You just enter a location and the app will show a map with all the campsites close to that location.  You can then zoom in and out of the map to get down to the finer details if you want to.  If you hover the cursor on a campsite flag then you will see it’s name and you can then click on it to get the information about the campsite.  From here you can click on the campsites website if it has one and then see even more details.  On the right of the screen you also have a listing of all those campsites and you can scroll through these until you see one you like the sound of, click on it and then see the detail behind it.  The details give you the address, contact number, email, website if it has one, detailed map location, description and a list of facilities.  It really couldn’t be easier.

I have both the iPad and the iPhone app but I much prefer the iPad app because of the larger screen and because you get to see the map.

On the iPhone you input the destination and then get a list of the campsites nearby and you can then scroll through these and again click on one that you are interested in to get the detail.  These details are the same as the iPad but without the map detail.

There are 900 or so campsites listed and the cost of the iPad app is £1.79 compared to the book at £9.99 and the iPhone app is free.

It’s a real bargain and once you get it you’ll realise just how easy it makes choosing a campsite in and around your destination.

Related posts:

1. Le Guide Official Camping & Caravanning – 10,336 sites listed throughout France

The important thing you need to know is that it is written in French.  Oh dear, too bad, won’t bother then I hear you say but don’t worry it is very easy to understand because at the front of the book the symbols for the campsite information are listed in English. Phew, that’s alright then.

When you look at the various regions in France you will be amazed at the huge number of sites there are, many more than we ever get offered in UK publications.

As a good example of this we like to visit the Bourgogne region around Chalon sur Saone and Tournus, just north of Macon, and we usually have a choice of 3 sites but this guide has around 20 minimum.  It’s a great book for those of you that like to try something different or travel around to quite a few sites in a particular area.

The book can be purchased from Vicarious Books for £12.50 with free postage.

If you’ve never used Vicarious Books then check them out anyway, they have a huge number of great books either written for or with Motorhomes in mind.

No related posts.

One-Chem is a family of Formaldehyde free products that work extremely well and thankfully the smell doesn’t cause you to turn up your nose and wince.  We used to get some very strong nasty smells from our Motorhome holding tank with our previous products but One-Chem has got rid of those completely.

I also love the idea that you put the same fluid in the toilet flush system as you do the waste tank, that way everything is the same colour and smell.  I’ve also noticed that the toilet flush water keeps the colour and scent all the way through until it’s empty whereas with our previous products it used to fade well before I’d used it all.

The products are extremely easy to use and I’ve noticed more and more site shops and retailers selling them, so if you spot them don’t hesitate to try them for yourself; I can assure you, you won’t regret it.

I’ll carry on using One-Chem for the rest of the year and let you know how it goes but already I can’t see me changing back even though I’ve still got some of my old Thetford products left over – maybe I should just give these away and have done with it.

No related posts.

I bought the Thule Rideon 9502 and I must admit it looks very good when fitted.  I’ve had a dummy run – well actually a dummy bike fit – and it seems fine.  The plan is to take the bikes on their first ride early in March somewhere nearby, that way I won’t get neck ache stretching to see if they’ve fell off yet.  I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Just bought a bike cover that probably won’t fit very well because it assumes that the bikes are facing the same way and it has extra bulk at the handlebar end.  Unfortunately you are supposed to reverse the bikes on the bike rack so I need a bit of bulk at both ends.  I think that most bike racks are like that by the way , balance, space and all that.  Handlebars side by side are really wide whereas a handlebar adjacent to a saddle is fine.  Simple isn’t it.

So why do we have to live with manufacturers who have no experience with the real world.

Painful isn’t it.

No related posts.

I took it to a place called Towtal, based in Stoke, where they fitted it in a day. It was extremely painless and getting to Hanley to do some shopping or something to eat is an easy bus ride away. If any of you need a towbar fitted to your Motorhome then don’t hesitate to contact them.

No related posts.

One-Chem Cassette Toilet can be used in both your flush and waste tanks and One-Chem Holding Tank looks after your grey water tank. They both have a pleasant fruity flavour and don’t have that distinct chemical smell you get with other products.  They also both have  a clever measuring device which ensures you don’t overdose and waste money and they both work extremely well.

We had no problems with our toilet cassette and emptying it caused no distress at all – I’ll never call this job pleasant but One-Chem certainly helped.  The best part for me though was the fact that I also used this product in my flush tank and this was excellent.  The flush water turned blue in the tank and remained blue throughout and there’s something natural about the toilet flushing blue into a holding tank containing blue liquid – if you see what I mean.

