camping or cheap hotels on a 4 week trip
 

if your camping in say europe .... wet and cold
if your camping in say morocco .... to hot !
and
you have to " lug " all that stuff with you !

cheap hotels for me every time !:scooter::scooter::scooter::scooter:

Independent hostels in the UK, https://independenthostels.co.uk/

I've stayed in maybe 20 so far. Often no more expensive than a camp site but without all the faff.

I'm just back from a four week trip and we used campsites, hostels cheap hotels, (and even the occasional expensive hotel (when my wife was paying!)). Good luck with solely depending on cheap hotels - this was one in northern Spain that we booked on line (and paid for in advance). When we got there it was shut. And it wasn't the only one we came across like that. In Burgos we had a choice of hotel or hostel in the same building. The hotel entrance was on the ground floor (as you'd probably expect). The hostel was on the 7th floor with no lift and a external metal staircase. The difference in price wasn't that great.

https://i.postimg.cc/qvHDhDGR/15th-Aug-Hostel.jpg


On the other hand this was a campsite we stayed in near Le Mans in France. It was in the grounds of an old chateau and had some of the best 'infrastructure' (toilets / showers / restaurant/ bar etc) of the whole trip. It was expensive for a campsite but still only much the same as the seventh floor hostel. Yer pays yer money as they say, and I agree that camping gear can turn a racehorse into a cart horse, but on a 'long' trip I'd prefer the flexibility that being able to camp adds.


https://i.postimg.cc/bv3m5yfD/IMG-0403.jpg

I agree. Camping gear might be a bit cumbersome, but you get used to it quickly - I carried a camping drybag on a 33-day cross-Europe trip, never needed it once, but it served me well as a backrest! And the advantage of having it with you is that can camp only in advantageous conditions. A warm evening, a nice secluded lake or a hilly view, no campervans or other tourists around... So you finish your trip, and you've only ever camped when it was enjoyable, using cheap hotels when it wasn't - that's the perfect way to go!

That's exactly what we did - camped when it was the preferred option, hotel / hosteled when that was the better bet, and 'scrounged' accommodation when that was possible / offered. The person I was travelling with belongs to Bunk-a Biker in the US and hosts bike travellers himself (three over last weekend) so he used it to find us occasional accommodation in France and Spain. That was a real eye opener for me and we met some amazing people as a result - even got invited to a wedding reception!

It's not all wonderful in the tenting world though, particularly if you're using commercial sites. Compared to some years back a surprising number have had to reassess their viability and particularly in inland Spain budget campsites were trickier to find than you might think. One we tried to book into had 'reinvented' itself as a skate park, another looked like it had been ploughed up and a surprising number on the coast have just been abandoned.

So funny that biking and going offroad by 4x4 has similar topics.

Doing serious offroad with an upgraded but overlaod(ed) overlanding rig - isnt the same funny experience than with an 4x4 in stock konfiguration but very lightweigt.

It is still possible, but will need more material, more power, more use of the winch.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wOd1JdgnjB...0/DSC03238.jpg

I answer the question about carrying camping gear in other words: if you ask here about carrying camping gear, you probably dont plan to use it - leave it at home :w00t:

Surfy

Depends where and when. I've seen temperatures below zero C in the Sahara and temperatures above 30 C lots of times in various places in Europe.

I think a key driver is cost - the only way for us to travel in Iceland and in Australia is camping - even cheap hotels are not cheap. Whereas in most of South America, Africa, and SE Asia you can find good hotels with rates less than an Australian or Canadian campsite.

Camp 90% of the time. Even in temps upto 45-50 degrees, it’s no fun in those temps but neither is a cheap hotel room.

I use a hotel in a few places if I want to be a certain part of a town or if I’ve done and long remote desert section.

How much is a cheap hotel for you?

Depending on location it would be mostly camping for me with the odd night in a cheap hotel or hostel in developed countries which is usually Europe or North America but when I go to South or Southeast Asia it is cheap hotels the whole way.

