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Motorhomes and cars parked in a gravel stopover below jagged mountains
Topic · 02 / 06 3 pages No affiliate links

Aires: the official stopover, explained

Wohnmobil-Stellplätze von Grund auf erklärt, für Leute, die noch nie einen genutzt haben. Was sie sind, was sie kosten, und wie man sich auf einem verhält.

01 · Where to start

What do you want to know?

An aire is a public parking area set aside for motorhomes. Some are a corner of a village car park, some hold fifty vehicles, and a lot of them are free.

01 · France In France the word is aire, and the sign is a blue motorhome pictogram About 2,070 French sites are tagged free in OpenStreetMap 02 · Germany In Germany it is a Stellplatz, and the etiquette is stricter than the sign suggests About 1,041 German sites are tagged free in OpenStreetMap 03 · Italy In Italy it is an area di sosta, often run by the comune itself Same idea, different paperwork 04 · Services The service point: fresh water in, grey water and cassette out Free to park does not always mean free to fill
The anchor Start here if the word is new to you Every pick here is chosen on what it does for your trip.

02 · Aires

Everything you need before the first one.

Every aires page
Guide Service points: water, waste and how the borne actually works A borne handles three different things that first-timers mix up: drinking water, grey water and the chemical toilet. How to tell them apart, how to pay, and why the service point is often not where you sleep. Jul 20 Read Guide What is an aire? Motorhome stopovers explained An aire is a designated motorhome stopover, usually municipal, often free, and almost never a campsite. What that means in practice for a first-time visitor, with the rules cited. Jul 20 Read Guide Aires etiquette: the unwritten rules Most of the etiquette on a motorhome aire is written down somewhere, and some of it is law. The reference version: what is a courtesy, what is a house rule, and what carries a fine. Jul 20 Read

03 · From the blog

Latest in aires.

All posts
Blog Loire Valley motorhome aires: where to sleep at each château Chambord forbids overnight stays in its car park and charges 15 euros per 24 hours to park a motorhome there. Every other headline château on the corridor has an aire within 2 km, and the ones at Cheillé and Sully-sur-Loire are free. Sep 6 Read Blog Hauts-de-France motorhome aires: the coast is paid, the free ones are inland Ten to 15 euros a night between Le Touquet and the Baie de Somme, and Cucq bans motorhomes on its seafront from March to October. The free municipal aires are an hour east, and one of them has no water this year. Sep 4 Read Blog Motorhome aires in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: where the free ones are, and what the borne costs Parking is free at most of them and the service point is not: 2 euros at Neussargues, 4 euros for water at Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule. The free aires sit in the lowlands and on the valley floors, and winter shuts the tap before it shuts the bay. Aug 27 Read

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FreeCampMaps runs display ads and nothing else. Nobody can pay to appear on this page, to sit higher on it, or to change what we say about where you can legally stop. Where a link here goes to a shop or a manufacturer it goes there directly, without a tracking parameter, and we are not paid whether you follow it or not. The full position is in the advertiser disclosure.

Next step

See where the aires actually are

Reading about aires only gets you so far. France has more mapped free aires than anywhere else in Europe, and the map is the fastest way to understand the pattern: villages, lakes, edges of towns, and almost never a beauty spot.

Open the France map Start with the basics