Guide · Aires · Jul 20, 2026

Aires etiquette: the unwritten rules

Most of the etiquette on a motorhome aire is written down somewhere, and some of it is law. The reference version: what is a courtesy, what is a house rule, and what carries a fine.

FreeCampMaps Team Editorial team · 8 min read 8 sources cited

Most of the etiquette on an aire is not etiquette. It is written down, and a useful amount of it carries a fine.

That is the practical frame for this page. Somebody will tell you the rules of an aire are unwritten, and then hand you a list. The list is mostly right, but it flattens three very different things into one: national law, the operator’s written rules of use, and habits that are genuinely just good manners. Knowing which is which tells you where you have discretion and where you do not.

For the short behavioral version, read aires etiquette, how not to be the problem. This page is the long one, with the official texts behind each rule.

For the vocabulary, start with what is an aire. The borne is the service pillar. The mairie is the French town hall that sets the local rules. In Germany the equivalent document is a Benutzungsordnung, a rules-of-use text the Stadt or Gemeinde publishes, and it is usually a page long and worth reading.

The one that is law: deploy nothing

Awnings, chairs, tables, windbreaks and leveling ramps are the line between parking and camping across much of Europe, and that line is legal rather than social.

Wild camping vs free camping vs aires quotes the regional Spanish wording in the original and explains why “you cannot wild camp here” and “you cannot sleep in your van here” are different sentences. The short form of the two national statements:

Spain. The Dirección General de Tráfico treats an autocaravana as parked when it sits in a permitted place inside the markings and within any time limit, and when the activity going on inside it does not carry to the outside through the deployment of elements that overflow the vehicle’s perimeter. It names the elements: tenderetes, toldos, dispositivos de nivelación, soportes de estabilización. Camping itself is only permitted in zones set aside for it, under each autonomous community’s rules.
Italy. Article 185 of the Codice della Strada says parking an autocaravan where parking is allowed does not constitute camping provided the vehicle rests on the ground only through its wheels, produces no discharge other than the engine’s, and does not take up more road surface than its own footprint.

Operators say the same thing in their own documents without needing the law. Coesfeld’s Benutzungsordnung: “Es ist untersagt, Zelte oder Vorzelte auf oder im Umfeld des Stellplatzes aufzustellen.” Bad Rappenau prohibits das Zelten on its site. The Rothsee rules forbid free-standing tents and sleeping outside the motorhome in a tent. The Highland Council states that outdoor tables, chairs and awnings are not permitted at its scheme car parks.

So the rule is not “please keep it tidy”. The rule is that the awning is a switch, and flipping it changes the category you are in.

Leveling ramps count. This is the part people miss, because a ramp feels like a mechanical necessity rather than a deployment. The DGT lists leveling devices and stabilizing supports by name. Italy’s wording requires the vehicle to touch the ground only through its wheels. If the aire is on a slope and you cannot sleep without ramps, you are on the wrong side of two national definitions, and the honest answer is that a badly sloped aire is a reason to move on rather than a reason to level up.

Arrive late, leave early

An aire is a stopover, not a base. The bay you are sitting in at two in the afternoon is the bay somebody needs at seven.

Mid to late afternoon is the working compromise: late enough that you are not holding a space all day, early enough that if the site is full you still have daylight to reach an alternative.

Where an operator sets a window, it is explicit. Forestry and Land Scotland’s Stay the Night runs from 6pm to 10am, one night only, with no return to the same car park within 48 hours. On a French municipal aire the posted hours are whatever the mairie decided, and there is no national figure. The stay limits themselves vary widely and are covered on what is an aire: the Rothsee rules allow up to a week, or 6 consecutive nights, capped at 6 weeks per calendar year, while Bad Rappenau allows 3 nights. Neither of those is a European norm. Read the sign.

One bay, parked square

Take one bay. Do not hold a second.

The Rothsee rules put it directly: reservations before arrival are neither required nor possible, and users are forbidden from reserving or blocking further free pitches on site for themselves or for anybody else. That is the written version of a habit most people already have.

