many Spanish motorways are now free. Portugal has barrier-free sections that need a transponder or online payment — the same trap as Ireland’s M50. |
| ITALY | Barrier tolls | Ticket in, pay out. Class by axles and height. Telepass works but is not always rentable to foreign plates. |
| SWITZERLAND | Vignette | An annual motorway vignette, valid the calendar year regardless of when you buy it. Buy at the border or online. Not optional if you touch a motorway. |
| AUSTRIA | Vignette + sections | A time-based vignette, plus separate tolls for specific tunnels and alpine passes on top. |
| SLOVENIA · CZECHIA · HUNGARY | Digital vignette | Bought online against the plate. Nothing to display. Slovenia charges vehicles over 2.1 m more — another height line worth measuring for. |
| GERMANY | Free | No car or motorhome toll on the autobahn. Some tunnels and bridges charge. |
| BELGIUM · NETHERLANDS | Mostly free | Free motorways; a handful of tunnels and bridges charge. The cost here is the emission-zone registration, not the road. |
| NORDICS | Free-flow + bridges | Norway and Sweden read the plate and bill it. A toll account tied to the vehicle before you travel avoids administration fees later. Major bridges charge separately. |
03 / CAMPING CARDS
A fixed nightly rate at thousands of European sites, for two people, a pitch and electricity. Available as a book, a card and an app.
It is a low-season scheme. Outside July and August it is excellent value and often halves a site fee; inside them it does nothing at all. The honest test: if your file runs in May, June, September or October, buy it. If it runs in August, do not.
An annual membership giving free overnight stops at hundreds of French farms, vineyards and small producers. No facilities, no charge, and explicitly no obligation to buy anything — though most people do, which is rather the point.
One night per stop is the convention. Equivalent schemes exist in other countries under different names.
Widely used across Scandinavia, where some sites effectively require a camping card for check-in. Also carries third-party liability cover in some territories.
Worth having for a northern file; largely pointless for a French one.
The Caravan and Motorhome Club and the Camping and Caravanning Club both run overseas booking arms with useful ferry deals and site networks — but the site membership itself does not open a European gate.
National Trust covers Northern Ireland but not the Republic and nothing on the continent. English Heritage the same. Every European file needs its own access line in the budget.
04 / THE AIRES
If one thing converts a British campervanner to European touring, it is this. A network of dedicated motorhome stopovers, most of them provided by the town itself, running from free to the price of a coffee.
France calls them aires de camping-car, Germany Stellplätze, Italy aree di sosta, the Netherlands camperplaatsen. All the same thing: a marked area for motorhomes with fresh water, waste disposal and often electricity.
Most are municipal, because a town that provides one gets a night’s trade from every van that uses it. It is a completely different relationship from the British pattern of overnight-parking bans, and it changes how a trip feels.
An aire is for passing through. There are no showers, no pitches and usually a stated maximum stay. Awnings out and chairs on the grass is bad form; arriving late and leaving early is exactly right.
A motorway aire de repos is a service area, not a stopover, and sleeping at one is both unpleasant and the single most commonly reported place for vehicle crime. Come off the motorway and use the village.
The off-grid endurance core is more useful on the continent than at home for exactly this reason: more nights without hook-up, but far easier water and waste. On most European files the binding constraint turns out to be fresh water rather than battery.
05 / WINTER + THE LAW
Everything above costs something. These cost a fine, a refused insurance claim or a night stuck at the foot of a pass — and several of them are seasonal, so they are easy to be caught by.
06 / THE NATIONAL BODIES
Britain has a familiar stack: National Trust, English Heritage, Forestry England, the RSPB, the Woodland Trust, the Wildlife Trusts and the RHS. Every European country has equivalents, they are rarely called anything similar, and almost none of them are reciprocal with the British cards. This is the mapping, role by role.
The Office of Public Works runs the state’s historic sites. One annual card per person covers them all — Kilkenny Castle, Charles Fort, Muckross House and dozens more.
The National Trust for Ireland. Far smaller than its British namesake and does not run a comparable membership estate — the OPW card does that job here.
The state forestry company, with free open access to hundreds of forest parks and trails.
Reserves, surveys and the authority on Irish bird status. Membership supports the reserves rather than opening gates.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service runs the six national parks — Killarney, Wicklow, the Burren and others — all free to enter.
The state monuments body: Mont-Saint-Michel abbey, the Château d’Angers and around a hundred others. Sells a pass — worth it only if you will enter several.
Buys and protects coastline permanently, and the closest French thing to the Trust’s Neptune coastline. Access is generally free.
Manages the state forests, including the great Loire hunting forests. Open access on foot throughout.
BirdLife in France, with reserves along the Atlantic coast and the definitive species data.
Fifty-eight regional parks alongside the national ones — the régionaux are the lived-in working landscapes, and several are on the E02 route.
The closest Dutch equivalent: a membership charity owning hundreds of reserves and historic properties, founded in 1905.
The state forestry and nature agency, managing a quarter of a million hectares including Oostvaardersplassen.
BirdLife in the Netherlands, and the authority on the country’s internationally important wetland birds.
Twenty-one national parks. The Hoge Veluwe is privately run and charges; most of the others are free.
