Our European Wild or Free Camping Locations
The majority of our locations are unpaid spots but there will be a small number of inexpensive aires or campsites. The small percentage of paid sites are from when we first set off on our travels and had little experience. Alternatively, they could be places where wild camping is not permitted or where we felt it was in our best interest to park on a site.
What Does Wild Camping Mean To Us?
Wild camping is basically heading out into the wilderness or unchartered territories to camp for a night or two. Unlike regular camping, wild camping means heading away from tourist attractions with amenities such as electricity and running water and instead truly getting back to nature. For us, we always aim to find a wild camping spot that captures the best view of our surroundings. We love to find wonderful places that are unique and help make our travels special – like in the middle of the Tuscan countryside, a remote Greek beach cove, Norwegian Fjord or Austrian mountain ledge. However, we always make sure the sleepy spot is safe, not on a main road, not parked on someone’s property or will cause a potential issue.
City Parking
When in cities or towns grabbing a stunning view is not always easy but we do try! We always hunt around and consider the surroundings, safety, ease of access, noise etc before selecting our spot for the night. Sometimes a simple secure car park might be the best option for zipping in to a city before heading back out in to the surrounding countryside.
Is It Legal to Wild Camp?
Each country is different, so do your research before you go but if you are ever in doubt just call in to a local police station and ask. We have always found the local police to be most helpful and quite often giving you the nod on where best to go!
As a general rule of thumb ‘camping’ means setting your stall up just like you would on a campsite…awning, tables, chairs etc. This is usually not permitted. ‘Parking’ is pulling up, not setting your stall up and sleeping the night, this is usually permitted. But as with everything common sense is usually your best guide to whether you can or can’t.
Be Different
Wild camping is becoming increasingly popular with motorhome owners who are tired of going to the same old camp sites year after year and would rather travel and explore natural surroundings.
You can just see Vin on the edge (top right)
Data Capture
Like with most things in life, we never expected our wild camping GPS locations to be of much interests to anyone. Until we shared a file or two and everyone went nuts for it. So at the beginning of 2016, we built our own database to capture and store all parking spots. Once we were happy with the format, we input all our historic GPS locations that we’d collated since December 2014 and hey presto… one database of Our Bumble GPS locations. Click here for the database