Two practical additions:

Park square and tight, so the shape of the parking stays legible to whoever arrives after dark on an unmarked surface.
Where bays are unmarked, leave room. Forestry and Land Scotland asks for at least 4 meters between vehicles at its sites.

The version of this that actually causes arguments is blocking the borne, the drain or the entrance. Service first, then move to a bay. Nobody minds you taking ten minutes at the water point. They mind you taking the water point overnight.

No generators, and the rest of the noise

Forestry and Land Scotland’s scheme asks visitors not to use generators, on the grounds that they disturb wildlife and other visitors.

Most municipal aires say nothing about generators on the sign. That is an omission, not permission. A generator running on a small aire in a village in the evening is the most reliable way to produce a complaint, and complaints are how aires acquire barriers.

Quiet hours are frequently written down, and they are earlier than holidaymakers expect. Coesfeld: “Die Nachtruhe von 22 Uhr bis 7 Uhr ist unbedingt einzuhalten.” The Rothsee rules run the same 22:00 to 07:00 window and require all noise to be avoided during it. Bad Rappenau matches, and bans running engines in that period. The same logic covers everything else that makes noise: doors, awning motors, music, and the engine left idling to charge something.

If you need power, get it from a hook-up rather than an engine. The Rothsee power columns take 2 euro, 1 euro and 50 cent coins directly. Bad Rappenau charges 1 euro per kWh on its site card.

Waste goes in the drain, and only in the drain

There are usually two or three separate waste points and they are not interchangeable. Which is which, and how the borne is laid out, is covered in service points.

The rule that matters here is simpler: nothing goes on the ground. Not the gutter, not the hedge, not the grass verge, not the field entrance, and not the drinking water grating.

This is the etiquette item most likely to cost you money. Article 185 of the Codice della Strada prohibits discharging organic residues and both clean and foul water onto roads and public areas outside a proper sanitary disposal installation, for any vehicle carrying internal collection tanks, with an administrative fine of 87 to 344 euros. The DGT’s parking definition includes discharging nothing onto the road. Hendaye’s arrêté requires chemical waste to go into the designated receptacles connected to the sewer, and waste water only at the designated point. The Rothsee rules state that the disposal station is the thing to use for dirty water and for the contents of chemical toilets, and that fresh water may be drawn only from that supply station.

If the aire has no disposal point, you carry it to one that does. Plenty of free stopovers are free precisely because there is nothing on them.

Leave the service point usable

The person behind you is going to put a drinking water hose into whatever you leave.

Rinse the grating. Do not leave the cassette rinse tap dripping onto the approach in freezing weather. Put your household rubbish in the containers, not beside them.

Operators write this down too, which tells you it is a real problem rather than a fussy one. The Rothsee rules require the pitch to be left clean after use, restrict the bins to household quantities from entitled guests, and prohibit dumping bulky waste. Hendaye requires household refuse to go into the containers placed on the aire, and prohibits leaving oils, batteries and anything that is not household waste.

Do not treat a free aire as a campsite

This is the failure mode that closes stopovers, and it is worth separating from the deployment rule because it is about duration and behavior rather than awnings.

A campsite sells you a pitch and expects you to settle. An aire sells you a night, or lets you have one for nothing, and expects the space back. The municipal economics are not complicated: a commune builds an aire because passing motorhomes spend money in the bakery and the bar, and because the alternative is vehicles parked wherever they end up. A vehicle that stays four days, runs a generator and puts out a washing line is not producing the outcome the aire was built for.

What that means in practice:

Do not settle in. Arrive, service, sleep, leave.
Do not treat “free” as an invitation to stay longer. Free usually means the commune decided not to bill you, not that it stopped counting nights.
Do not run the aire as a base for day trips with the vehicle parked and empty.
Do not do laundry, wash the vehicle, or use the drinking water tap as a shower. Where an operator prices water by volume, you are also spending somebody’s budget.
Do not conduct business or take up residence. Both the Rothsee and Coesfeld rules address this, which means somebody has tried it.

What is genuinely just manners

Some of it really is unwritten, and worth doing anyway:

Greet the neighbors, briefly. A nod is enough. It makes the shared drain much easier to negotiate.
Do not shine headlights across occupied vehicles when you arrive at night. Approach slowly and park on sidelights if you can.
Keep dogs on a lead and pick up after them. Forestry and Land Scotland asks for both explicitly, and most municipal sites assume it.
Buy something in the town. It is the reason the aire exists.

