STORAGE: Twice now, we have put the motorhome into store for a year while we travelled outside Europe. We wanted undercover storage and our insurance company needed a lot of assurance that it met their security standards. For the best, visit www.cassoa.co.uk ('Caravan Storage Site Owners' Association') for a list of 180 UK-wide storage places with their Gold, Silver or Bronze Awards - and book early. Beware farmers diversifying into storage without mucking out their barns or putting hardstanding in their fields!

TAXING & TESTING: There are 4 possibilities. (1) You have a current vehicle licence (tax disc), (2) the vehicle is off the road in the UK and you have declared a SORN, (3) you have exported the vehicle or (4) you are illegal and the Swansea computer is automatically penalising you, wherever you are!

Leaflets V100 (Registering and Licensing your Motor Vehicle) and V526 (Taking a Vehicle out of the Country) are available from the DVLA, Customer Enquiries Group, Longview Road, Swansea SA99 1BL (phone 01792 783920) or from your nearest VRO (Vehicle Registration Office). Visit www.dvla.gov.uk for on-line forms and all the rules and regulations.

Here is a brief summary: Any vehicle taken out of Great Britain for less than 12 months is classed as being 'temporarily exported' and the vehicle licence must be kept valid throughout its period abroad. If the licence expires while you are abroad, you may apply for a new one by post up to 6 weeks in advance at one of the UK Post Offices listed on V100. Explain the circumstances in a covering letter and the tax disc can be sent to your overseas address.

Without a licence, you will be committing an offence in your host country as well, since proof of British tax paid exempts you from paying their taxes. French police may check on this as you approach Calais! Your motorhome insurance may also be affected (check this) and, for example, the RAC may refuse to tow an unlicensed vehicle.

You cannot declare a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) whilst the vehicle is out of the UK.

In addition to a current vehicle licence, you should carry your V5 (Vehicle Registration Document), a valid MOT Certificate (for a vehicle more than 3 years old) and an Insurance Certificate clearly showing its validity in your current country (see insurance, motorhome). You also need to display a full-size GB plate, except in the EU where the new number plate carrying a small 'GB' is sufficient.

The MOT cannot be renewed outside the UK and its absence may invalidate your insurance or lower the value of a future claim (check this with your insurer). Returning to the UK, you are permitted to drive to a pre-arranged MOT test.

The DVLA should be informed if you intend to take your motorhome out of the country for more than 12 months (leaflet V526). It will be classed as 'exported', your V5 should be surrendered and an export certificate (V756) issued. The assumption is that the vehicle will be registered abroad where new registration, tax, testing and insurance arrangements will have to be made. On return to Britain, the vehicle can be re-registered at a VRO using form V10, if you still have your registration document, or V62 if you haven't.

Vehicles registered after 1 March 2001 pay a Graduated Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), based on their engine size, fuel type and CO2 emissions.

If you passed your driving test before 1 Jan 1997, you can drive a vehicle up to a MAM (see weight) of 7,500 kg (C1+E) with an unbraked trailer of 750 kg and an MTW of 12,000 kg. Since that date, you only get a Group B licence allowing a MAM of up to 3,500 kg; a further test is needed to upgrade to C1+E.

TELEPHONES: Mobile phones are now in use everywhere! 'International Roaming' has to be requested before you leave the UK but is easily obtained, even for a pay-as-you-talk top-up phone. Take a tri-band phone if you roam as far as the USA. Be aware that European roaming can be quite expensive, since every international call is routed via the UK. You even have to pay for calls from the UK, or when you retrieve a voice message left for you! Look for UK companies with overseas subsidiaries - for example, Vodafone own Panafon in Greece (visit www.vodaphone.co.uk).

We usually stay long enough in a country to buy a local phone card. Higher cost cards are usually better value and last a long time (the one we have now has a picture of Homer on it!) Our €15 Greek prepaid card (Smile & Web) requires the input of 36 digits, but works out at 9p a minute compared with Panafon's 75p to the UK, any time of the day or week.

Motorhomers, thrifty as ever, use low-cost SMS text messages. We keep in touch with Barney in Turkey, Martin in Italy, Ian in Budapest and Keith in Morocco with equal ease. Costs vary from 25p to 50p a message. Hide and safeguard your mobile in an old sunglasses case.

