How to find and use ‘Aires de Services’ in France
The French are obsessed with motorhomes, and that’s one of the reasons France has the best services in the world for those travelling in a motorhome.
Read on to find out how to find and use aires de services in France.
One good example of the facilities provided are the “Aires de Services” (motorhome servicing points) located all over the country. Some of them are literally just for servicing (emptying waste tanks and filling up your water tank), but many are also overnight halts and offer mains electricity hook ups for motorhome travellers too. Happily, there are a vast number of them here.
Some are free to use, while at others there’s a small charge payable by a token (“jeton” in French). If you need to buy tokens they are usually sold by local businesses (bars or boulangeries, for example) – each servicing point will have a sign telling you where you can buy them. If you buy more jetons than you need, chances are there will be other servicing points in the same network along your route where you can use those tokens.
A guide for Motorhome servicing points of France
A Euro-Relais aire de services: waste water servicing point
The biggest Aire de Services network in Europe is run by Euro-Relais. They have made a video (below) of how to use a servicing point – it’s in French but you won’t need the words to understand what to do. Here’s a list by department number of all the Euro-Relais aire de services in France (pdf)
Needless to say, the FMH team take great care to show you how to service your campervan at the depot before you set off. However, there is a lot to take in during our handover and there is nothing quite like seeing how an Aire de Services works on a video, so here is the Euro-Relais video:
On each FMH motorhome and campervan, we provide a guidebook listing the “Aire de Service” of France, so it’s easy to plot a point on your journey for servicing. In addition, AireCampingCar.com has the most extensive online listing of “Aires” in France.
Read about the other places you can stay in your motorhome in France in our blog ‘Campsite Overnight Halts‘.
We also recently blogged about how to find good places to stay in an RV all over Europe with a particularly handy website called Park4Night.
Happy planning!