Things to consider when buying a Motorhome

• Things don't move fast in France, they are much more laid back than Australia. Just know this and relax, and you will have a very pleasant journey.

• If you email a dealer from outside of France, they won't reply to you. You can imagine how many tyre kickers they get. This is where John was invaluable, when we found the motorhome we wanted, he did all of the communicating for us.

• Do you buy privately or from a dealer? If you buy from a dealer they will arrange the registration transfer for you and any upgrades you may want. Apparently pricing for upgrades is supposed to be the same everywhere, so we went with this information and didn't bother shopping around. It's just too difficult if you don't speak the language. If you are buying privately the seller will need to transfer the registration for you. We decided we didn't want to take the risk of having problems with a private seller transferring or not transferring the registration, so we opted to purchase through a dealer only. In France you can't transfer the registration it has to be done by the seller. The transfer of registration takes weeks, it's not done immediately like in Australia. You don't need to wait for the transfer of registration to take possession of the vehicle, but you are not supposed to leave the country until you have the papers.

• If the price on the motorhome doesn't say the price is negotiable, that means the price is not negotiable. Don't insult the seller by trying to get the price down. It won't work in your favour. They don't haggle the way we do in Australia, and it's offensive to offer less than the asking price, unless they have invited you to do so.

• Think about when and where you will be driving. Many roads in Europe and the UK are very, very, very, narrow, and sometimes you may be travelling through snow. Our motorhome is 2.1 metres wide, 2.6 metres high and 6.3 metres long. We wanted to reduce the stress and difficulty of going down narrow roads as much as possible so we opted for a smaller motorhome. And if you haven't driven in Europe before, you need to be aware that some roads are no bigger than one car width. There are plenty of people driving in larger motorhomes than we have, but often they will be restricted, and unable to access areas we were able to access, because our motorhome was smaller.

• Think about the payload. The payload is the difference of the weight of the motorhome when empty, and how much weight you have left to fill the motorhome. The payload includes the weight of everything, including that of the driver and all passengers, your water, grey water and even diesel. If the motorhome you choose doesn't have a large enough payload you can enquire before purchasing, as to how much it would cost to increase the payload. Just make sure that any increase you get still works with your licence type.

• Licence type. You can drive up to 3.5 tons on a C class licence. When you are looking at websites for motorhomes they generally list the licence class required to drive the vehicle.

• Layout of the motorhome. We were more concerned about the seating area. We didn't want cafe seats. We wanted to know that we could sit comfortably with our legs out on tandem lounges. We opted for a drop down bed so we would have more living space. The bed is surprisingly very comfortable.

• Storage, we needed a lot of storage capacity because we were going to be travelling full time.

• Winterised or not? We didn't consider this a major priority, but it was a consideration. We did luckily enough, buy a winterised, A class motorhome, and we are very happy indeed that we did. We would now only buy an A class motorhome to travel Europe full-time. The temperature control in the motorhome is amazing. We have had caravans in Australia previously that weren't winterised and we think that the difference in a winterised motorhome is a major consideration for travelling in Europe.

• Snow chains. They will be needed! Weather can change unexpectedly and if there is sudden snow you will need snow chains. Even if you have tyres suitable for the snow, signs will appear out of nowhere telling you that you can't drive unless you have snow chains. Getting snow chains for motorhomes will generally need to be done by order so think ahead. We purchased our snow chains from Norauto.

  It took a week for them to arrive and they cost us 199 euro. We got the easy self tensioning ones to make life super easy.

  Do your homework before buying snowsocks, if you are considering these instead of chains. I found out that the tyres on our motorhome are not designed for snowsocks and that they would reduce the wear of the tread. I also found out that snow chains are best for black ice, and we have just driven through several areas in France that have numerous signs saying that they frequently get black ice.

• Second set of Tyres. In Europe everyone who lives in an area that gets snow will have two sets of tyres because snow tyres are more expensive. Apparently you can change your tyres over and the tyre shop will hold your winter or summer tyres until you come back to swap over at the end of the season. I don't know if, or what the fee for this is. Our motorhome came with snow tyres and because we are in and out of the schengen at different intervals and different areas we decided to suck it up and use our winter tyres all year round.

• Security. Since we were going to be living full-time in our motorhome we wanted the best security. So we paid the extra and we got it. We had it done in Ireland. We have security that goes back to a base and notifies us if someone tries to break in. If the vehicle is moved and we have the shield on the security team will ring us immediately. If we are not driving the vehicle they can stop the vehicle remotely and they contact the police and advise them that the vehicle is stolen and where the vehicle is. We can also put security on if we want while we are sleeping. This means if someone tries to break in while we are there, the alarm would go off. This is our home and we just didn't want the hassle of something going wrong.

