We currently have our vehicle insured with Sterling Insurance. We have 365-day cover, including fully comprehensive green card cover for most countries we have travelled through or will travel through. The exception has been Kosovo, where we had no option other than to purchase third-party insurance. This will also be the case when we get to Georgia and Armenia.
When arranging our vehicle insurance, we spent time speaking directly with Sterling to work through the details and make sure the policy matched our plans. Diane, having previously worked in the insurance industry, has a good eye for policy wording and can dig into the details to make sure the cover genuinely fits our lifestyle.
A few thoughts when it comes to insurance, whether that’s health, travel, or vehicle cover:
• Shop around, but also speak directly with insurers or brokers and discuss your plans in detail. It takes time, but it’s time well spent.
• The cheapest policy isn’t always the best policy. The important thing is that it provides the right cover for the way you travel.
• Consider the value of your vehicle, the value of your travel plans, and your own tolerance for risk when deciding what level of cover is appropriate.
• Be completely transparent. Failing to disclose relevant information can create problems if you ever need to make a claim and, in some cases, could invalidate your policy.
What travel insurance do you use?
Our travel insurance is a one-way policy with True Traveller. We chose them because their cover suited the way we travel. Many travel insurance policies are designed around shorter trips and can limit a single journey to 30, 60 or 90 days. As we’re travelling continuously for much longer periods, that wasn’t particularly useful to us.
True Traveller offered a policy that allowed us to travel for an extended period while still providing the medical and other travel cover we wanted. We were also able to arrange the entire policy online, which made things considerably easier when we were preparing to leave the UK.
For us, having proper travel insurance is an essential part of travelling long-term. European healthcare arrangements such as an EHIC or GHIC aren’t a substitute for travel insurance, and once you’re travelling beyond Europe there are obviously no such arrangements to rely on. We therefore make sure our policy covers the countries we’re travelling through and, importantly, the activities we intend to undertake.
We don’t regard travel insurance as something to buy simply because you’re required to have it for a visa or border crossing. Medical treatment abroad can be extremely expensive, and repatriation can cost considerably more, so it’s one of those expenses we would rather have and never need than discover we needed after something had gone wrong.
The exact cover, exclusions and conditions will depend on the policy you purchase, so it’s important to read the wording carefully and make sure it actually matches the way you intend to travel.
This is probably one of the questions we get asked most often.
For UK citizens, the basic rule is that we can spend 90 days in any rolling 180-day period in the Schengen Area. It isn’t 90 days per country, and it isn’t simply 90 days followed by 90 days out. It’s 90 days across the whole Schengen Area, with the calculation constantly looking back over the previous 180 days.
The trick, if you’re travelling long-term, is to keep an eye on the calendar and plan ahead.
We call our approach the “Schengen Shuffle”. We move in and out of the Schengen Area, spending time in countries outside it while our Schengen days gradually become available again. For us, that means countries such as Morocco, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Turkey can become particularly useful when we’re travelling around Europe.
One thing to be aware of is that the day you enter Schengen counts as a day, and the day you leave counts as a day too. So if we cross the border on a Monday and leave on the following Monday, that’s eight Schengen days, not six. Every day spent inside the area counts, regardless of how much of that day we actually spend there.
We also try not to use every available day. As we travel, we generally aim to leave around 7–10 days “in the bank” rather than running the clock right down to zero. That gives us a useful safety margin and, more importantly, some flexibility if we suddenly need to travel back into Schengen, perhaps because of a route change, a family commitment, or simply because we need to get somewhere.
The other important thing to understand is that your unused days don’t suddenly appear all at once. As older days fall outside the rolling 180-day window, they become available again. So someone who has spent 90 days in Schengen doesn’t necessarily have to stay outside for another 90 days before being able to return. It depends on exactly when those previous days were used.
We keep a running record of every entry and exit and work out our position before crossing a border. It sounds a little obsessive, but when your home has wheels and you’re moving between countries, knowing where you can legally be is rather useful information to have.
And there’s one final point worth remembering: crossing from one Schengen country to another doesn’t reset the clock. Once you’re inside Schengen, you’re essentially travelling within one zone for the purposes of the 90/180 calculation. The Schengen days only stop accumulating when you leave the Schengen Area altogether.
It can sound complicated, but once you get your head around the rolling 180-day calculation, it becomes fairly manageable. For us, it’s just another part of planning the route.
We use the European Commission’s official short-stay calculator alongside our own records. The rules can be complicated and individual circumstances can differ, so always check your own position before travelling.