One card, some four hundred museums, and it pays for itself in about three visits. The Kröller-Müller alone justifies a day.
The Flemish nature charity, owning and running hundreds of reserves including the Zwin hinterland and the Kalmthout heath.
The Walloon counterpart, and BirdLife’s partner in the French-speaking region.
The public forest and nature agencies — Flemish and Walloon respectively — running the Hautes Fagnes, the Soignes forest and the Ardennes state woods.
Heritage is devolved to the regions, so there is no single national card. Buy at the gate.
The GR long-distance path network, waymarked white-on-red across both regions.
Naturschutzbund Deutschland — BirdLife’s German partner and the largest conservation membership body in the country.
The other great German membership body, with reserves and a strong campaigning arm.
The umbrella for sixteen national parks, over a hundred nature parks and eighteen biosphere reserves — including the Eifel.
Heritage is a state matter rather than federal, so there is no single card. This is the national foundation behind the restoration work.
The federation behind the waymarked trail network, including the Rheinsteig above the gorge.
The Danish Nature Agency: state forests, dune plantations, and the free shelter and primitive camping network that substitutes for a right to roam.
The largest Danish nature membership body, and the reason a great deal of coast is undeveloped.
Reserves, ringing and the authority on Danish bird status. Their Sort Sol guidance is the one to trust.
The palaces and culture agency. Individual castles charge; there is no single national card.
The official map of free and near-free shelters, primitive campsites and nature huts — genuinely the best public camping resource in Europe.
The single most useful membership in Scandinavia: five hundred huts, twenty thousand kilometres of waymarked route, and members’ rates throughout.
The state landowner, holding a fifth of the country and providing cheap fishing and hunting permits with it.
Formerly Norsk Ornitologisk Forening — reserves, surveys and the national rarities committee.
Runs the forty-seven national parks, and publishes the access and wildlife-disturbance rules that matter on Hardangervidda.
Eighteen designated National Tourist Routes with architect-designed viewpoints and rest stops. Effectively a curated map of the best driving in Europe.
The Swedish equivalent of DNT: hostels, mountain stations and huts, with members’ rates and the Kungsleden behind it.
The environment agency, and the publisher of the definitive plain-English guide to what allemansrätten does and does not permit.
The oldest and largest Swedish conservation membership body, founded in 1909.
Reserves, the national bird survey and the authority on where the cranes actually are this week.
The state forestry company, with ecoparks open to the public and fishing permits on much of its water.
Two honest caveats. First, no British membership opens a European gate — National Trust covers Northern Ireland but not the Republic and nothing on the continent, and English Heritage has no reciprocal arrangement anywhere here. Budget an access line for every European file. Second, joining is usually not the point: most of these bodies protect land that is already free to walk on, and membership funds the work rather than buying entry. The exceptions worth actual money are the Dutch Museumkaart, the Irish OPW Heritage Card, and DNT or STF if you intend to use the hut networks.
Organisations rename, merge and move their websites. These were checked in August 2026 — if a link has moved, the correction address at the foot of this page goes straight to a human.
07 / THE APP DECK
Download the offline data before you sail. Signal on a Breton headland or a Norwegian fjord is not a plan.
Crowd-sourced maps of aires, wild spots, service points and car parks that tolerate a van. Between them they cover the continent properly. Read the recent comments rather than the rating — a spot that was fine two years ago may now be barriered.
The Trip Engine gives spring and neap ranges months ahead but deliberately never times. For the Mont-Saint-Michel bay or a Breton pêche à pied you need an actual local table — the SHOM data for France, and the harbour office everywhere.
08 / WHAT TO ORDER, AND WHEN
The failure mode is always the same: everything is easy except the thing that had to be posted. This is that list.
| When | What | Why the lead time |
|---|---|---|
| MONTHS | The ferry or tunnel crossing | Peak sailings and every overnight cabin sell out, and the cheap fare goes first. Fix the boat, then build the route. |
| MONTHS | Passport check | Two conditions for Schengen: issued within ten years on the day you enter, and valid three months beyond your intended exit. Renewal takes weeks. |
| WEEKS | Crit’Air or Umweltplakette | Posted to you. There is no way to buy a Crit’Air at the French border. |
| WEEKS | Télépéage badge | Also posted, and needs a mandate set up against a bank account or card. |
| WEEKS | Pet paperwork | An animal health certificate must be issued within ten days of travel, but rabies vaccination must be at least twenty-one days before it. |
| WEEKS | Insurance + breakdown | Confirm European cover in writing, and confirm the breakdown policy covers a vehicle of your weight and length. Many quietly do not. |
| DAYS | LEZ registration | Belgian and Dutch zones want a foreign plate registered online, but it is quick once you know it exists. |
| DAYS | ACSI, France Passion, camping cards | Digital or quick post, and only worth buying once the dates are fixed and you know the season. |
| ON THE DAY | Vignettes | Swiss and Austrian vignettes can be bought at the border or online the day before. Do not buy these early. |
No prices anywhere on this page, deliberately. Toll rates, vignette fees, sticker costs and camping card prices all change at least annually, and a stale number is worse than no number. This page states the mechanism and names the scheme; the operator states the price, and only the operator states it truthfully.
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