I’ve said before that I have always used Thetford products previously and one of the issues I had with their flush tank product was that when I initially filled it it would flush intense pink but soon afterwards it would flush with water colour only and it was as if the fluid and the water never mixed properly.  One-Chem Cassette Toilet certainly seems to mix very well and this mixture remains until the flush tank is empty.

One-Chem Holding Tank also has a pleasant smell and seems to permeate up from the tank to the kitchen sink and gives you a confidence that previous unpleasant smells will be a thing of the past.  I do need to test this for a longer period though to be completely sure and of course summer has now unfortunately gone and that is when the holding tank smells are at their worst – maybe I need to go off to Spain for a month to be sure of the best test – I wish!

The big thing with these products is that they are both environmentally friendly, biodegradable and formaldehyde free and I’m sure that’s what we’re all looking for.

I’m very happy to keep using both these products and in any case I’m going to continue with the trial and report back on progress.

No related posts.

If you’re anything like me you know you have to clean up, you know you have to destroy germs, you need to get the most powerful products and yet you hate using chemicals.  We even have a stain remover made from Bananas; and it works.

The beauty about this product is that it uses no chemicals at all and yet it lifts dirt like a magnet and will kill 99.99% of harmful germs.  I don’t imagine it will be long before it is available over here and of course as it sells more and becomes more readily available it will reduce in price.  I can imagine some of these huge companies that make a fortune manufacturing and selling cleaning products will be shaking in their boots at this news.

This story is featured in a fantastic online magazine called Springwise that provides, and I quote, ” your daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas “.  It’s a great magazine and is full of new and wonderful ideas, inventions and products, some of which are here now and others are in the pipeline.

Click here to read this article and more in Springwise and while you’re there you should sign up for the daily newsletter, it’s great.

No related posts.

I’m going to focus on the chemicals we use in the cassette toilet waste tank, the flush tank and the waste water tank because these are the ones that may or may not be an issue for the environment and for us.  I use three different types of chemicals, all Thetford products, Aqua Rinse for the toilet flush water, Aqua Kem Blue for the toilet waste tank and Tank Freshener for the waste water tank.

There are other products on the market of course, it’s just that because I have a Thetford toilet in my Motorhome then I use their products, a natural thing to do.  I have looked into this issue in detail and I must say that there is an awful lot of conflicting evidence around.  There are reports of people feeling unwell and nauseous when they are away in their Motorhomes for more than a week and they put this down to the particular brand of toilet fluid that they use.  We don’t think that we’ve ever been affected by this but in reality we wouldn’t actually know because it has never occurred to us that if we have felt unwell it has been due to our chemical toilet.

The key chemical in this mix that as far as I can tell does the most damage is Formaldehyde for the following reasons :

1. It’s moderately toxic to humans and can burn your skin and make you blind – bad stuff
2. It seems to be accepted as a carcinogen to humans
3. The way that Formaldehyde works is that it kills the bacteria in your waste tank and if this is then emptied into a septic tank then it will disrupt the way the septic tank works and it may become ineffective.  One of it’s uses is as an embalming fluid so you can imagine what it does.
4. Formaldehyde has been banned for certain product use in a number of countries for all the above reasons

This chemical is the one that is most used in the toilet waste tank to prevent smells.

I’ve decided I want to be Formaldehyde free but this isn’t as easy as it seems because of all the conflicting information around.

Thetford in the EU don’t mention that their products contain or do not contain Formaldehyde but they do say that Aqua Kem Green can be used in septic tanks.  On that basis I wouldn’t want to empty my waste containing Blue into a septic tank.  However, Thetford in Australia state that neither Aqua Kem Blue or Green contain Formaldehyde and that both can be used in septic tanks.  Are they different products then?  Until I understand fully whether Aqua Kem Blue does or does not contain Formaldehyde then I’m going to stop using it.

This is an interesting slant from Thetford on ” the real truth about Formaldehyde “.   I have also seen a material safety sheet about Aqua Kem from 2 years ago that states it does contain Formaldehyde.  Confusing isn’t it.  I did email Thetford and asked them the direct question but haven’t had a reply so I’ll try them again.

Blue Diamond Toilet Fluid Blue states that it does contain Formaldehyde whereas it’s Green version says it doesn’t so thanks for that level of honesty.