• Heating and air conditioning. This really depends on where and when you will travel. Even though we are used to hot weather in Australia, we don't really like it, well I don't anyway, so we intend on staying away from the extreme heat. This means we are likely to find ourselves in some pretty cold places sometimes. So we wanted a good heater for those cold days and nights. Our heater runs on gas. Even if you are going to navigate your travels avoiding the cold, you can be sure there will be unexpected cold snaps more often than you would expect. If you plan on free camping you won't be able to use the air conditioning, you will need power to use the air con. We didn't worry about air con and if we find down the track we need air con we will look at purchasing at a later date.

• Free camping, caravan parks or a mix of both. If you plan on free camping make sure you are set up for this. In Australia we generally have a lot of power because we set-up in one place for days on end, because the travel distances can be so long. In Europe you move on every couple of days and you don't have to drive for days. We only have one solar panel (160 watts) with a 150amp hour lithium battery. This has been more than enough for us. We only power up things like laptop, go pro, camera, drone and stick vacuum cleaner and occasionally the ebikes. We have only run out of power once in France while charging both ebikes at the same time, and after being stationary for 3 nights. It was an easy fix, we went to a free aire (local campsite), and we paid 3 euro for power for the night and recharged the battery. We have been pleasantly surprised how easy this works for us.

• Gas, we opted to have the Gas Flow system fitted with 2 x 13 kilo bottles. This means we can fill up the bottles before they are empty and we have the 3 different European attachments.

• The size of your fridge. We were fortunate enough that the motorhome we purchased had a full size fridge-freezer and not a bar fridge. We wouldn't want anything smaller than what we have. We initially thought it wouldn't be that big of an issue if we had a smaller fridge, but now it's a must-have for us.

• Reliability of vehicle. Do your homework and decide what vehicle you think is going to be most reliable. We had decided that we only wanted a Fiat or Mercedes base.

• Diesel or Petrol. Most motorhomes are diesel.

• Insurance, John from France Motorhomes does this as part of his service when you purchase the vehicle. We have breakdown service with our insurance and we are covered for all of Europe and the UK. The cost of insuring a motorhome over here is a little bit more than insuring a car back in Australia. We are insured with Allianz and we have a contact person who speaks English.

• Rear view camera. Our motorhome didn't come with one, so we had Libertium install one when they did the other work for us.

• Bike racks. Most motorhomes come with bike racks, if you want one, but your motorhome doesn't have one you can get one installed.

• What sort of bike to buy. We couldn't decide if we wanted a good old fashioned bike that uses only man power or if we wanted to have the easy option when we faced those daunting hills, and buy an ebike. After much to-ing and throwing we decided on an ebike. Why an ebike in the end? We realised we wouldn't regret buying an ebike but we may regret not buying an ebike. We generally ride without power and only turn the power on when we need to get up a big hill or get somewhere fast.

• TV, we decided we wouldn't buy a TV until we knew if we really wanted one. Travelling through Europe meant that local TV would mostly be in a language we didn't understand. We haven't missed TV at all, and we are grateful we didn't waste any money on one. We do like watching other youtubers and it was difficult for us to watch these together on a laptop, so we decided to buy a projector so we can watch these together. We also signed back up to Netflix so we could have movie nights. We purchased a white blind that we screwed into the ceiling, instead of projection screen, and it works perfectly.

• Filling your motorhome with things you need. When we need something we generally start at secondhand stores and op shops. This is obviously a more affordable way of purchasing things we need and also helps to reduce waste. There have been things that we have had to purchase new, but we have been able to get some things second hand.

• Make your motorhome, your home. We are slowly collecting things and decorating as we go. We like things to be a little brighter and homey. We find that motorhomes are very modern inside, which we appreciate, but it's not our thing. We don't want to spend a lot of money and we want to know that one day we can return it to its original state when we sell. So if you are coming from Australia and you are like us, bring lots of Blutac (we couldn't find blutac in Europe but later found it everywhere in Ireland) to put things up, and 3M hooks. 3M hooks are expensive over here and the cheap hooks come off easily. I love using hooks, they just create so much space. I have hooks inside cupboards for my beenies, rain jackets, backpacks, cables and I even store my spices in little zip lock bags and hang them from inside the cupboard doors. By the way zip lock bags are hard to find here. I had our son bring some over when we met up in Ireland. Also if you want soup spoons, you won't find them in Europe. Bring some with you or you will have to wait until you hit the UK to buy some.

• Bed sheets and pillowcases. I don't know if it's only Australians who like top sheets, but I couldn't find any in Europe. Also it's hard to find normal pillowcases in Europe, they are all European pillowcases. We had to fold the pillowcases around the pillows to make them fit. I had my son bring some pillowcases and sheets from Australia as well (and soup spoons, I can't eat soup from a normal spoon, it's just wrong, wrong, wrong) when he came over for a visit.
  We will be doing a video with how much everything cost us from creating the Societe Civile to buying hooks, and you can have a tour of our new home.
  There may be other things that you think are important considerations, let me know if you think we have missed something important. We would love to hear what you think is an important consideration when buying a motorhome.

These are just our thoughts and they may or may not work for you. Let me know if you have any ideas or must haves for motorhome travelling.