may or may not be the cheapest option - if covering long distances fuel prices plus rental can be daunting. Such vans IMO are to base yourself in a compact area - camping fees for such vans also are not cheap IME. Car and tenting can be really cheap but camper vans on a wide ranging tour I think not the cheapest. Investigate also railpasses.

palairet,

on our recent trip to France, we were really surprised to see how many camper vans there were parked near where we were staying in northern Brittany. There seemed to be a special part of the car-park set aside for them which they were using as a semi-permanent site. I'm sure this can't be the only place to have such a site. google might help you find more.

lots of people go touring in camper vans in europe. in the uK, the caravan club is the organisation to know about these things - you could try them.

Find out the price of the rental for a camper van, then compare it to a car rental without the CDW (assuming your credit card will carry the CDW) and the cost of hotels and B&Bs. In France we found the "2 ears of corn" B&Bs quite acceptable although usually located in the countryside, but then the van campground will tend to be out of the cities also.

http://www.kemwel.com/

http://www.gites-de-france.com/location-vacances-chambre-hotes.html

http://www.france-balades.fr/index_us.html

Other countries will have similar listings.

whether a camper van makes sense depends in large part on where you are going/what you are doing.

If you are going to any major cities like London, Paris (or even lots of smaller cities), a van will be next to useless since driving them into the city centers and parking are really difficult. Or parking them near train stations to day trip in.

If you are mainly staying in the countryside a camper van could make sense. But there are tons of very inexpensive accommodations around so a van might or might save you $/£/€ They do give you some flexibility -- but then you are also tied to where the camp sites are.

Before making any decision look very carefully into the costs - including gas at $8 to $10 per gallon. Also - I would definitely not rent in the UK and try to drive all over the continent with such a vehicle on the wrong side of the road - even if the rental company will let you (may well not).

Thanks guys for all the replies.

I'm quite confident about our choice to go for a campervan.
I mean a campervan (not much bigger than a car) and not a motorhome as it is much easier to drive and to find places to camp.

We've done it 5 years ago (with a van that we had bought)and we found it very convenient. Sure petrol is not cheap, but we save on accomodation. And railpasses are an economical option too but it is only worthwhile if you want to stick to cities.
We found the campervan much more flexible to vist the country side.

My initial question was more about a recommandation for a good campervan rental company. (for 4 weeks, it won't be worthwile buying a van this time).

DW and I considered doing this a few years ago. The big knot that stopped it was the insurance. The deductible for EACH event was really high and (at that time) you could not purchase super CDW on any type of rental RV. The rental company could decide what was an individual event, whether you filed an accident report or not. Thus, the rental company could look at a scratch on the rt. front, a nick in the left rear and say something broken on the roof and consider them 3 separate incidents, hitting a renter up for perhaps $6,000 in additional fees. Oh, and it is doubtful you credit card covers an RV type.

So, before you go this route, be certain what you are getting into.

dave

Palairet,

My wife and I did a road-trip around France and Spain last May.

We hired a camper from www.origin-campervans.com

They are located in Northern France (Lille). We found this very convenient as it was only just over 1 hour from London with Eurostar train.
Plus, the staff picked us up at Lille train station to go to their depot.
Being registered in France, the vans are left hand drive which is safer to drive on the continent.

The van was a Volkswagen nearly new. From what we've seen at the depot, it seems that it is the case for the rest of the fleet.

Hire rates were reasonable and included unlimited mileage, insurance and road side assistance.

We really enjoyed our experience with this company and recommend it.
Also, the staff was friendly (and spoke a decent english)

There seemed to be a special part of the car-park set aside for them which they were using as a semi-permanent site.>

yup in France at least you can virtually park your camping car, as the French car it not camping van, anywhere and yes some streets in say resorts resemble campgrounds.

You really need not pay anything thus to camp overnight but in a small camping car as there is unlikely to be a douche or WC that would be a problem - large RVs have WCs.

pal - the place we spotted was by a marina so they were able to use the same facilities that visiting yacht crew could use too.

obviously that's not going to be available inland!

I am surprised they could use those facilities for free - are you sure there was not some charge - ever try to use say a French cafe's WC without buying something?

no, Pal, they aren't free! usually a few €s to use the showers, not sure about the loos. but at least there are some to use.