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Motorhome route planner: avoid low bridges, narrow lanes, weight limits (2026)

By Rovee · Reviewed and updated 2026-06-29

Avoiding low bridges in a motorhome requires routing software that knows the vehicle's height, width, weight, and length — not just GPS coordinates. The apps that do this in 2026 are Sygic Truck & Camper, CoPilot Caravan, TomTom GO with Camper mode, CaraMaps Premium, and Rovee (closed beta). Consumer apps (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze) route every vehicle as a car and have caused documented incidents including a 3.2-metre motorhome wedged in a residential lane in Padstow, Cornwall (ITV News, 2023). Rovee's beta routes around height-restricted, weight-limited, and narrow roads using vehicle-dimension data combined with European road regulation awareness.

Routes around the lanes. Not down them. The visceral motorhome moment isn't the bridge ahead; it's the lane that narrowed half a mile back, the one you can't reverse out of without a queue forming. This is the apps that prevent it, and the trade-offs each one carries.

The Padstow moment

In September 2023, ITV News West Country covered a story that every motorhome owner has now heard some version of: a 3.2-metre coach-built motorhome wedged between two cottages on a residential lane in Padstow, Cornwall. The driver had followed a sat-nav route into the town centre. The lane narrowed past the point of return. The crew had to be talked out — wing mirrors folded, paint scraped, queue of locals filming.

The story isn't unusual. The MotorhomeFun forum's long-running "sat navs and narrow lanes" thread has fifteen years of these. Wild Camping runs the same pattern. The variation is the country: a Cornish village, an Italian hill-town, a French wine-region commune, a Dutch dyke road.

What's common is the cause: a navigation app that treated the motorhome as a car. The fix is straightforward and has been for years — use routing software that takes the rig's dimensions as inputs and refuses roads that don't fit. Most motorhome owners don't, because the apps that do this are unevenly known and unevenly priced.

2024–25 — the scale, in Network Rail's own numbers. Between April 2024 and March 2025, Network Rail logged 1,666 bridge strikes — roughly one every five hours. The price tag for the rail network alone: £12 million in damage and 186,384 minutes of delay. The most-struck bridge in 2024–25 was on Watling Street (the A5) in Hinckley with 22 hits; Scotland recorded 158 strikes for the year (Network Rail press release). Most strikes are HGVs and buses, not motorhomes — but the underlying failure mode is identical: a driver trusted a navigation app that didn't know the vehicle's height.

Sources. The bridge-strike figures above are Network Rail's own. The authoritative national record — annual strike counts, damage cost, and the most-struck bridges — is Network Rail — the risk of bridge strikes. For the strategic road network (motorways and major A-roads), the responsible authority is National Highways. Fact-check date: 2026-06-29.

The matrix

The apps below were checked against each one's current iOS App Store listing in mid-2026 and cross-referenced with the active discussions on motorhomefun.co.uk and editorial coverage at practicalmotorhome.com.

Why the consumer apps fail this specific job

Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze are the apps most people open by default. They route well enough for cars. For a motorhome they don't — and the failure mode is the one that puts the vehicle in trouble, not the one that just costs a few extra kilometres.

Google Maps has bridge clearance data in many countries. It just doesn't use it when routing. The same is true for Apple Maps and Waze. Even if you tell the app your motorhome is 3.2 metres tall — Google's "vehicle settings" exists for some commercial accounts — the routing engine treats the line as a car line. The data is there; the engine doesn't read it for routing decisions. See the Rovee vs Google Maps and Apple Maps compare for the per-country detail.

The vehicle-aware apps (Sygic, CoPilot, TomTom GO Camper, CaraMaps Premium, Rovee) take vehicle dimensions as routing inputs. A 3.2-metre vehicle won't be routed under a 2.7-metre bridge by any of them. The difference is what each does when the only route to your destination requires using a restricted road: Sygic and Rovee will reroute around at additional distance; CoPilot will warn and ask; TomTom is the most conservative; CaraMaps Premium handles dimensions but its routing engine is less mature than the others.

Height warnings vs dimension-aware routing

A useful distinction the marketing copy blurs. Some apps show a height-restriction warning when you approach a low bridge — they know the bridge is there, they alert you near it. But the route they planned still passes through it. That's not dimension-aware routing; that's a heads-up before you have to reverse.

Real dimension-aware routing rejects restricted segments at the planning step. The route never touches them. The user experience is: you ask for a route, the app draws one that avoids height-restricted, weight-limited, and width-limited roads. You're not warned later because the route never went there.