My last few road trips have been a mix of both. I'm okay with staying in a tent for a couple or three nights when the weather is decent, but my back appreciates the extra expense of sleeping on a proper mattress in a warm dry room with a hot shower and a coffee maker.

and .................. its the middle of the night ............. and you need a "P "
,,,,,,,,open the tent door all wet on you and get back and more wet !
nice hotel with warm bathroom ?

A few years ago i used to camp all the time , but as you get a wee bit older it does not have the same appeal !

anyway a hotel in Morocco is about £10 so why even think about the camp thing !!

Things got that bad have they. :rofl: I suppose it gets us all in the end :(

You're probably right and the reality (my observation of it anyway) seems to be that fewer and fewer people are tent camping. Festivals and special occasions, yes there's loads of people camping at those but during our recent trip it wasn't unusual to find that we were the only people in tents in the entire campsite. In the US we've been refused access to sites because we wanted to use a tent - 'camping' being something done in an RV, not under canvas (or nylon or whatever the fabric is).

It's not all wonderful in cheap hotels (or expensive ones come to that) though. I reckon I can't sleep in the bed in one hotel in three (roughly) as the bed is too soft and I end up with back pain in the morning. It's a little depressing to have to sleep on my camping mat in the hotel room while the bed I'm paying for is unused. :(

I quite like the quirky nature of some of those places and it looks like a site worth bookmarking. I'll have a browse through it in due course, but my initial look was a little eyeopening - I stayed in a campsite in North Devon last weekend that cost me £13, but the place across the road that's on the independenthostels site (I saw signs for when I was there) wanted £285. That didn't seem terribly competitive until I read a bit further and realised that was for 40 places. :rofl:

:oops2: dont get me wrong............. when you wake up in the morning and the sun is rising and your by a nice river , away from it and .:........... its dry and warm its great ........... but the reality is most days are wet and nights are damp . :Beach:me wild camping in wales !!

That's what a piss bottle is for, no need to go outside in the rain and if the lid seals well you have a hot water bottle for 20 mins or so...!!!! [emoji6][emoji1787][emoji1787]

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Never used one of those - I tend to just undo the zip ... :rofl:

Brung up in a barn before anyone says it :rofl:

I generally try to camp as much as possible to save money, and get a hotel once a week to shower/relax/wash clothes. That plan doesn't always work if the weather is nasty though.

Then kneel in it in the morning getting out of the tent...

One-litre plastic milk bottle works a treat, if you need more than that you've got a problem ;)

I enjoy camping (seldomly). I enjoy biking. I Just don't enjoy the combo.

Riding long days, day after day, camping doesn't give me the restitution I need. There is also a price to pay in terms of the opportunity to explore at your destination.

Setting and tearing camp, shopping groceries, cooking, doing dishes, personal hygene, laundry, drying out gear, regulating temperature, sleeping poorly, being cramped out, charging electronics... It all saps energy and time.

At my destination, I'm uneasy about leaving my gear behind - unlocked and unattended - so most often I stay put.

I only bring camping gear if there is a probability that I may be without any other options. In fact, I will rather ride several hours longer than planned to avoid pitching a tent. I do brin ag tent and sleeping gear on some trips, but for emergencies only, or for the odd chance where I really want to camp. I don't bring cooking gear food services are usually hard not to find on a long days ride. Even then, cold meals are ok sometimes also.

There are trips where camping is key to the experience - for me it is usually a shorter trip with two day camping in the same location - never a new camp every day. On these I bring all the creature comforts.

I get that people are on a budget - fortunately for me, my budget allows me other forms of accomodation as well as dining services. I respect tgat people enjoy camping as much as possible - it's just not for me when on motorcycle journeys.

I enjoy not having all that extra weight and clutter that camping gear involves - so I leave it at home and plan accordingly.

