Spots
The best places are the ones nobody talks about. Until now.
There's a particular kind of freedom that comes from knowing exactly where you're going to sleep tonight — not a campsite you booked three weeks ago, but a place you found, a place that felt right, a place that's yours for the night. A flat piece of ground above a lake. A quiet forest track far enough from the road that you can't hear the traffic. A harbour wall with a view that stops you in your tracks.
Finding those places is one of the great pleasures of vanlife. Remembering them, sharing them, and building a personal database of the best spots you've ever found — that's what the Spots module is for.
And for those moments when you don't already know where you're going, premium verified datasets from trusted data partners mean you're never starting from scratch.
The Spots Vault
You camped somewhere perfect in northern Spain two years ago. You didn't write it down at the time but you logged it in the app. Today you're passing within thirty kilometres of it. You open the Vault, filter by Spain, and there it is — your notes, your photos, your rating. You're back before dark.
Every great spot, remembered.
Your personal database of everywhere worth stopping.
Every spot you discover belongs in the Vault. Log it once and it's yours forever — searchable, filterable, and available completely offline. Add amenities, surface type, noise level, and personal notes.
Private, secure, always available.
Your personal Vault is stored securely on your device. Rate spots and mark favourites for quick access. Fully searchable and filterable by country, amenity, or rating. Works completely offline.
Spot Detail & Reconnaissance
The track looks promising on the map. But your Spot entry from last autumn tells you: surface soft after rain, suitable for high clearance only, no turning space for vehicles over 6 metres. It rained yesterday. You find somewhere else.
Intelligence, not just a pin.
Know what you're arriving at before you arrive.
A good spot entry is more than a pin on a map. It's intelligence — surface condition, vehicle size suitability, noise, light pollution, nearest water, whether there's room for more than one van.
The detail that makes the difference.
Log surface type, access difficulty, available amenities, noise and light pollution ratings, and vehicle suitability. Your own photos attached to every entry. The difference between a perfect night and a wasted journey.
Trip Planner & Route Builder
You're planning a two week loop through southern France and northern Spain. You open the Trip Planner, sketch the rough route, and drop in a handful of spots from your Vault and from your premium dataset. The route builds itself around them. You leave knowing exactly where you're headed each night — and with three or four alternatives at every stop in case plans change.
The journey worth taking.
Plan your route around the places worth stopping.
Build a route not just from A to B, but around the spots that make the journey worth taking. Add waypoints, attach spots from your Vault or premium datasets, and build an itinerary that puts the best places front and centre.
Handoff to your mapping app.
Visualise your planned route on the map. Add alternatives at each stop for flexibility. Seamless handoff to Apple Maps, Google Maps, or Waze for turn-by-turn navigation.
Route Conditions Report
Know what your route looks like before you drive it.
Weather changes. Roads close. The spot that was perfect in summer is underwater in November. The Route Conditions report gives you a weather overview for your planned route — conditions at each waypoint, forecasts for the days ahead.
You're planning to cross a mountain pass tomorrow. The Route Conditions report shows heavy snow forecast above 1,400 metres overnight. Your route peaks at 1,650 metres. You adjust the plan, take the valley road, and arrive safely.
- Weather conditions and forecasts for every waypoint on your route
- Temperature, precipitation, and wind at each stop
- Identify potential problem sections before you commit
- Adjust your route with confidence based on real forecast data
Spot Filters & Vehicle Matching
You need electricity tonight — your laptop battery is critical for a client call tomorrow morning. You filter by electricity hookup, within 30 kilometres of your current position, suitable for vehicles over 3 metres high. Three spots appear. You pick the closest.
The right spot for your rig.
Find what works for your specific rig.
A spot that's perfect for a small campervan might be completely inaccessible in a high-roof panel van with a roof rack. Filter by amenity, vehicle height, length, and surface type.
Precise, combined filtering.
Filter by distance from current location or any point on your route. Combine multiple filters for precise results. Filters work on both your personal Vault and premium datasets simultaneously.
Premium Data Partners
You're heading to Germany for the first time. You purchase the German dataset. Thousands of verified spots — stellplätze, aires, wild camps, service points — downloaded to your device. You cross the border knowing exactly where you're going tonight, and every night after.
Never start from scratch.
Verified data from the sources that know the road best.
Premium spot datasets from established data providers — verified, maintained, and delivered as one-time in-app purchases for offline use. No subscription. No ongoing cost. Buy the regions you travel and own them.
Seamlessly integrated.
Premium spots and personal spots side by side on the same map. Filtered and searched with exactly the same tools as your personal Vault. CarPlay and voice integration — say "find the nearest spot with electricity" and navigate there hands-free.
A note on data partnerships
The quality of a spots database is only as good as the data behind it. Vanlife Assistant is built to support verified datasets from established providers in the vanlife and overlanding community — organisations who know the road, maintain their data, and share our commitment to giving travellers accurate, trustworthy information.
If you represent a data provider and would like to discuss a partnership, we'd love to hear from you. Please get in touch at [email protected].
Import Your Own Data
Already have a dataset? Bring it with you.
Vanlife Assistant supports CSV import for those who already have spot data in another format — from other apps, from community exports, or from your own research. The import wizard maps your columns, validates your data, and adds your spots to the Vault.
You've spent years building a spreadsheet of every wild camp you've ever found. You export it as a CSV, run it through the import wizard, and your entire history is in the app in minutes. Every spot, every note, every coordinate — imported and searchable.
- Import spot data from any CSV source
- Column mapping wizard handles non-standard formats
- Data validation flags any issues before import
- A clean migration path from any other system
Everything in the Spots module works offline. Your Vault, your premium datasets, your planned routes — all stored on your device, available wherever you are.
For full detail on any feature, visit the Help Desk.
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