# Aires Guide



## alhod (Nov 1, 2010)

I'm searching for guides to aires (for mh, of course) and the one which seems to be the best is "All the Aires France" from Vicarious Books. A new updated edition is apparently to be issued soon. Does anyone have any experience of this guide (not the new one - previous editions :roll: ) or can recommend any better?

I also plan to get France Passion for 2011. 
:wink: 

It seems that with these two we will be covering all of the possible sites (except camp sites, of course).

Anything further I should know about?

Thanks as ever
Alan


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## Addie (Aug 5, 2008)

Are you just considering France?

All the aires is a good guide as it gives you pictures of a lot of aires, the name is misleading as it is not truely 'all the aires' but just a good collections of ones visited and verified by the authors.

French Passion is also excellent, we stayed on 10 or so of these sites in 2008 and met some wonderful people and drank some great wine!

Bord Atlas is great book which covers Germany mainly but loads of others in the rest of Europe in a second book that comes with it. It's all in German, but the icons and translation in the introduction is great: 
Bord Atlas - Cheaper at Amazon

If you have a Computer and can use Autoroute, then there are POI (point of interest) files you can download for both Aires in every country and also LPG filling stations.

Download a 60 day free trial of Autoroute here:
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/autoroute/default.mspx

Download some great POI files from here:
http://www.doyourdream.co.uk/resources-downloads/gps-pois-hosted-by-us/


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## colpot (Jun 9, 2008)

We have used All the Aires for the last 4 trips - be prepared for some to be closed and some charging now.

We have also used France Passion and have stayed at some great (and not so great) sites. A couple have been hard or impossible to find and on one occasion the book was thrown to the back of the Motorhome with a vow never to be used again (the vow lasted all of one day!) We have renewed our membership each year since 2008.

We bought a book in a French Supermarket (cant remember which one) which has Aires and Municipal Campsites - its in French but fairly straight forward - its titled Guide Bel-Air Camping-Caravanning Evasions en camping car 2010.
It is very useful as it had lots of Aires not in All the Aires books (I must admit I havent contributed to all the Aires by sending any in to them)

Bon Voyage (we are back over there at the end of May)


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## KeithChesterfield (Mar 12, 2010)

As well as All the Aires we took the Michelin Camping France 2010, £8.39 from Amazon, with around 2,600 campsites throughout France which is handy if you can't find remote sites hidden away in rural areas.


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## adonisito (Nov 6, 2009)

I don't know if its the same as the Vicarious books ed. but we use Aires de Services Camping-Car published by Les Guides Motor Presse, ok its in French, but we rely on it. I bought mine in a motorway aire near Narbonne. 

 In fact I'm looking at it now for a site to stay !!,


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## Zepp (May 14, 2009)

If you plan to travel out of season this is a must ACSI CampingCard 2011


We used it for the first time last year and and we found some very good and cheap sites . it pays for itself the first time you use it.


Paul


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## barryd (May 9, 2008)

This site really is "all the aires" and not just France either (it is all the Aires in France though)

http://www.campingcar-infos.com/index1.htm

It used to translate ok but now it doesnt. What you need to do is get to the map and find your aire and then right click on the page and select TRANSLATE WITH LIVE SEARCH. Well thats how you do it in Internet Explorer.

There are photos, costs and useful comments from visitors.


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## Solwaybuggier (Mar 4, 2008)

If your French is any good, the Guide National des Aires is, I think, far better than All The Aires - more included, more accurate, and (to my mind) more logically organised. Appears out of stock at Amazon - but Vicarious have it (http://www.vicarious-shop.com/product.php?productid=73&cat=1&page=1)

Alternatively, and particularly if you're taking a netbook/notebook, the Campingcars.info memory stick is brilliant - http://www.campingcar-infos.com/USB.php - again, mainly if you're comfortable with French.


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## JeanLuc (Jan 13, 2007)

We keep an old copy of Aires de Service - Camping Cars (must buy a new one next time).

