When Camping Abroad

By Author: David Davies
Total Articles: 9
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Camping abroad can be a daunting prospect. Not only are you stuck in a rickety tent miles from anywhere on a godforsaken strip of land in the middle of Europe, no one can understand you and neither can you them. I personally have never experienced the joys of a European jaunt but I hear good things about them.

In the interests of science and pure curiosity therefore I decided to look into what would be involved in setting off for a camping trip around Europe. The first thing one must consider is budget; nowadays everybody is very poor and therefore one must choose a location that is not only close enough to reach without extravagant cost, but one in which items necessary to a camping trip are not ridiculously overpriced.

This leaves you with a relatively limited number of options. All of the Mediterranean countries are in simply through climate, but the further east you travel the colder it gets so there is a magic cut off line around Germany. Of course in the summer months this all changes with Europe becoming one massive heatwave, but for the majority of the year you are pretty much limited to France, Spain, ...
... Portugal and Italy.

Then of course is the matter of transport: if you have lots of time to spare a ferry or even the channel tunnel may be your best bet, but if you only have a week or so then you will have to take flights. There are plenty of cheap flights to Europe but they all seem to centre around major cities which you would have to travel a long way out of to get to anywhere worth having a camping trip.

Say for the sake of argument you settle on Spain, find a cheap flight and manage to plot a route between various campsites along the Mediterranean coast. The next thing you have to do is get travel insurance that not only covers you abroad, but covers all of your possessions as well. Campsites are not the safest places in the world so you may need to get a fairly comprehensive deal. I recommend checking out specific internet sites that cater for campers. That said sites such as AA Travel Insurance might well give you the cover that you need. All that is required is a bit of foresight and shopping around.

Then you need to budget for food and activities and probably buy a phrasebook or two. With all that done you can sit back and enjoy your holiday. If the weather holds I can actually see it being a quite pleasant week or so away, but if there was the faintest hint of rain I would be longing for my tropical beaches and lovely hotel bed. Each to their own. Happy holidays!

David Davies is a travel advisor and recommends that you take out travel insurance or annual multi travel insurance depending on the nature of your travels.