Sygic Truck & Camper, CoPilot Caravan, TomTom GO Navigation in Camper mode, and Rovee all do real dimension-aware routing. Magic Earth's "Truck mode" is somewhere between — dimensions are entered but routing rejection is partial. CaraMaps Premium added dimension-aware routing in 2026 and is still maturing.

When the map data is wrong (and it sometimes is)

No map is complete. The MaxHeight tag on OpenStreetMap is missing on around 30% of European bridges and clearance changes — roadworks, resurfacing, damaged structures — can lag the map by weeks. The commercial providers (HERE, TomTom) audit more aggressively, but still miss the freshly-signed temporary case.

The mitigations are unglamorous: most vehicle-aware apps let you report a missing or wrong restriction (Sygic's Map Reporter, TomTom MapShare, OSM editing for OSM-based apps). Reports take days to weeks to land. The driver-side mitigation is the older one — on an unfamiliar road, read the physical signs and trust them over the screen. The app is the first line of defence, not the only one.

A useful habit from long-distance motorhome forums: when the route enters a town centre or a rural side road, slow down, drop the radio, watch for restriction signs. The app catches 95% of these. The signs catch the last 5%.

UK weight limits: which ones bind a motorhome

Weight-limit signs cause more worry than they need to, because two different signs look alike and only one usually applies to a motorhome.

• Environmental limits — usually not your problem. The common 7.5-tonne sign with an Except for access plate (UK traffic-sign diagram 622.1A) reads "goods vehicles exceeding the maximum gross weight prohibited". It's aimed at lorries cutting through villages. A motorhome registered as a Motor Caravan is an M1 (passenger-vehicle category) vehicle, not a goods vehicle — so, like a bus, it generally isn't bound by it. One caveat: some larger rigs over 3.5 t are re-registered as Private HGV (heavy goods vehicle) on the V5C for tax; if yours is, its status under a goods-vehicle sign is less clear, so check the body type on your V5C.
• Structural limits — these apply to everyone. A weak-bridge or weak-road limit (diagram 626.2A, often 3 t, 7.5 t, or 18 t) applies to all vehicles, motorhomes included. Here the figure is a hard cap: a 3.5-tonne coach-built is in breach on a 3-tonne bridge, full stop. These rarely carry an access exemption — the structure can't take the weight even to reach a house.
• The plated weight is what counts. Both kinds are judged on your Maximum Authorised Mass — the plated maximum on the V5C — not what the vehicle weighs on the day. A rig plated at 3.85 t is a 3.85-tonne vehicle at every weight sign, even half-empty.

This is exactly the distinction a dimension-aware app should encode: enter your plated weight and it rejects any segment below it — structural or environmental — the same way it rejects a low bridge. The consumer apps ignore the number entirely. It's the weight sibling of the height problem this page is about; the motorhome dimensions page covers reading the figure off your V5C.

Setting vehicle dimensions correctly

Every vehicle-aware app asks for a vehicle profile. The most common mistake is entering the bare-vehicle height from the V5C and forgetting roof additions: A/C units, satellite dishes, solar panels, roof rails. A 2.95-metre coach-built with a 20-cm A/C unit is a 3.15-metre vehicle for routing purposes.

• Height. V5C / registration document + everything you've added on top + 10 cm safety margin. Bridges are surveyed to nominal height; road resurfacing reduces clearance over time. The 10 cm catches both.
• Width. Cab-mirror-to-mirror. Not body width — the mirrors are what hit things. Add the cab mirrors at full extension.
• Length. Tow-bar to front bumper. If you tow a bike rack that protrudes, add it.
• Weight. Maximum laden weight (Maximum Authorised Mass on the V5C), not unladen. Weight restrictions on bridges are about loaded vehicles.

Some apps (Sygic, Rovee) let you save multiple vehicle profiles — useful if you sometimes tow a trailer. CoPilot and TomTom assume one profile per install; switching requires re-entry. The difference matters if you have a tow setup you switch between two and four times a year.