Perhaps our most reliable "bible" is the website Camping Car Infos:
http://www.campingcar-infos.com/index1.htm

Excellent resource (in French) but it just gets better by the year. Also, as it receives regular reports and opinions from local camping caristes, it tends to be up to date and provides useful reviews / comments.

Also, you can buy a copy on a flash stick - see to the right of the home page (but obviously that copy will not be updated). There are POI files for your SatNav on the website too.

Highly recommended.

Philip


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## alhod (Nov 1, 2010)

barryd said:


> This site really is "all the aires" and not just France either (it is all the Aires in France though)
> 
> http://www.campingcar-infos.com/index1.htm
> 
> ...


Thanks - just been trying that site and it works really well. Well, it does on home broadband, looks as if it might be different trying to down load over a slower link but that's back to the discussion about free wifi availability 8)

Thanks again
Alan


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## barryd (May 9, 2008)

alhod said:


> barryd said:
> 
> 
> > This site really is "all the aires" and not just France either (it is all the Aires in France though)
> ...


Yes your right, I carry a wifi antenna and usually manage to find a connection and use the site overseas. What I also do when planning the trip back in the UK is create a load of folders for each region Im going to visit and then go through each page of Aires on the site and print off the English translations of each Aire as PDF files (google cutepdf writer if you cant create PDF files). I then have an off line resouce of my own bang up to date "all the aires" for where I might go resource in English!. You can of course as previously mentioned in the thread download them all or purchase the USB stick from the site but its all in French.

Its a pity we cant get the French to properly translate it all into English but I suspect this would be an impossible ask and they wouldnt be very impressed!


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## JeanLuc (Jan 13, 2007)

alhod said:


> Thanks - just been trying that site and it works really well. Well, it does on home broadband, looks as if it might be different trying to down load over a slower link but that's back to the discussion about free wifi availability 8)
> 
> Thanks again
> Alan


See my post about the same website above. The version on a USB stick is not expensive and then you have it on your laptop without being constrained by needing a link to the internet. I bought a 2009 version (on DVD in those days). Now I download the up to date POI file direct from the website each year and load that into my Garmin SatNav as well. Most of the aires on the DVD version are still in the latest POI file so not a great deal changes. I guess it will be time to buy the latest USB stick this year.

Also note that you can load the files from the USB stick onto your hard drive so it runs even faster, rather than running it from the stick.

Philip


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## alhod (Nov 1, 2010)

barryd said:


> alhod said:
> 
> 
> > barryd said:
> ...


I like your idea about saving as pdf to print - makes a neat easy resource to use whilst driving.



On the English translation, there is an alternative to that of course..........................................................................

learn French!!
8)


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## geraldandannie (Jun 4, 2006)

We used "All the Aires" last autumn. It's very easy to use, and gives a lot of information about each aire, some in little icons.

However, it isn't "ALL" the aires. I think there were about 1500 / 1800 or so in the last edition, whereas the Campingcars infos site has 5,000-odd?

When in France last year, we used a connection at McDonalds to download the CampingCars Infos data to a laptop. You don't need to use a memory stick - everything gets stored on your computer. It works with both Mac and PC. You can even use it on different computers at the same time (we did for 'serious' aire research, when we were both searching at the same time).

There's no doubt the All The Aires book is very handy and quick to use, and is useful if your passenger can read it as you drive along.

AND we have the aires POI from TomTom (aires verifiee, if I remember correctly) as a 3rd option.

As someone said, if you're using any book, be prepared for it to be out of date. We found a number of aires no longer in use (either temporarily or permanently), and some of them even had incorrect satnav coordinates, so if you have POIs downloaded, you can quickly check when programming in.

Gerald


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## JeanLuc (Jan 13, 2007)

*CC Infos*

Thanks for that information Gerald. I hadn't spotted the option to download direct to hard disk. I see it is almost half the price of the USB stick and at €8 is very good value.

However, as Bruno says - "Attention: connexion internet rapide indispensable!"

Probably not one to try over a dongle or if you have a dodgy ADSL service.

