Our First Aire
So on Saturday we had our first taste of camping on an Aire in the MH. Not in France as you may think but Canterbury.
Never stayed in one before so it was a new experience and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a bit tight staying on what is effectively a car park at the New Dover Road P&R but we slept well, there are services for water, waste and black waste if needed and its easy to find.
We arrived early as we were not sure how popular it was but found 5 or 6 spaces when we arrived at about 2:30. We went into town on the bus did some shopping and had a meal and a drink. There were a few more spaces when we returned to town so obviously some people only used it as a car park for the day before going off to a site.
Quite a few foreign vans there including 1 UK and 3 foreign Knaus MH's.
So for £6 it was good value, Canterbury got quite a few ££££'s from us for the shopping we did and eating out plus others would have visited some of the tourist attractions so it only leads to the question why cant other councils set up the same thing on a P&R site to attract MH visitors and take some pressure off the main sites (York, Bristol, Bath come to mind). I know travellers put some councils off but it seems to work in Canterbury so why not elsewhere and as its now the C&MC should the club be tackling councils to do it? Does not have to be 20 bays in smaller cities/towns, Winchester have MH parking at the P&R but no overnight, a simple change maybe, it attracts visitors who spend money etc.
Comments
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Just be careful of the mindless thugs that patrol these area's looking for an opportunity to nick something heard of all the bad reports in France. l would like to know what the security is like here in the UK. My brother has done it abroad up to now know problems but like you he has motorhome, l my self like the freedom of a car hence the caravan. If we ever change can't see us doing it like the security the C&MC offer us
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I know someone who has used this facility and been pleased. May try it ourselves.
With regard to mindless thugs and security we take our motorhome off site and park it so it's vulnerable if you think that way. Sensible precautions help but nothing can prevent everything. I've got it to use not worry over. Personally I think you've vulnerable on the roads the way some people drive!
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what mindless thugs have been reported in France?
perhaps you're thinking like a caravanner and the motorway services that are sometimes referred to as 'aires'....
would i overnight on a motorway service station here or France, almost certainly not, as there are many other options open to us.
the thousands of town/village aires in France (and the rest of Europe) are perfectly safe to stay on, we (and many, many others) have been doing it for years.
i agree with Michael, it doesnt take much, physically, to alter a few P&R spaces to allow MH to use them at a similar tarrif , but it does take a mighty big change of mindset and comments about mindless thugs wont help the cause.
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As Baker says as soon as you go on the road the opportunity to have something stolen increases. Here it is just as I say a car park but we felt safe with lots of others around us, set the alarm when not in the van like normal and also at night so no different to a site really. Never been on one abroad yet but would use common sense and if the area felt dodgy would not stay and I think most of these scare stories are just that. I am sure some people get some stuff stolen if they leave it out same as here in the UK but so long as you lock up and alarm on I see no difference to a club site, in fact with less people who are all MH's there is a camaraderie to maybe look out for each other.
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in a nutshell, Michael
we used 4 (new to us) stopovers on the way down to Spain and felt perfectly secure in all...
a four van aire in Les Sorinieres (Nantes)
a Masy Mas supermarket car park in Irun (Spanish border)
an aire/carpark in Teruel, Spain
a quiet road between the two aires at Anglet nr St Jean de Luz (both aires were full, lol)
I'd have no hesitation in using these or other new aires on the long road south....
enjoy.
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Heethers, presumably you base your experience on the 120 CC sites in the UK and not the over 7000 Aires, Stellplazen and Sostas in France, Germany and Italy.....plus thousands in so many other countries.
We have never come across crime in any shape or form in over 50 years of European travel....but no doubt there is some....somewhere?
I can understand your concern about parking on motorways, in any country, but don't take your bikes to Clumber Park CC site in the UK
Happy travels where ever you visit
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Glad things went ok for you MT.
Not a formal aire (no water or waste dumps), but a very good stopover we found via a MH website, is the big Leisure Centre car park in Stratford upon Avon. It has dedicated large overnight spaces, a very good dog walk adjacent and when we took a chance on staying, turned out to be safe, quiet and ideal for what we needed. Has CC cameras as well. It was £3, from 8pm, to 8am next morning. You can of course move into a parking bay closer and use the LC facilities and cafe if desired, but we moved on and had a lovely breakfast at Evesham Country Park, about 20 minutes away. I think there was an HGV also parked up for night, but no noise at all, we were pleasantly surprised.
We don't tend to be nervous parkers luckily, but didn't find anything to be worried about here at all. By the time we arrived, after 11pm, everything was very quiet, no one around at all.
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Well, we have been going to France for over 35 years. First of all in tents, then we changed to caravans and for the last 17 years a MH. For the last 14 years we've been going twice a year since being lucky enough to take early retirement.
In all that time we have only been the victims of crime once: it was when we were camping in a tent, in France on a campsite, in the 80's. Whilst we were out someone stole some cigarettes which we'd bought to take home for friends, and which, stupidly, we'd left in the tent. Others around us had also been robbed of various items.
So, thefts also take place on campsites. Someone else mentioned Clumber Park; they've had to put lock-up sheds on that site in order to keep bikes safe.
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its funny, i'm a bit paranoid about locking the electric bikes when popping into a supermarket....i do it here and have carried this over on our Continental trips.....
...however, almost no-one else does this.....the Dutch dont seem to bother, the Germans dont seem to care either.....perhaps they've never been to Clumber Park.....those pesky CC sites are real hotbeds....
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I've camped or m/homed a great deal around the continent for more than 40 years and never, ever, had any cause for concern about theft or vandalism.
If my m/h was broken into it would be a nuisance but in fact there's never anything in it that isn't either insured or of no sentimental value.
The best I'd find if I broke into my own m/h would probably be the couple of bottles of St Emilion or the emergency stock of tinned of cassoulet.
The only vandalism I suffered was when feral cats shredded my tent on a 3 month European tour on my 64 year old motorbike. I was in a local bar at the time.
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