About Van Spots
A simple, easy way to find spots to camp in your van.
Van Spots is free resource, with no ads. The aim is to keep it that way.
It takes some clever engineering in order to do this. You may notice at times the site takes a long time to load, this is because it turns off when no one is using it.
We're working at the moment to try and improve performance across all areas of the site.
Van Spots is an open-source project built by one person in their spare time using Ruby on Rails.
It is still in development so let me know if anything isn't working as expected.
All the core functionality is now live; you can sign up, add, find and review spots.
If there are any features you would like to see, any feedback you would like to give, or any bugs that you find please get in touch.
If you want to keep track of progress (or contribute with a pull request) you can see what needs doing on the Trello Board and the codebase lives on GitHub . If want to use the data, then we also have an API. G et in touch and we can talk to you about usage.
If you want to get in touch with suggestions or just to have a chat, drop me an email.
More information coming soon!
Latest Updates
29/08/2025
Fix emails. Emails should now be sending again.
20/02/2025
The app has been rebuilt from scratch to improve speed, performance and security.
If you have an issues please drop me an email
26/11/2019
Update the front page to add most recent spots and reviews
08/11/2019
Updated the default sorting of spots on the index page, so the best rated spots are now at the top.
Added loading icon to increase descriptiveness of background processes.
01/11/2019
Van Spots has had some performance improvements and a load more spots added.
Please let us know if you have any issues!
25/09/2019
Update to front page
23/09/2019
Lots of little background updates and a major change to the design of the Spot Finder page
Latest Reviews
10/10
Ribble Way Car Park
Lovely Rural Views!
Lovely views of the sunset over fields. Would definitely recommend. Undisturbed nights sleep and friendly locals :)
10/10
Hills and Hollows Nature Reserve
Great spot, Minutes from the M6.
Just minutes from the M6 with lovely woodland walks, a spacious carpark and hardstanding. Yet its lovely and quiet. 100 percent recommend!
1/10
Afan Forest Park Visitor Centre
No Overnight Parking
Visited Nov 2025 - signs saying no overnight parking. Shame.
10/10
Fairy call beck
Fairy Call Beck
Nice, very quiet spot next to the bridge over the river. It’s on a quiet road between Hutton le Hole and Rosedale Chimney Bank. Stayed on Sunday night into Bank Holida...
5/10
Burry Port, Factory Road
factory road
nice spot if you dont mind the boy racers doughnutting in the early hours
10/10
Madeira Drive, Brighton
The best place to stay in Brighton
How to use Van Spots
More details coming soon
Finding a Spot
There are two ways of finding a spot to camp in, you can either browse the Map or use the Spot Finder to browse for a spot.
There are some basic filters on the spots index with hopefully some more coming soon.
Signing Up
Click the link in the nav bar and sign up
Adding a Spot
Either find the location on the map and click or tap on the map or enter the latitude and longitude yourself on the create spot page
Rating a Spot
View the Spot and click Rate Spot
Editing a Spot
If you are the person who created the spot then you can edit it. There should be an Edit Spot button next to the Rate Spot button
Editing your profile
From your Profile page, click the Edit Profile button