Philip


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## johnthompson (Jul 29, 2010)

alhod said:


> barryd said:
> 
> 
> > This site really is "all the aires" and not just France either (it is all the Aires in France though)
> ...


Just loaded it on my laptop using the site WiFi in Spain with no problems.

Not exactly a fast connection either

Date Time Download Upload
Today 10:24 558 kbps (69.8kB/s) 154 kbps (19.3kB/s) Share 
Thursday 11:43 148 kbps (18.5kB/s) 111 kbps (13.9kB/s)

Speed test using MyDownloadSpeed


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## peejay (May 10, 2005)

Similar to what Barry mentioned, there is an easy option on Campingcar-infos to print off a list by Department.

Go to the main search page >here< - Select the departement required - (eg: 62 Pas de Calais) and look out for the printer icon near the top of the page and "Listing des aire de ce departement" - click on that link which will give you the following in printer friendly format....

>Click Here<

You can then select either the"Tous", "Le 5 Dernier" or "sans" box, to include "All", "The last 5" or "None" of the comments relating to the aire, then just print it off.

Doesn't translate it like Barry's option but all the important info and coords will be there.

Pete


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## alhod (Nov 1, 2010)

peejay said:


> Similar to what Barry mentioned, there is an easy option on Campingcar-infos to print off a list by Department.
> 
> Go to the main search page >here< - Select the departement required - (eg: 62 Pas de Calais) and look out for the printer icon near the top of the page and "Listing des aire de ce departement" - click on that link which will give you the following in printer friendly format....
> 
> ...


I'm wasting the whole morning just going through this site! The facility to link the site location to Google street view is good and some of the locations are unbelievable - I just found that there is one a short walk from the beach in St Tropez 8).
And the French only is not a problem since it's easy to pick up the few words needed to understand.

We are new to this MH thing (in fact don't even have the vehicle yet  ) so it's a real voyage of discovery and looks like we will be having a great time.
But one glaring omission - the elephant in the room - Why is there nothing like the aires in UK? Looking at our own town (biggish place in an area reliant on tourism for a large part of the local economy) all one sees are signs saying No parking, No Camping, No overnight parking etc etc. All the car parks near to the town centre have height restrictions and the message seems to be "If you have a camper van, GO AWAY" 8O

Is the UK tourist industry missing a trick?

Alan


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## JeanLuc (Jan 13, 2007)

alhod said:


> Is the UK tourist industry missing a trick?
> 
> Alan


That's what most of us believe I think. Don't hold your breath though. Fylde Council in the Northwest are thinking of setting up a a form of Air, but I think they are meeting a lot of local opposition as in : "we don't want those big white camper vans round here / no gypsies required etc."

Pity really that most councils seem to be more concerned with keeping people out of their towns rather than encouraging them in. I guess they don't realise that the motorhoming community contains quite a lot of "financially comfortable" people who could boost their local economies.

If you get up into the West Highlands of Scotland, many smaller communities are a lot more relaxed. Otherwise it's hey-ho and off to France / Germany / Italy etc., where motorhomers are generally very welcome. In fact in France we have occasionally stayed in town car parks (not aires). No-one has ever seemed to mind.

Philip


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## ActiveCampers (Jun 17, 2005)

As posted above, I host GPS databases (TomTom, Garmin and Autoroute) which include the GPS database from camping-car.infos - and thus you can get a good overview with where teh aires are and then use the CC-infos downloads for details..

I'll probably end up buiying it shortly! Better than "All the aires" really.

Also - Bordatlas as mentioned above is also included in my databases (thus tells you what page to look at). BA does cover all of Europe and is a massive (think Argos) book.


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## stevee4 (Oct 12, 2007)

*poi*

Hi there I have used the french Aire book and it is fairly simple to use even if your french isnt brill.

My question is which POI should I load onto my Garmin. Can I load the french CC info POIs. I notice they are mainly for TomToms.

http://www.campingcar-infos.com/index1.htm

Is there a problem loading them.

My french isnt brill will that be a problem. ( I have tried to learn more but Im dyslexic ... English is bad enough)


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