When we bought our first camper in 2015, we were really surprised that our most expensive vehicle ever was also the cheapest to insure. It was less than £200 with Staveley Head (https://www.staveleyhead.co.uk/personal-vehicle/motorhome-insurance). That’s fully comp for both of us to drive etc and even allowed for us to add another driver (thanks Richard!) when Toby broke his ankle. Fast forward to 2018 and the limitations of this policy became clear as we were trying to arrange insurance for the new beast and for our big adventure.
There are two things that are critical for long tours – unlimited foreign trips and unlimited mileage. Our Staveley Head policy had neither – a pretty strict mileage limit and limited days abroad per insurance year.
Julie and Jason (http://ourtour.co.uk/home/) had a blog post about insurance and we went to their company, Safeguard (https://www.safeguarduk.co.uk/motorhome-insurance/). Safeguard have been great although we should say that the cover is really expensive (over £800) and they are also very funny about any form of communication via email – even the simplest query will get a terse “please call us to discuss this” even for a yes no question. But on the phone they are really helpful. Perhaps thay are not quite up to speed on the internet age yet!
The insurance ‘ace card’ is keeping the house – this is a grey gap not a permanent lifestyle change – and it seems that this is the key difference between being ‘on tour’ and ‘living in the van’. We were clear with the new insurance company that this would be a one year tour with possible trips home, but that we would be maintaining a UK address. No problem they said. We recorded the phone call in case there are any difficulties later!
The insurance comes with Europe wide breakdown cover including accommodation, relay and repatriation, which was an expensive bolt-on from the RAC. They also cover the genny (if we end up needing to buy one to help over the winter) and have a new for old clause (but this only applies for 15000 miles). So that £800 whopper for the insurance offsets the £300 RAC membership by quite a chunk.
We’ve had no issues with Staveley Head and guess we’ll be back with them once we don’t need the extra European cover features.
Travel insurance has been another kettle of fish now we are 50, but we’ll leave that subject for another day!