01 / GETTING STARTED
A free, ad-free archive of campervan expedition routes and the tools to plan them. There are 42 expedition files covering 718 days of route, a wildlife and season Matrix, seven calculators and two trip engines. It is written for one van and one crew, and everything on it is free.
No. There is no sign-up, no login and no account of any kind. Nothing you type is uploaded - your van profile, your trip plans and your wildlife log all live in your own browser.
If you know roughly when you can travel, open the Trip Engine and give it your dates, your start point and how long you have. If you would rather browse, the Journeys shelf lists every file with its length and difficulty. If you are still deciding on a van, start with the calculators.
Yes, and it always will be. Nothing sits behind a paywall and nothing unlocks if you pay. There is a voluntary coffee link, and paying changes nothing about what you can see.
The site installs as one. Add it to your home screen from your browser and it behaves like an app, including working with no signal. There is nothing to download from a store.
02 / THE EXPEDITION FILES
A researched route with a day-by-day plan: where to drive, where to spend each night, the driving hours, what to see, and the specific warnings for that ground. Files run from a long weekend to four weeks.
Not yet, and every file says so at the top. They carry a PLANNED - NOT YET DRIVEN stamp. The routes are researched, the facts are dated and checked, and the warnings are real - but they are not drive reports and will not claim to be until they have been driven. When one is driven, the stamp changes.
42 in total: 22 across Britain and Ireland and 20 in continental Europe, together covering 718 days of route.
A one-to-five scale for how much the route asks of you. Two is a comfortable first trip. Five means altitude, long distances, or something that changes how you camp - remote single-track, mountain passes with opening dates, or large wildlife.
Yes. Every file states a minimum, and the engine trims the route to your window - dropping days from the middle rather than the arrival or the journey home, and telling you how many it cut.
03 / THE TRIP ENGINE
It ranks the expedition files against your dates, your start point, how many days you have and the kind of trip you want, then builds a day-by-day plan for the one you choose. It shows its reasoning, including what it ruled out and why.
Usually the window: a file needing twenty-one days will not be offered for a ten-day trip. It also rules out files that are out of season in your month. Anything excluded is listed with the reason rather than quietly hidden.
There is a second engine for the continent, because the constraints are different - the Schengen ninety-day clock, ferry lengths, toll classes and vignette bands. Both engines read the same van profile, so the vehicle is set up once. The European archive is reached from the home page or the Journeys shelf.
Yes. Plans are saved in your browser and can be exported to your calendar. Your last briefing is remembered so it is still there when you come back.
04 / THE NATURE MATRIX
A wildlife, landscape and season calendar. Each entry carries the months it is realistically findable, a rarity from common to rare, and an honest note on what seeing it involves. It covers mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, flora, fungi, fossils, weather and dark skies.
354 entries for Britain and Ireland, and 2,333 for continental Europe across 18 countries. The two are separate sets - a red squirrel in Cumbria and one in Bialowieza are not the same sighting.
Common counts one, likely two, lucky five and rare ten. It is a way of keeping score with yourself over years, not a competition with anyone else. Britain and Europe keep separate ladders.
Entirely. It is stored in your browser and never uploaded. You can export it to a file, and clearing your browser data will delete it - so export it if it matters to you.
Watch from a hide, a road or a distance. Never bait, never approach, never block an animal's line of retreat, and never publish a location for a wolf, bear, lynx or a raptor nest. The recoveries are real but politically fragile, and a habituated animal is usually a dead one.
05 / YOUR VAN AND THE CALCULATORS
Seven tools for the arithmetic that decides whether a trip works: the vehicle master, off-grid power and water, trip budget, the launch checklist, packing, the access-card optimiser and the travel passport.
No. Set it once in the vehicle master and every calculator and both engines use it. Change it anywhere and it changes everywhere. It is stored only in your browser.
Payload is what is left of your plated weight once the van itself, its fluids and its driver are accounted for. It is usually far smaller than people expect, and it is the number that decides whether you are legal. Overloading is an offence and it changes how the van brakes and handles.
They are careful estimates from your own figures, not guarantees. Weigh the van loaded at a weighbridge before you rely on any payload number, including ours.
06 / PRIVACY, COST AND CORRECTIONS
None that identifies you. There are no ads, no tracking accounts and no cookies of our own. Everything you enter stays in your browser. Hosting is proxied by Cloudflare and analytics are cookieless. The privacy page sets out the detail, including which third-party embeds appear.
Yes, after the first visit. Install it to your home screen and the archive, the calculators and the engines all work with no signal - which matters more in a glen than it does at home.
It is not, particularly. There is a voluntary coffee link and that is the whole business model. No ads, no sponsored routes, no affiliate links in the recommendations.
Please send it. Every page carries a corrections link that opens an email with the page name already filled in. Facts carry the month they were checked, because that is exactly the sort of thing that drifts.
It is built and maintained by MAXFR LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 1455659. Contact is [email protected].
07 / STILL STUCK
If it is not answered here it is a gap worth filling. Questions are welcome and so are corrections — every page carries a corrections link that fills in the page name for you.
The blog goes deeper on payload, off-grid endurance, choosing a file and how the engine thinks.
What is stored, what is not, which embeds appear and how analytics work.
FOUND THIS USEFUL?
Everything here is free and always will be — the expedition files, the Nature Matrix, the seven calculators and the Trip Engine. Nothing sits behind a paywall, and nothing unlocks if you pay.
But if a file saved you a wasted weekend, or the Matrix put a puffin in front of your children, you are very welcome to stand us a coffee. It goes on diesel, ferries and the next expedition — which comes back up here, free, for you.
Fuel for the Nebuchadnezzar£10 · ONE PAYMENT →Entirely optional. One payment, never a subscription — and you can set any number up to ten at the checkout if you are feeling especially kind. No perks, no supporter tier, and absolutely no hard feelings either way.