There are some new products available called One-Chem and one of their selling points is on the basis that they do not contain Formaldehyde but are strong enough to do the job and they are biodegradable, so good for septic tanks. They have a number of products but the ones I’m mainly interested in for this exercise are:

1. One Chem Cassette Toilet – you can use this for your waste and flush tanks
2. One Chem Holding Tank – you use in your waste water tank and apparently this has a long lasting life cycle which will be good because our holding tank does smell sometimes

I’m going to give these a trial over the next month or so and I’ll report back on how well they are working as I go.

In the meantime it would be great to hear what anyone else thinks about this issue so why not send us your comments.

No related posts.

Actually finding out what our Motorhome tyre pressure is supposed to be is difficult in itself and seems to be a closely guarded secret.  Our previous Motorhome was the same and I’m sure yours is no different.  The Peugeot handbook gives you the tyre pressures but of course these are for the Boxer van and the Autocruise Starseeker handbook doesn’t mention it.  I have discovered though from talking to my dealer that they should be 60psi; now that wasn’t difficult was it; well yes actually it was.

That actually turned out to be the easy part after all.  The hard part is keeping them inflated and we all know that over or under inflated tyres wear more and can cause handling problems so it’s in all our best interests to get it right.

Now the fun starts.

I started off with an electric automatic pump that you plug into the lighter socket and off you go.  Well actually no you don’t because at 60psi the gauge is not accurate, the thing kept stopping for no reason and in the end I decided it couldn’t hack it so I’d go for a foot pump.

OK, so for those of you that have used one of these foot pumps you’ll know that they are extremely unstable and the frame tends to twist if they’re not on very level ground and then the thing collapses from under your foot.  Rubbish.  I tried another and another but with the same result.  You can stop laughing now thanks.

What can I do?  Oh I know, you’re not using the Motorhome every day so the tyres will stay at the right pressure for longer so no need to worry.  Good one that but not quite right.  It’s utterly amazing that in the face of adversity we can convince ourselves of anything.  By the way, waiting for the habitation check once a year is no good either although I did try to convince myself of that one as well.  Insane logic abounds when you’re desperate.

You’ll be pleased to know that I have finally cracked it, I’ve bought a beast.  The king of all foot pumps. The foot pump manna from heaven.  The real McCoy.  A double barrelled shotgun of a foot pump.

Its a Michelin Twin Barrel Footpump that has some great qualities:

• The gauge is accurate up to 100psi; it certainly is up to 60psi at any rate

• The hose is longer than normal so gives a better reach

• The twin barrel pumps would pump up an air balloon

• The stability because of it’s wide spread and bigger feet is amazing

• Your foot rests assuredly on the plate and you feel like you can pump forever

I love it.

If any of you need one of these beasts then get into Halfords as quickly as you can because they are reduced from £34.99 to £19.76 and worth every penny.

No related posts.

The first SatNav I had was a Navman that worked really well for around 3 years but because it was not supported by Vista I couldn’t synchronize it with my laptop plus Navman stopped issuing map and software updates for it.  The lack of map updates was the biggest issue and the one that caused me to search for another SatNav; one that I would be able to update, connect to Vista and one that had a great deal of support from the manufacturer.

I’m a bit anal about these things and treat buying something like this as a huge project so I read everything I can about them, produce my SatNav facility wish list, narrow down to my top 3, think again and then decide.  It’s a real big deal for me but it usually means that I get what I want.

So it was that in June 2008 I bought a TomTom GO730 SatNav together with a remote control and I’ve been very happy ever since.

With the season just about to kick off in earnest I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about these mysterious devices that we all call SatNavs in order to help anyone who’s thinking of buying one.

What is a SatNav : It’s a device that will get you from A to B in either the quickest time possible or the shortest distance which isn’t usually the shortest time.

What isn’t a SatNav : It’s not a mind reader nor a visionary nor has it any sense of what a Motorhome is.

Whilst a SatNav can be a real boon it can be a real nightmare as well and I’m sure you’ve all heard of the tales of woe caused by SatNavs directing motorists down dead ends, the wrong way up a one way road, the wrong town with the same name and in the extreme over a cliff – not sure if this last one’s true but I certainly read it somewhere.  My own personal experience of the wrongdoings and rightdoings of a SatNav are plenty and I’ll share a few with you now:

• We were staying at Norcenni Girasole Club in Italy just outside of Florence and had been on a day visit to Sam Gimignano when on the return journey the SatNav directed us down a road through Chianti country that looked fine and I thought would be very pleasant with lots of good views of country life.  It was just that for a while and then the tarmac stopped and the road became a black cindery slippery dusty thing that I thought would change back just as rapidly.  But no, it didn’t, and to make matters infinitely worse suddenly there was a hill and a bend and I didn’t make it to the top.  The front wheels were spinning and the more I tried to get going the more we slipped towards the edge of the road which had a drop of around 4 feet, enough to frighten the life out of me.  I kept having visions of toppling over the edge.  Some very friendly Swiss people stopped to help and rang a farmer to see if he would tow us off with his tractor but he was out in his field – how unfair – but did say that hat he would come along later.  The friendly Swiss family had to go but also said they would be back later.  Hey I thought, I’ve seen this stuff in the movies, just put a carpet under your tyres and you’ll be off in no time; well no, that doesn’t work.  In the end I reversed back down the hill with my wheels teetering on the edge and just hoping that everything held, which it did.  We managed to turn around at the bottom of the hill and went back the way we came.  I then reprogrammed the SatNav to use the motorways and we went the long way back.  We got back just in time to get a table in the site restaurant thank goodness, I needed a drink!

• Another cracker, but not as scary, was on the way to Florence we were driving on the ring road around Milan and whilst going around a roundabout the SatNav told me to take the right hand lane.  Sounds easy but there were three lanes to choose from and for some mysterious reason I took the centre exit and drove down into the centre of Milan and onto a road that looked just like a car park.  The SatNav recalculated a route and directed me along a couple of roads that took an eternity to travel down due to the excess of traffic, not to mention scooters, cars and lorries joining the road from what seemed like everywhere and then back up onto the ring road.  Well done SatNav.  The one piece of advice I would give to anyone driving a Motorhome down one of these Italian nightmare roads is to just move gradually along as traffic allows and not to worry about what anyone else is doing, they will avoid you.

• Another thing to be very wary of is if you miss a turning for some reason.  The SatNav will then want to reroute you back on track but in order to do this it will then send you down the first available road and this may not be suitable for a Motorhome.  Generally the roads we get directed down are fine but when this happens the SatNav seems to lose all reason and becomes obsessed with getting us back on track regardless, so it might be prudent to wait until you know you are being directed down a decent road before you turn off.   This is of course much easier in the UK than in Europe and as I’ve said on a previous post the last 5 miles of any journey is the scary part.  Always follow the site directions when you get to this point.

The SatNav I use is a TomTom GO730 and it’s quite brilliant.  It’s a touch screen device but I use the remote control mostly because I hate fingerprints on screens of any kind.  You have a choice of computer generated voices, male & female UK and US, but I use the UK female, it just seems to sound kinder.  You can also download recorded voices of all kinds, some for free and some you have to pay for and there are thousands of POI’s (points of interest) that are available.  Some of the best ones that I use are location directions of the Camping and Caravanning Club sites, the Caravan Club sites, Camping Car Aires positions and Motorway Services and low bridge locations that give you advance warnings as you approach them.

It’s extremely important to keep your SatNav updated both with the operating software and with maps and TomTom are excellent at providing these.  You do have to purchase the map updates but these are essential if you want to feel secure whilst on route especially as the TomTom GO730 has full mapping for the UK and Europe.  There are also free updates (Map Share) that you can download and these are supplied by other users who might spot a map change whilst driving on a particular route, these come thick and fast and are very useful.  There are also speed camera locations for the UK and Europe but have a look at my Guide to Driving in France for information regarding this.

The beauty of the TomTom GO730 is that you can plan a route say from Leeds to Nice in France and it will calculate one continuous route whereas other SatNavs load maps on a country by country basis.

The TomTom GO730 also gives you the option of connecting an ipod if you use one and playing this through your Motorhome radio speakers.  The actual road directions come through an internal speaker that is very good and you can control the volume of this very easily.  If you’re playing your music at the time when the SatNav wants to give you directions then it cuts this sound off, speaks the direction through the internal speaker and then switches the ipod sound back on; neat.

The choices of SatNav are many as with anything you buy nowadays and it is of course a personal choice.

In January 2009 MMM ran an article on SatNavs and recommended the TomTom or Garmin as the best 2 to choose from with the particular model as a personal choice although the writer of the article recommended the TomTom as the number one choice because of ease of use.

In February 2009 the Caravan Club did a comparison of SatNavs and again recommended the TomTom.

My recommendation would be the TomTom GO730 for ease of use, excellent mapping, great facilities and the fact that it has never got me into trouble whilst driving my Motorhome.

No related posts.