I love our caravan

I have just laughed so much that I spluttered and choked and husband came to see whether I was okay :

I've happily been indulging my fantasy and browsing caravan sites and someone is selling a caravan "with interrogated decking"

oooh I really want one .....I would love a campervan ..stop at side of road cup of tea..cook meal...move on....a caravan to stay on a site and while away many happy hours....or a motorhome would be my ultimate dream..might have been a romany in a past life

Think I have managed to upload a photo of my wee van and awning,maybe more than once lol

Just in case we didn`t see it the first time?

scooter that's a lovely wee van [jealous]

Our van that we sold a few months ago is on my profile page. It was made in 1993, but was still in fairly good nick, I do wish we hadn`t had to get rid of it, I miss it.

I miss ours number we had some super holidays and lots of spur of the moment weekends in Derbyshire, we were walkers then. Then we had a static in North Wales until DH developed his memory problems ,but very happy times.

Thank you Grannyknot,I love it,never ever thought I would own one of my own,Numberplease,had a wee look at your van on your profile page,it's lovely,shame you had to let it go.

Scooter58 love your caravan,,,,, so are you selling the other two

you still got your bike? had to sell mine last week

what make of van is it....I would love a camper van or motor home, they hire them out at the end of the road from us, think about £80 a day but they are the latest models all singing and dancing.

Couple of pedal bikes on the back and away you go, lovely

Hya Bikergran,aye still got my bike,if I sell my other 2 Vans I could buy a new bike !!! That's a shame you had to sell your bike,will you get another one?.
My Van is a Coachman Mirage,big enough for me and a friend and Zeta my German Shepherd,maybe one day you will get to hire a Motor Home,hope you do ��

German shep aww lovely..as well.
not sure about another bike , may have to wait a while, could do with 4 wheels at the mo rather than 2 lol.

yes whos knows you may see my flying round the country in a little camper van lol adios

Having become an orphan and come into a bit of dosh we upgraded this year to a new - properly new(!) - 'van. A Swift Eccles Sport. Not top of the range - but it has hot and cold water, good sized loo/shower, heating, good sized fridge, microwave ....... etc. AND a worktop! It's four berth so a bit bigger than the old little one which I found claustrophic in the dark evenings early/late in the year. And, I'm afraid VQ that we have also invested in a TV for those dark evenings.

However - coming away from our last break to Flamborough Head on Friday - we dropped it! We both thought the other had checked the green bit was showing on the hitch - but neither of us had - and it wasn't! An enormous crump as we were leaving and there sat the poor van all left behind! It doesn't seem to have done any damage though other than pulling out that emergency red brake line (it worked!) and loosening the connection for the lights. Booking it in today for a check over. We won't make that mistake again!

Oh heck Dumpling hope not much damage done, I'm sure it will be fine if it just dropped to the ground,,like you say you will never do it again, maybe one person does all the couplings then the other goes and checks it.I think the front bit the A thingy is pretty robust.

DW and I have had caravans since the mid-eighties and now that we are both retired we spend more time in our caravan than ever - in fact we have just returned from a 28-day trip to Southern Germany and the Austrian Tirol ("Sound of Music" country).

Our latest caravan has a large shower cublcle which DW is able to use despite her disabilities, and with double-glazing and central heating we can go out whatever the weather so there is no "closed" season.

I frequently hear people saying that they would love a caravan but don't think they would be able to tow it, but the reality is that towing is just another skill that has to be learned. Remember when you first started driving (however long ago that was), you didn't just get in the car and drive away - you had lessons in how to do it right. Towing is no different. Any good school of motoring will give towing lessons.

It always amuses me to see caravans advertised as having x number of "births", rather than "berths", makes me imagine loads of babies being born in them!

Any crunch sound behind makes your heart sink. We thought we'd remembered everything on our first trip away. Coming home we thought the road was particularly noisy then came the crunch. We'd left the jockey wheel down. Cost £30 for the replacement part. Now we check and double check.

I too would love to own a static van on a nice site somewhere.
We have looked on line at the second hand ones recently, there are a couple around £5-£6000 (obviously very old) then of course there are annual site fees etc., but am I right in thinking that most sites won't allow you to keep them on there after they become a certain age?

Glad there was no damage Dumpling,you must have feared the worst when you heard the crunching sound,bet you don't do that again.

I think some sites do have an age rule but there must be some that don't. I suppose it depends where you'd like to be.

We've raked up all our spare cash and are going to treat ourselves to an inflatable awning plus electric pump. They're up and ready in less than 5 minutes! We like the Kampa Fiesta Air Pro which is designed to allow two extensions to be zipped on if required. We figured it will be useful when the children are too big for the small caravan beds. To say I'm overexcited is an understatement

We'll sell our current awning on ebay to recoup some of the money.

NanSue, we looked a few years ago at buying a static caravan, it's the high price of keeping it on the site that put us off though.

Hi rosesarered I have been doing a bit of digging around and it seems this could be anything from hundreds to thousands!! It's certainly put me off too.

Yes, I agree, it's not just buying the caravan but the thousands to be paid out to keep it on a site, otherwise we would have gone ahead and bought one, the whole family could have used it.

Regarding the age rule, it applies to tourers as well on a very few sites. There were 2 lovely looking sites in Suffolk that we were tempted by a few years ago, both owned by the same company, but we were unable to go there, because they had a rule of not accepting any tourers over the age of 10 years. Maybe they thought that old vans would spoil the look of their beautiful sites? Not true in many cases, some old vans are better kept up than newer ones.