OUR VERY HANDY PURCHASES

Travelling in a motorhome isn't as simple as pulling up anywhere and we need to occasionally find places to top up water, empty waste (fun fun!) and recharge the batteries. These are called Aires or Stellplatzes depending on where you are in Europe. I found an awesome UK website, Vicarious Books, that is devoted to selling motorhome books. Apparently there is a big enough market for that. We bought:

• All the Aires Mountains: a unique motorhome ski and mountain stopover guide covering the Spanish and French Pyrenees, including Andorra, the Alps including Austria, France, Italy, and Switzerland, sections of Bavaria in Germany, Sicily, Tenerife, the Sierra Nevada in Spain, and LPG stations in all countries.
• All the Aires France: a detailed list of 2100 French Aires inspected in the second half of 2010. 
• Reise Mobil Bord Atlas 2011: contains details of 3353 German Stellplatze and 1647 Aires in Europe. Unfortunately this guide is written in German and, while I did study it for the HSC in 2005, the words for waste disposal, campervan and electricity weren't part of our vocabulary list. Luckily there is an app that can do the job for me. 
• France Passion 2011: Motorhome owners who display the France Passion sticker can stay overnight or for 24 hours at one of the 1600 participating farms and vineyards free of charge. Although we can't refill water or dump waste, France Passion is one of those schemes that really lets you get into the local culture. Plus you can try or purchase the wine, champagne, olives, honey, meat, snails, milk and cheese that is made on the property. 

As we didn't want to be lugging too many books around we turned to the lovely advances of technology for other guides. We bought the Lonely Planet Guides to Germany, France and the UK for the Ipad and they are so awesome to read and use.

Hopefully all these purchases prove useful as they didn't come cheap. We'll keep you posted.