kirsty lunnWe are currently one month in to our full time motorhome travels around Europe and the UK, so we thought we’d do a breakdown of what we have spent so far, to hopefully help give you an idea of the cost to travel Europe for 1 month full time.
Obviously, the cost will be different for everyone depending on your budget, the things you want to do and how you spend your money etc.
For us, we’re on a budget, so we haven’t been over-spending on anything and have been quite careful with how we have been spending our money, as we want our travels to last as long as possible!
Within this first month we have travelled France and are part-way through our Italy travels. We have travelled almost 2500 miles. We have been travelling quite quickly as there is just so much we want to see and do, of course if you plan to take your travels more slowly, then you will most likely spend even less.
Our travel breakdown is based specifically on van life travel, which is what we are doing. If you are backpacking or travelling in a different way, then the cost may be completely different.
Cost to travel Europe for 1 Month Breakdown
| Monthly Expenses | Month 1 – £ |
| Phone | 59 |
| Wifi | 41 |
| Lottie Pet Insurance | 10.41 |
| Music Subscription (Spotify/Apple Music, Etc.) | 9.99 |
| Van Finance | 368 |
| Changing Expenses | |
| Fuel | 635.2 |
| Gas (LPG) | 21 |
| Campsites | 290 |
| Parking | 17 |
| Groceries | 699.35 |
| Eating Out | 93.45 |
| Laundry | 10 |
| Miscellaneous (park fees, gifts, etc) | 41 |
| Attractions | 28 |
| Tolls | 90 |
| Cash | 150 |
| Total: | 2563.4 |
Overall, our first month spending was roughly where we wanted it to be, which we’re really pleased about. We thought we might overspend as it was our first month, we didn’t know how much things were going to cost so it was unknown to us. Now that we know more about the cost of things and we learn as we go on, we can use this to help us plan our future travels.
We have split our costs into monthly expenses and changing expenses. The monthly expenses are fixed items that will come out of our bank account and cost the same every month, so we know that these are standard costs.
The changing expenses are things that will change every month depending on where we are travelling and the cost of living in these places.
Fuel is our biggest outgoing cost, especially at the moment due to the increased fuel prices following the Coronavirus pandemic, and also, at the time of writing this post (March 2022) Russia are invading Ukraine and that also has resulted in an increase in fuel prices. The reason for this is that a massive proportion of the world’s fuel comes from Russia, especially in Italy as 45% of their fuel actually comes from Russia.
You will see we have spent a very small amount on gas so far. We have a Gaslow refillable gas system, which we have spoken about in our van tour YouTube video if you would like to find out more.
We have found this to be a lot more of a cost effective option than swapping out gas bottles, and also a more widely accessible option. We are travelling in off-season so, especially at the start of our travels, it was quite cold so we have used our gas for heating, cooking, hot water etc so you will see how little this has cost us.
Food is our second biggest outgoing. We have actually only eaten out maybe twice in this month. If you look at the cost of eating out, £93.45, this is quite expensive, but this is because the places that we did eat out were expensive touristy spots, which brings inflated prices. Our biggest food cost has been our supermarket shops. The cost of food also seems to have increased we feel since the coronavirus pandemic.
We have spent more than we wanted to or expected to on campsites. We didn’t pay too much for campsites in France as there is an abundance of good, free places to park-up, but we have found this to be different in Italy. It’s more difficult to find free places to park, and when you read the reviews of free spots, there does seem to be an increase in the crime rates, so we have found ourselves paying for campsites more often, just for the added security.
Tolls is also something we have spent a lot more on since coming to Italy. We didn’t use any toll roads at all in France but have been using them a lot more often in Italy because for some journeys they save hours and hours of driving time. We are not in any rush, but when you are travelling and driving as much as we are, some days you just want to save hours where you can.
Also, the roads are not very good in Italy. They are full of pot holes and not in good condition. This is another reason we have chosen to take toll roads as the motorways are the best roads. The backroads can also be small and difficult to navigate in a large motorhome or campervan, which can make for stressful driving, so this is the reason we have spent quite a lot on toll roads since getting to Italy.
We would say our monthly cost increased a lot since we came to Italy, compared to France, due to the increase in paying for more campsites and toll roads.
There are also a few other outgoings such as the cost to get the Eurotunnel, our travel insurance and motorhome insurance, which we haven’t factored into these costs as we paid for these up-front before we started our travels, so it’s important to bare in mind extra costs like these.
We really hope this post has helped you to understand how much it may cost to travel Europe for 1 month, and hope it has reassured you that it doesn’t have to be too expensive and that it is possible to do on a budget.
We will be doing this budget break down for each month of our travels, so that we can see how the cost compares when we travel to different countries.
If you have any questions at all, please do leave a comment on this post, we would be happy to help!
Keep up with our full time van life travels over on our YouTube channel! If you enjoy our videos please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel 🙂 – Three As A Bird – Vanlife Travel – YouTube
You can take a look at some of our other van life posts which include lots and lots of hints and tips on all things van life here – Van Life – Travel Information, Hints, Tips and Advice (threeasabird.com)
If you’d like to follow more of our adventures or keep up to date with our travel hints and tips, please join our Facebook group, we’d love to connect with you all! –https://www.facebook.com/groups/309295536220437
