Hello my fellow intrepid sitters.
My wife and I are on our third sit in a beautiful cottage in France. We have three more sits scheduled back to back (ish) over the next few months. Suffice to say we are loving it. So much so we are thinking of going full time, renting out our house in Portugal and hitting the road.
One option for us is to buy a motor home so we have a base between sits and set it up with an moped for smaller jaunts. We will do this primarily in Europe and was wondering if anyone else had done this and could offer any pros, cons, tips or tricks. Thank you all in advance.
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Hi @Oztravels , I’ll tag a couple of sitters who I believe travel in a motorhome from sit to sit. @Romana who I think sits around Europe and @IHeartAnimals in the US. I’m sure they will have some good advice.
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Hi @Oztravels , we do have a 36foot motorhome that we have been travelling with for the last 2 1/2 years. It’s in storage now as we don’t really need a base for a long time as we have back to back sits for the summer. The motorhome has been great and for our family of 5, it does get a bit tight sometimes, but almost every campground has a welcome/activity/work center so we utilize those to work/homeschool/hang out. There’s a few gaps we have between sits so on those, we will be taking a break from petsitting and staying in cabins. But yes, if you could set up a motorhome somewhere and just leave it there, it’s a great idea for a base. Although much smaller than a house, it’s all your own stuff so it does feel like home
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Motor homes are great for use in between sits, but please make sure you advise potential pet parents of this as some neighborhoods do not allow them or they don’t have adequate space in driveway or in front of home to leave them parked.
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Yes, I do the same. With a small buscamper traveling through Europe.
Parking a buscamper is mostly no problem at your visits.
The big advantage is that campering saves you the biggest costs on a trip: hotel and eating in restaurants.
Besides that, the freedom is invaluable.
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Thanks for your reply. Sounds promising. We may see you on the road. Have a great day.
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Thanks. Yes from caravanning around Australia for two years we fully realise that issue.
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We use our RV only recreationally, but FWIW: Many homeowners associations have restrictions against parking RVs. That plus the turning radius and parking space needed can potentially severely limit your ability to do various sits. Some RVs also are too large to pull into national parks, depending on the country and the park.
I mention the above, because you might want to consider such factors before buying. You might also want to rent and try out various RVs first.
I ended up choosing a Mercedes Sprinter RV (which is the width of a typical car, though longer), because my husband and I can park it in many more places than with most RVs. Ours also is purposely nondescript — you can’t tell it’s an RV vs. just being a regular van. That means we can park it in our driveway, even though we live in an HOA community. That gives us easy access to it and we don’t have to pay to store it offsite.
Sometimes, we drive it just to go to a restaurant, because we can order takeout, eat it fresh and hot in our RV, while we have our dog with us.
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That’s our next plan too. Our 36ft RV is in storage while housesitting and on travel days our minivan is absolutely stuffed. When we go through drive thru to get food it’s quite embarrassing. We have 5 people in the car plus all our belongings. I also dread it when we pull into a new HOs driveway and they come out to meet us. We open the doors and it looks like we just got evicted from somewhere and had to rush to stuff our car get out. Cargo vans are expensive but would make future travels a lot more comfortable
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We are pretty much full time Housesitters who started out as full time RVER’S when we sold our home in 2021. Now our RV is our “home base” when we return to Texas. During our overseas housesits we keep it in storage. For US housesits we often go by RV & preconfirm the availability of parking at our housesits. Our RV is a 20 foot Winnebago Travato that works great as a commuter vehicle as well.
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We would certainly welcome Motor Home sitters as we have a big drive where they can park up but use our house as well.
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Yes, I gave up my own home and have been travelling with a little motorhome from house sit to house sit for almost a year now, all over the UK, Europe and Morocco, and it has been a wonderful experience! Especially, as you can easily live for less than 1,000 pounds or euro per month this way, so you don’t have so much stress with having to work a lot. Just make sure that the vehicle is not too big - the smaller the better - and avoid the centres of big cities. Some cities such Madrid and Barcelona don’t allow old big diesel vehicles in at all, and in some such as in Zurich or Prague it is almost impossible to find free parking, so you have to leave the motor home at the outskirts, which causes me worries as I have all my belongings inside it. On the other hand, in rural locations I could always park right at the house.
The picture shows the little Citroen Romahome which I started out with and which’s size was perfect for one person and a hamster, but I switched it for the Mercedes Sprinter in May which I now find is unnecessarily big for easy travel and parking.
If you ever venture to the U.S. with your Sprinter, FYI, it’s pretty easy to park one that size, except in the densest big cities. Some folks ship them between continents, because RV rentals are more expensive for anything but short lets.
There are various RV’ers on YouTube and other social channels. My favorites are a Canadian couple named Eamon & Bec, who’ve taken their Sprinter-size RV from Canada to the U.S., Mexico, U.K., Morocco and beyond. They have a tea business that they run mostly from the road.
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A great inspiration. Thank you. I just need to trade my wife in for a hamster and I’m set 
Thank you. I will check their channel out.
Hi
We paid off our mortgage and moved out of our house in the UK eight years ago, initially into a fifth wheel on a friends farm and have now downsized into a 9m, 6ton motorhome. We’ve been volunteering for the last two years via another web platform and are recent members on THS, but have sat for Hosts we’ve volunteered with before. With THS we are half way through our first three month sit and booked up into the new year.
We’re finding it easier in the UK to leave the motorhome in storage somewhere near “home” where we volunteer, for free as long as we return occasionally to volunteer with them, which is great as we can see friends and family from there.
We would take the motorhome sitting, but finding longer term sits in the UK with the room to park greatly restricts your choice and your mobility while you’re there, especially if like us you fulltime in a larger MoHo. That’s not to say it can’t be done and we’re planning a Scandinavian trip next spring/summer (Angela got an Irish passport since Brexit) which will have a mix of THS, wild camping and volunteering.
We don’t get a huge income from our house rental, but being free from the bills associated with bricks and mortar is a financial game changer.
A moped sounds like a great idea (Just not for us) and if your living full time in a MoHo, sitting feels like luxury … space, appliances like dishwashers, even swimming pools sometimes, we’ve even sat a castle in Scotland!
The only caveat I would suggest, is don’t sell a property to by a motorhome, the former is hopefully an appreciating asset while the latter will inevitably depreciate.
Good luck in your adventures
Peter & Angela
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Hi @Peter_and_Angela
A warm welcome to the forum. So pleased you have found us here.
Thank you for sharing your story of volunteering, motorhoming, and now Trusted sitters.
Sounds like a tremendous adventure and please keep us updated as your ongoing travels.
What are your summer plans this year?
Looking forward to hearing about your Scandinavian trip next summer too.