TRAVEL ADVICE: Foreign Office travel advice and country profiles appear at www.fco.gov.uk with links to Embassy sites. Register there for email updates. The need for reliable advice applies particularly to Eastern Turkey, the disintegrated Balkans and the FSU.

Other useful advice comes from MMM Travel Consultants, a country's Tourist Office website or London office, guidebooks and the Caravan Club's pair of European campsite guides. The latter list tunnels, mountain passes (heights and dates open), legal requirements and much more. See camping, sites and border crossings & visas.

TV, SATELLITE: You can receive a limited range of digital TV and radio channels from an Astra satellite with a decoder bought second-hand in the UK for as little as £50. A freestanding 80–100 cm dish bought locally costs little more. At the top of the range, a roof-mounted self-seeking dish, a decoder, card and wiring will cost over £1,000! Which channels you can legally view where and the price of the relevant card all constitute a minefield you should explore for yourself. We haven't!

TV, TERRESTRIAL: Our Thomson 14" portable 12/240V multi-standard receiver works in every European country. It provides good entertainment and information and gives us an important link to the local language and culture. In Greece and other Balkan countries, films and documentaries from the UK and America are sub-titled (not dubbed), which makes for easy viewing and listening. Our factory-fitted rooftop aerial winds up and rotates; sometimes a local aerial is needed.

WATER, FRESH: Fresh water is found at campsites, filling stations, marinas and restaurants. We check that it is at least described as 'potable', avoid roadside fountains and springs, run the tap for a long time if it is little used and look, smell and taste first for excess particles, chlorine or salt.

We have two 20-metre food-quality cassette hoses with fittings to join them together and to taps of various kinds. Sometimes, the tap is too far away even for 130 ft of hosepipe (once, in Crete, it was 2 miles away) and then we use a 25-litre water carrier and our 12-volt submersible pump. Two old-timers in Australia gave us the tip of using a section of bicycle inner tube to get water for washing from small, awkward basins in outback dunnies - the full-timer is prepared for anything and everything!

We add one 'Aqua Tab' sterilising tablet every time we fill the 140-litre fresh-water tank. Since the tank is in permanent use, we rarely need to clean it. We have fitted a filter on the pipe to our kitchen's cold-water tap and we boil water for drinking. So far, we have had no digestive or intestinal problems.

However, some travellers keep their drinking water separate, buying it in bottles or keeping 'good water' in a 5 or 10 litre container. We have never done this, even in Morocco, eastern Turkey or Latvia!

WATER, WASTE: 'Grey' water, from sinks and showers, collects in a holding tank of up to 150 litres. A U-bend on each sink drain, bleach down the pipes regularly and a roof-level vent pipe all help to eliminate smells. The holding tank is easily emptied into a suitable drain via a bucket or a short length of 3" hose, although one campsite owner in Sicily encouraged us to 'irrigate' his trees and bushes. Not least, an empty tank helps keep you within your MAM - 150 litres of water weighs 150 kg!

'Black' water collects in a sealed tank: in the 'Porta-Potti' itself, in a removable cassette under a Thetford toilet or in a large fixed tank under a 'marine' toilet. The Porta-Potti and the Thetford cassette are simply removed for emptying and rinsing at a 'chemical toilet' on a campsite. If no banned chemicals (such as formaldehyde) have been added, they can be emptied down any toilet.

'Green' liquids and granules give some odour control, but cost up to 60p to treat a 20-litre cassette – and we have a 140-litre fixed black-water tank! Luckily, it is well sealed and has a roof-level vent. The tank is emptied by gravity through a 3" hose - an impressive sight - but there are problems if the campsite doesn't have a low-level emptying point (a 'Camper Service'). We have emptied a bucket at a time down a chemical toilet, dumped into an accessible 'Turkish' toilet (something we were told to do at a campsite in the Alpine town of Albertville) and found a bus station with an emptying point for coach toilets. We could buy a macerator which liquefies the waste and pumps it long distances and to great heights along ordinary hosepipe - another impressive sight!

