Planning our first grand tour ...

Being able to manage without EHU will improve your chances of a last minute pitch. I'm set up for off-grid and I can spend three days without any requirement other than a place to park. The size of your fresh and waste tanks and water consumption will be the determining factor. The other one is when your loo cassette warning light comes on.

A good site for ad-hoc stops is Park4night.com

BonniePennyPitstop  You say “planning our 1st grand tour in summer/summer holiday trip”.  IMHO I would say if booking full tour use it as a fact-finding trip where you may find places you want to return to.  I would suggest if touring (UK) in summer without bookings bear in mind you need to have good phone signal/internet access and/or books with site listings.  If you have a heavy M’home and the ground is wet/soggy I would avoid grass pitches. 

Reading a site’s T & C’s will give you the info regarding flexibility of bookings. 

Good luck and enjoy.

BPP,  -  My first thought is that if you are intending to see all 3 countries then you are likely to see nothing apart from miles of tarmac. Why not limit yourself to one area and see it in more depth?

All good advice and links above. I think how much you enjoy your tour might depend on how long you are going for, and what time of year. We spent 10 days away early June, just touring Dumfries and Galloway, and our route was carefully planned. We only booked the one CL site, mainly because we knew it would be busy, and really wanted this place as a base, and a rest point from driving to be honest. The rest of our stops we just winged, and it worked out ok for us, but boy was it getting busy as we headed home. Even the little Aires, MH pull ins.

Dont be over ambitious in terms of mileage is my advice, otherwise all you will see is tarmac. Plan in a few proper stays, where you can actually do something, see something, and take a break from being on the road. If you are travelling July and August, expect traffic to be very heavy, another reason to have a few proper stays. The best website we found for touring was Search for Sites, mentioned and linked above. Has all sorts of MH info, including simple pulls ins, how safe stops are, etc…..

If you do wing it, expect cheap overnight MH stopovers to be full by 2-3pm, after that you will be searching around for a stop. We found that loo disposal, and getting rid of recycling/rubbish were our two main factors. We don’t dump either where we aren’t supposed to, but could easily do three, four days without filling or dumping water with frugal use and care.

If you want to tour via Club Sites and CLs, you might very well have to book these. Everywhere is super busy compared with a couple of years ago. CLs won’t be flexible, they are small independent businesses. The Club will be able to move you to another Site, tag on an extra day if available.

Thanks for all the advice and links. I can't wait to look through them all!

We've holidayed a lot in the UK - except for Wales for some reason  - so we have some places that we're revisiting. 

When we were younger, we both travelled a lot for work and sometimes had exactly that experience of just travelling and working and not actually seeing anywhere so we're conscious of not spending all our time on the road and are aiming for not more than two hours driving between sites/stops (although maybe I should have touched wood after I typed that because 'best laid plans ... etc'!). 

Great tips about grass pitches, internet and how early stopovers can fill up. According to Mr BPP we can probably survive off-grid for at least 3 days but I'd probably like us to try one night first. Maybe we'll squeeze that in before we go our longer trip. 

Thank you so much for all your tips and suggestions. Everyone has been so helpful. 

Summer touring is usually very easy off grid. We have done weeks at a time, but you do need to be prepared. We have little in the way of specialist kit, although our MH came with a roof top solar panel and this keeps everything going. Admittedly we don’t use a TV, microwave. It’s warm so you don’t need heating, shower frugally (a trigger head for shower is just so good, no wasting water). We use  iPads for most of our entertainment, music, maps, etc….. charging up as we roll along. Travel as light as possible if you can, it’s far easier if moving on every few days.

Gas bottles are our issue at the moment. The small ones are just not out there.