chocciegirl

Hi, Could anyone please tell me if there are regular Service Stations providing fuel and refreshments on the motorways driving from the UK through France and into Spain ? I will be driving a motorhome so need a little more space than a car to park it in. I see also there are many tolls to pay, how do you get to pay for these ? Also once in Spain is it allowed to park in Laybys to stop the night ? Many thanks in advance and apologies for maybe seeming a bit thick lol

Rosemary

Not thick at all. Look up the Michelin site it gives you all of the details that you need. I made sure that I had each lot of toll money in money bags ready so that I did not get flustered at the tolls. There are quite a lot of service stations which I think are also on the Michelin site. Not sure about lay-bys but surely you could sleep in your mobile home at the service stations.

Rosemary

chocciegirl

Thanks for your speedy reply Rosemary. I will take a look at the Michelin site. I was wondering about the laybys if I should not be able to find a service station , but if I can find out in advance where these are which hopefully now I can then I will indeed stay in the Service Stations.

Mitzyboy

As Rosemarie says, loads of service stations

There are also picnic areas, that tend to have a toilet block, often in amongst trees. Although nice to stop off during the day, I would caution about wild camping there overnight ... theres no security, and often no one else about.

dmu

Not recommended to sleep over in French laybys, nor at service stations come to that. There are too many "pirates" around, who seem to target foreign cars in particular, pretending to be plain-clothed policemen....
You can either pay tolls with Visa or the like Cards or in cash (€€€) at French toll booths - make sure you get in a "tall vehicle" lane, otherwise your roof will be scraped. On second thoughts, you'd need a lot of €€€ in cash for all the toll booths from North to South, so keep a CB handy.
Bon voyage!

whitelinen

Stay off the motorway and avoid being robbed or gassed.

Stay at proper sites overnight, AA and Michelin will list them.

adra04778

We used to travel by motorhome through the tunnel and on through France and down to Almeria until this last year, we now have started doing Santander as we sold the motorhome, anyway we just stopped on the back of petrol stations all the time without any problems, and if you do stay on the tolls then you are unlikely to be robbed on the stations there, as the stations have cameras on them, if you stop anywhere and don't put lights on chairs out etc, nobody is any wiser as to whether you are in your van or not, France has a lot of free parking or a few euros, so definitely no problem traveling through France, you can also miss a lot of the tolls if you want too by following the coast, the area around Barcelona has a bad rep for conmen flashing people down, but I have never met anyone this has actually happened too, we never go that way, we head to Granada from Madrid and if you google people being gassed it is supposed to be a miff, the profesionals say it is impossible to do and that the people who have been robbed have been sleeping deeply from exhaustion. If you don't have a dog, buy a dog bowl and lead and tie it up outside the door and leave water in the bowl on the floor as a deterrent, also if you buy a chain and feed it through each inside door handle and secure with a padlock, it is another good deterrent and stops anyone opening the doors from outside. Have a good trip, you could look on the forum on www.motorhomefacts.co.uk

jdr

There is also a law in Spain that only allows motorhomes to be parked on legal sites.
Although the police do not usually worry, last year near the park a lot got moved on.
Also the way the councils are short of money, fines for illegal parking could start to bring them in a few bob..

adra04778

If you are looking at parking up for days on end then I wouldn't reccomend you do it at the end of someones street, I was thinking on the over night period to rest, also the police told me that you can park anywhere a normal car can park if there is no sign to say otherwise.

dmu

Up to the OP to decide whether to take the risk, but autoroute pirates aren't a myth in France. I don't have any personal experience, but I read the French press....

Mitzyboy

Ive slept over in a motorhome in a service station before, and it wasnt a problem as there were so many people about.

I only wild camped once, in Scotland on the way to Skye in a layby in the middle of nowhere .... the wife always remembers it as she never slept a wink ... scared to death all night

Bri and Katee

We drove last summer in a car. Tolls are easy, take a credit card and insert into the slot in the toll gate. It debits the card automatically, no need for cash at all. The toll booths have sign above showing which ones take cards and which ones take cash, although the cash one's are usually easy to spot by the huge queues!

Services (Aires) on motorways in France are every six miles or so. But be aware that some are just camp/picnic areas to rest, others are fuel stations and of course the full blown fuel, hotel and restaurant type. Once south of Paris you may have trouble actually getting into them with the amount of vehicles parked up.

Signposting for them is really easy, much better than the UK, they have picture glyphs of what the station has and the distance to the next and what it has as well, ie knife and fork for restaurant, fuel pump for fuel etc.

Not sure what to recommend to feel safe in them. The busy ones are really buys with probably hundreds if not maybe a thousand or so people just milling around. The picnic type at night could be daunting as they are not illuminated. We never stopped in them long enough to find out. Longest was an hour during a deluge of rain, we slept in the car while it eased off.

EsuriJohn

Our friends who travel all over France and last year came down to Ayamonte to see us in their motor caravan always stop in the full sevice Aires overnight but park up with the lorries so that there is always plenty of people about and going on

mikelincs

Certainly in France on the toll roads, the ticket you get when you join the road is time and date stamped, if, when you leave the toll road, the time is greater than they allow, then there is a big surcharge at least as overnight camping is illegal.

EsuriJohn

Is this not just an Urban Myth how would commercial vehicles manage they have to stop for rest breaks and sleep. Just like they say you will get done for speeding I know someone who has done whole lengths around Le Mans at more than 100mph and not a word is said!