That about sums camping up !
You a dead right ................ after a long ride . who wants to start pitching a tent and all the faff that goes with it ............. give me a nice double bed with clean white sheets anytime

and .............. the next day you spend an hour trying to pack all of it away !

( tent icon ^^ ):eek3:

Hello

Camping allows you travelling in areas with no people and no hotels around for free.

Camping allows you travelling in areas with high prices for accomodation, usually there are campgrounds for $10-30, while hotels are in the 3 digits level.
Backpackers are good when you are young, but sharing a room with kids (18-30years) gets more difficult with age.

With good camping equipement that works for you, bad weather is less of a problem.

Areas with hotels for $10-30, have rarely nice campgrounds, so you really have to like camping to still do it.

In areas with hotels in the 3 digits level, camping is a no brainer, but if one doesn't like camping at all, take out the wallet.

4 weeks in Norway will have a different price tag than 4 weeks in Marocco, doing both the same way with hotels and restaurants.
But, you can do camping in Norway or hotels in Marocco for the same amount of money overall.


sushi

P.S.
With your own tent you don't have to worry about bed bugs and such...
More than once I put up my inner tent on a cheap hotelbed...

As a biker I would really look into ultra-lightweigt.

Small pack size, small weight

Unfortunately that is the most expensiv gear. :(

But all the basic gear, tent, mat, sleeping bag, cooker, pan, dishes would easily fit in a standard side bag - if cash $$$ isnt the point. On the other side you can easily stay 14 days in a 5 star hotel for that - but just once. :rolleyes2:

I think that's a trap. Much like an acquaintance of mine whose hobby was putting together the absolute lightest road bicycle he could. He'd gush about the new part he'd spent eighty euros on that saved fifteen grams off the bike's total weight! It's not the worst hobby to have of course, but he didn't care that all the savings totaled up came to less of a difference than the rider skipping breakfast.

I kind of started out that way when I was putting together my first camping bag. I still have the Coleman Biker sleeping bag - the vacuum-compressible stuff sack it came in was an absolute pain to deal with, and I was happy when it tore so I had the excuse to throw it out. I still use the sleeping bag, but just stuff it into the airbag that my sleeping mat came in.

My first sleeping mat folded down really small. But it was uncomfortable as hell. At some point I realized that if I can't get a good night's sleep, I simply will never choose to camp, and the whole rest of the setup makes no sense anyway - so I spent two hundred euros on what was, at the time, the absolute top-of-the-line thermarest. But it's not particularly small.

Ultralight backpackers will tell you to use your folded-up jacket as a pillow. Screw that, I loved the inflatable pillow I got at the Decathlon in Hong Kong.

This summer, my partner and I were doing a two-week road trip down the length of Norway, and she didn't really have any camping gear - only an oversized sleeping bag that she'd used for festivals and canoe trips. So she invested in a nice - not absolute best, but maybe third most expensive - Ferrino sleeping mat, and it's better than my thermarest. She got an inflatable pillow, and it's bigger and more comfy than mine. Part of our summer camping involved our 30+kg dog, so we got a nice big 3-person Coleman Festival tent with blackout windows and a separate "hallway" - it packs up only a tiny little bit larger than my old Darwin 2!

All of the stuff I listed in my post above, plus all of HER stuff, and the larger tent, fits into a single duffel that's larger than my drybag, but definitely still a reasonable size for me to put on my pillion. And since we were in a car, we could just leave the car at the trailhead and easily carry all the camping stuff a few hundred meters to a nice spot.

You're on a motorcycle - you're space- and weight-limited, but you're not THAT limited! In the world of camping gear, if you go for slightly above the absolute lowest weight and size, you get a MASSIVE comfort advantage. Gear that's maybe 15% bigger by volume will be 200% more comfy.

The thing about the ultralight absolutists, you have to remember, they are the sort of people who go on multi-day mountain trail runs, surviving on protein bars and dehydrated fruit skins, in the rain and snow, for fun. They are all confirmed masochists, and their camping setups reflect the fact that they derive pleasure out of their own suffering!