Van Spots


Wild camping spots for those with Vans
Now in Beta


About Latest Updates How To

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

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 Spots

Vanlife Community & Retreat

Free Spot - 10.0/10
Created By: Dionis on Sep 24, 2023
We are the UK’s (and possibly Europe’s) first and only FREE campsite for vanlifers. Funded by tourism, our campsite allows vanlifers to stay and use our facilities for FREE. There is absolutely no catch. We are Vanlifers ourselves. So please come and join us. Stay as long as you want. We are open all year round and have a cafe on site offering free teas and coffees.

Bellmount Tower Car Park

Free Spot - 0/10
Created By: wisewoman on Sep 22, 2023
Fabulous walk up to the tower from here with beautiful views . Small car park - due to its layout really only suitable for vans and small Motorhomes . Takes about 10 vehicles.

The Dog and Partridge Great Moor Stockport

Free Spot - 10.0/10
Created By: Karen44 on Aug 25, 2023
This is a great little spot, free site, call up, give them your reg. breakfast available on Friday and Saturday. Great food and a good selection of award winning beers.

Devils Bridge

Free Spot - 0/10
Created By: UziT5 on Aug 23, 2023
Large car park behind Haford Arms. Good for overnight stay. Free

bolton le sands

Free Spot - 0/10
Created By: sirdmark on Aug 01, 2023
At the sea front. Quite a few people here but on the other hand you can make camp-fires on the beach and stay overnight. Only bins, nothing else. You have to bring everything. Tricky to get into pasture lane. If you miss, there is a turn round option just a few hundert meters away.

Latest Reviews

1/10

Nolton Haven

No overnight parking permitted - enforcement in operation

1/10

Grass Car Park

No overnight parking permitted - enforcement in operation

1/10

Saint Govan's Chapel

No overnight parking permitted - enforcement in operation

1/10

Car Park near Manorbier YHA

Parking enforcement in operation

Parking enforcement in operation at this site

1/10

Manorbier Beach

Parking enforcement in operation

Parking enforcement in operation for this car park.

1/10

Wisemans Bridge

Local community not happy with litter

Local community not happy with litter left by campervans

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


P.S. How To is also a great book by Randall Munroe