In motorhome-friendly countries, 'Camper Services' are found in car parks and at motorway services, greatly easing this final stage in the digestive process. See camping, free for guides.

WEIGHT: It's best to read this section before you buy a motorhome, otherwise it could be too late.

• MAM = Maximum Authorised Mass (formerly GVW). More than this, you should not weigh!
• MAW = Maximum Axle Weight. A vehicle not exceeding its MAM may still be overloaded on its rear axle (a common motorhome problem), with its front axle under-loaded.
• MTW = Maximum Train Weight. This is the maximum combined weight of a motorhome and trailer.
• VUW = Vehicle Unladen Weight. This is the motorhome's least weight, without passengers, goods or liquids.

Your maximum load is therefore MAM minus VUW. Check this out. These weights are given on a plate, often attached to a cab doorpost. You may get a nasty surprise after you have filled the tanks, the larder, the lockers, the roof boxes and the passengers! See also Taxing and Testing.

WHEELS, HOW MANY? Many long-term motorhomers carry an extra set of wheels – for exercising, shopping, touring, exploring, accessing the mountains, giving the motorhome a rest. Bicycles are easily carried on an external frame, available and fitted at many motorhome dealers.

Our 100 cc Yamaha motorbike weighs about 90 kg and is carried around the Balkans on a rack below our 2 bicycles, access being gained by a ramp. But check your MAM and MAW (see weight) and consider a trailer! A small car can be pulled behind a motorhome, preferably using a trailer since an A-frame may be technically illegal. David Berry deals with this subject exhaustively in his book 'RV in UK'.

Your existing motorhome insurance may give 3^rd party cover for a motorbike or car, but only while it is being carried or towed. The Caravan Club and Comfort Insurance both give quotes said to favour towed or carried second vehicles which are taken overseas and relatively little used.

Phone 0800 720720 for your nearest Indespension Trailer dealer, visit www.pwsacc.co.uk for more on motorbike racks, www.protowframes.co.uk for A-frames and www.fiamma.com for cycle racks and much else.

WHICH MOTORHOME: There is a whole magazine on this subject so we won't try to describe the many available alternatives. Enough to say that you can have a fixed or rising roof, a high top, a demountable or a coachbuilt which can be A-class, C-class or low profile.

We guess that most full-timers have a C-class coachbuilt and use the overcab space for extra storage. A length between 22 and 27 ft is about the right compromise. More than a million Americans live full-time on the road and their excellent vehicles and services cater for this popularity. They build motorhomes to live in, rather than just for holidays, although we do like the more recent European coachbuilts, with a permanent bed at the rear over a 'garage' for a scooter, bicycles, chairs, whatever.

We bought a 27 ft C-class American motorhome for comfort, space, load carrying, a permanent bed, a separate shower, cooking - all kinds of reasons. The motorhome is our house and Pickford's combined; we live in it and it moves itself from place to place. A smaller motorhome means less space and comfort but greater freedom in choosing places to visit and to stay.

MMM lists new prices, dealers and shows and contains many second-hand private sales. Good left-hand drive bargains are available in Germany and Belgium, either through a personal visit or UK-based agents. Visit, for example, www.palmo.de.

WISH LIST: Barry wishes that we had bought a motorhome in America, to use there for a couple of years before importing it into Europe. We could have saved a third of the cost and benefited from competent dealership and a full warranty. Margaret wishes she could have brought her cats and both of us wish that we could have begun this way of life much earlier.

ZEN OF MOTORHOMING: Full-time travel is associated with retirement, and for us ageing gives urgency and poignancy to the whole process . . . we may never pass this way again! With no regrets for our choice of this rich way of life, we remember the moment we finally closed the front door of our house, started the engine and set off! We hadn't owned a motorhome or caravan before; all our travel had been with bicycles and a tent. On early retirement, we quickly realised that a motorhome was the only way we could afford to travel all the time, comfortably, freely and carrying all the things we need for a full life.

The rewards of travel are enormous and it doesn't lose its freshness and its challenge. Motorhomers need only do what they are doing – no more and no less. Life can be lived in the present moment, avoiding habit and routine. This is the way to slow the ever-accelerating rush of time.