The sign wins

The posted sign at the entrance, the operator’s current rules of use, and the commune’s current arrêté beat this page, beat any app, and beat what was true last season. One town’s Benutzungsordnung is not Germany’s rules, and one commune’s arrêté is not France’s, so read the panel in front of you before you settle. Where it is silent, take the strict reading: nothing deployed, nothing on the ground, one bay, gone in the morning.

Aires etiquette: how not to be the problem: the short behavioral version of this page.
What is an aire: the vocabulary, the payment models, and how long you can actually stay.
Service points: how the borne works, and which hole takes what.
Wild camping vs free camping vs aires: why deploying changes the legal category, quoted from the original texts.
Motorhome travel in Europe: the planning layer above all of this.
France: the country hub, and the densest aire network in Europe.

Sources

Where the original is not in English, the summary above is ours and the linked text is the authority.

Frequently asked

The questions people actually ask.

Which aire etiquette rules are actually enforceable?

More than people assume. Emptying waste anywhere other than a sanitary disposal installation is an offense under article 185 of Italy's Codice della Strada, with an administrative fine of 87 to 344 euros. Deploying awnings, leveling devices and stabilizing supports is what Spain's Dirección General de Tráfico uses to separate parking from camping. Tents and awnings are banned in writing on the Stellplatz rules at Coesfeld, Bad Rappenau and the Rothsee. Quiet hours from 22:00 to 07:00 are in the Coesfeld and Rothsee rules. Arrival windows, one bay per vehicle and no generators are usually house rules of the operator rather than national law, but the operator can still throw you out.

Why does putting out chairs matter so much?

Because in several countries it changes what you are legally doing. The DGT's position is that a motorhome stays parked as long as the activity inside does not extend beyond the vehicle's perimeter through things like tenderetes, toldos, dispositivos de nivelación and soportes de estabilización. Italy's article 185 says a parked autocaravan is not camping provided it touches the ground only through its wheels, emits nothing but engine exhaust, and occupies no more road surface than itself. Parking is broadly permitted. Camping outside a designated zone often is not. The awning is the switch.

Can I use a generator on an aire?

Treat it as no unless a sign says otherwise. Forestry and Land Scotland's Stay the Night scheme asks visitors not to use generators. Most municipal aires say nothing about generators at all, and silence on a sign is not permission. If you need power, look for a stopover with a metered hook-up: the Rothsee site has coin-operated power columns taking 2 euro, 1 euro and 50 cent pieces, and Bad Rappenau bills electricity at 1 euro per kWh on a site card.

How many bays can I take, and how much space should I leave?

One bay per vehicle, and do not hold a second one for a friend. The Rothsee rules state that reserving spaces before arrival is neither necessary nor possible, and that users may not reserve or block further free spaces on site for themselves or for third parties. Where bays are unmarked, Forestry and Land Scotland asks for at least 4 meters between vehicles, which is a workable default.

What do I owe the next person at the service point?

A clean drain and a clear space. The Rothsee rules require the pitch to be left clean after use, and put household waste in the containers provided rather than beside them. Bulky waste is prohibited outright there. Hendaye's arrêté requires household refuse to go in the containers on the aire and forbids leaving oils, batteries and non-household items. Service, rinse, move to a bay. The borne is not a place to park while you have lunch.

Is any of this the same as the rules for wild camping?

No. An aire is a place somebody with authority already said yes, in advance, at that exact spot. Wild camping is a land access question governed by different law, and this site does not publish coordinates for it. See our guide to wild camping vs free camping vs aires for why the two questions need separate answers.

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Service points: water, waste and how the borne actually works A borne handles three different things that first-timers mix up: drinking water, grey water and the chemical toilet. How to tell them apart, how to pay, and why the service point is often not where you sleep. What is an aire? Motorhome stopovers explained An aire is a designated motorhome stopover, usually municipal, often free, and almost never a campsite. What that means in practice for a first-time visitor, with the rules cited.