Caravans - the towing kind

[Graham C]

Does anyone have one?  I thought it may be fun to get a caravan for weekends away.  Clearly I haven't though too much about the finer details  in it but my daughter wants to do the camping thing, I don't really like tents/camping so thought this would be fun.   I have somewhere I can keep it and my car also has a tow bar, what else could one need?

If you have one, do you use and enjoy it?

[Laxie]

We have one and used it all summer every summer until only a couple of years ago.  We travelled around a bit the first year, but the rest of the summers we took it back to a lovely seaside spot and just parked it for the season.  I'd definitely make sure you have a full awning with it.  We didn't have one until the 3rd season, but we wouldn't go without one after.  It's like adding another full room to the caravan and it's handy for keeping things like the kid's bikes and the like when you're not there.  Granted, I'd still lock them up, but at least they aren't in plain view. 

We had a brilliant time.  We found a lovely place right on the beach that was only an hour away from home.  Handy if the weather turned nasty.  I'd gather the kids, hitch the caravan to the car and head off for the site while Timothy was at work.  We had it set up in no time and Timothy would land back after work with nothing to do, only kick up his feet and relax.  He spent the summers travelling to work from the camp site and we'd call back to our house maybe once a week just to check on things and to maybe swap around laundry. 

Also, there's a special lock to put on the caravan's tow bar.  Get it and use it once you have the caravan parked.  Makes it more difficult for anyone to carry off when you're not there.  That said.  If you're staying at a 'holiday camp site', you'll get to know your 'neighbours' and everyone is usually pretty good about watching out for each other and their camping gear.  There was one bad week where we said 'sod it' and went home for a night as the winds were unreal.  When we returned, the awning was down and a good bit of our stuff had been packed away into a tent we'd set up.  One of the die hard campers had stayed on and looked after everyone's gear.  Only for him, our stuff would have been in the ocean.         

Now it's parked across the road and is handy when we have extra visitors, but we don't take it out.  I had a couple of operations on my upper back and that threw off our seasons a bit.  Plus the kids are older and have more going on (footy matches and the like) so we wouldn't be able to spend as much time as we'd like there.  Pity, because we really had brilliant times there.  Sigh.

[Graham C]

Awesome cheers   Probably something for next summer to be honest, but I've been tempted for a while now.

[TheWhisper]

They had a couple of nice caravans at the Reading cattle market auctions last Saturday.
Also you might want to check out the camping exhibition in Wokingham starting this saturday http://www.campingcentreexhibitions.co.uk/html/exhibitions.html they had loads of caravans last year

[Ironside]

before you buy try them out

most carvan parks have some you can rent for week or so

my neighbours goto http://www.silver-sands.co.uk/ every summer for 2 weeks and its only 10 miles down the they seem to enjoy it

[Graham C]

They had a couple of nice caravans at the Reading cattle market auctions last Saturday.
Also you might want to check out the camping exhibition in Wokingham starting this saturday http://www.campingcentreexhibitions.co.uk/html/exhibitions.html they had loads of caravans last year

Cool, cheers for that, I may drag the family along, they'll love that