Best pick — picking the one to install today

If you're standing in a motorhome dealership car park, app store open, ready to install one:

• Deepest UK install base + mature offline maps → CoPilot Caravan. The default for UK motorhome owners since the late 2000s; £25.99/yr after the perpetual-licence sunset. See the Rovee vs CoPilot compare for the v11 + routing-quality context.
• Deepest community recommendation across European forums, if you don't mind the €55–€100 CarPlay licence (depending on region and promo) → Sygic Truck & Camper Premium. Default answer on motorhomefun.co.uk for years; trust caveats around the 2021 perpetual-licence sunset apply.
• Most-built-out CarPlay UI on a major brand → TomTom GO Navigation in Camper mode. Conservative routing — more reroutes than Sygic, but the conservatism is the feature for first-time owners.
• You want one app that handles dimensions + tolls + low-emission zones + vignettes in one place → Rovee. Closed iPhone beta; public launch Friday August 7, 2026. Founding tier: €17.99/year, price-locked, first 1,000 only.

Rovee routes for the rig — height, width, weight, length — and combines tolls, vignettes, and low-emission-zone awareness in one CarPlay-friendly app. Closed beta now, public launch Friday August 7, 2026.

Join the waitlist for the public launch.

FAQ

Do UK 7.5-tonne weight limits apply to my motorhome?

Usually not the environmental ones. The common 7.5-tonne sign with an 'Except for access' plate (UK traffic-sign diagram 622.1A) bans goods vehicles — lorries through villages — and a motorhome registered as a Motor Caravan is a passenger vehicle, not a goods vehicle, so it generally isn't caught, much as a bus isn't. What does apply to every vehicle is a structural weight limit — a weak bridge or road, often 3, 7.5, or 18 tonnes — where the figure is a hard cap and even a 3.5-tonne motorhome is in breach above it. Both are judged on your plated Maximum Authorised Mass from the V5C, not the weight on the day. One caveat: if a larger motorhome is registered as 'Private HGV' over 3.5 tonnes, its status under goods-vehicle signs is less clear — check the body type on your V5C.

Which navigation app is best for avoiding low bridges in a motorhome?

No single app does everything. The apps that route a motorhome around low bridges using vehicle dimensions are Sygic Truck & Camper (CarPlay behind a €55–€100 Premium licence (depending on region and promo)), CoPilot Caravan (£25.99/yr subscription; perpetual licence sunset), TomTom GO Navigation in Camper mode, CaraMaps Premium, and Rovee (closed beta). Consumer apps like Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze route every vehicle as a car and will send a motorhome under a bridge it can't clear. See the matrix below for the trade-offs.

Why doesn't Google Maps know about low bridges?

Google Maps has bridge clearance data in many places, but it doesn't use vehicle dimensions when routing. Even if you set your motorhome's height in the app, it routes the same line a car would take — height-restricted bridges aren't excluded from the route. Apple Maps and Waze behave the same way: no vehicle-aware routing for non-truck vehicles. For a motorhome you need an app whose routing engine takes height, width, weight, and length as inputs, not just the destination.

How accurate is the height data in motorhome navigation apps?

Coverage is uneven. UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands have the most complete height-restriction data (OpenStreetMap maxheight tags + commercial provider audits). Eastern Europe is patchier, especially rural roads. Even with good data, a freshly-signed temporary restriction (roadworks, damaged bridges) can lag the map by weeks. Treat the app as the first line of defence, not the only one: a paper height sign at the road still wins if the data disagrees.

What height should I enter for my motorhome?

Use the height from the V5C / registration document, plus anything you've added on the roof: A/C unit, satellite dish, solar panels, roof rails. A common mistake is entering the bare-vehicle height and forgetting a 20-cm A/C unit, then routing under a bridge with 10 cm clearance. Add 10 cm of safety margin on top of the true total — bridges are surveyed to nominal height, and road resurfacing can reduce clearance by a few centimetres.

Can apps warn about narrow lanes too, not just low bridges?

Some can. Sygic Truck & Camper, CoPilot Caravan, and Rovee use vehicle width and length to avoid roads classified as too narrow for the rig — this is what catches the rural-Cornwall and Italian-village cases the Padstow story made famous. TomTom GO Camper handles dimensions but is more conservative about flagging narrow-lane risk in the routing UI. None of the consumer apps handle width at all.

What if a low bridge isn't in the map data?

It happens. The mitigation: most vehicle-aware apps let you report a missing or wrong restriction back to the data provider (Sygic's Map Reporter, TomTom's MapShare, OSM editing for the openstreetmap-based apps). Reports take days to weeks to land in routing updates. The driver-side mitigation is the old one: when you're driving an unfamiliar road, read the physical signs and trust them over the screen.

When can I get Rovee?

Rovee is in closed iPhone beta in 2026, with public launch on Friday August 7, 2026. Founding-member access is capped at the first 1,000 members at €17.99/year price-locked as long as you stay subscribed. Join the waitlist below.