The route becomes a trip plan

A motorhome trip is not a distance but a sequence of days. Between departure and arrival lie nights, and the question of where those nights happen shapes the route more than the shortest connection does. So Camperada turns distance, driving time and stays into a trip plan counted in days, rather than a bare driving time.

Three figures the plan is built from

1. Driving hours per day. Between two and twelve hours, five by default. This determines how far a travel day reaches.
2. Nights per stop. How long you stay where. Camperada suggests a figure based on the places you have set yourself there, roughly one night per two sights.
3. Departure date. Optional. With a date every stop gets its calendar day; without one it stays with travel days.

What the plan makes of it

From these figures and the calculated driving times comes a timeline: arrival and departure day per stop, total length of the trip, total number of nights. If a drive takes longer than a travel day allows, Camperada splits it and schedules the night needed on the way. Those nights do not stay abstract: they get an approximate position on the route geometry and appear as their own marker on the map, so you can see which area you need to search.

Stops are more than waypoints

A stop consists of the place, the things you want to see there, and the overnight stay. There is a practical reason for that: the route then runs through the sights and ends at the site in the evening, instead of heading for the centre of town where nobody parks. As soon as you enter specific sights, the stop’s own location is no longer driven to.

What the route should avoid

Three switches in the overview feed straight into the route calculation: avoid motorways, avoid toll roads, avoid ferries. Every change recalculates the route, and they can lengthen it considerably, which is often exactly the point: back roads instead of transit. If the route uses a ferry, Camperada says how many crossings there are and how long they are. Fares and departure times are not something Camperada states itself; there is no open data source for them, and where OpenStreetMap records it, the ferry operator’s website is linked. If Direct Ferries lists the connection, a labelled partner link “Prices and sailings at Direct Ferries” sits next to it.

Tunnels cannot be deselected. Anyone who has to watch tunnels because of clearance height will find recorded height limits in the clearance check. It does not know tunnel restrictions for gas bottles.

Starting point and round trips

The starting point can be set separately from the stops, typically your own home, either through the place search or from your current location. With the return leg switched on the route closes into a circle, and the return counts towards trip length, fuel and tolls just as the outward journey does.

From marker to site

A scheduled night does not stop at naming an area. Beside every night row in the trip plan there is a site search: Camperada fetches the campsites and stopovers around the calculated night position, sorted by distance. Clicking a result turns it into a stop at exactly the point of the trip where the night falls, with an overnight stay in it. If you would rather choose yourself, you can create your own stop at the same position. More on the data behind this is under campsites along your route.

Where the plan reaches its limit

The position of the night is an approximation: it follows driving time, not the question of where it is pleasant to stand. And the sites come from OpenStreetMap, so without reviews and without prices. Both remain decisions nobody takes off your hands. How many kilometres a day are realistic is covered in the guide under planning your first motorhome tour.