Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Anyone own a caravan?
  • As in mobile.

    How much use do you get out of it if so, do you go abroad, what do you tow it with and how much did you pay?

    Inspire me with pics

    CharlieMungus
    Free Member

    i got one a couple of years bac, pull it with a 2.1 litre diesel toyota MPV, paid about £4K for it, as a starter van to see if we liked it. storage costs about £250 a year and been away a good few times. Better than camping, ‘cos all yer stuff is packed already. so quick getaways are easier, only drawback is you usually need to book a pitch in advance.

    Not been abroad yet, will need to build up to it.

    How many is it for? What is your expected use?

    k-sugden
    Free Member

    Our is 6 years old now we bought it new having worked our way up from a tent via a folding camper. used it more when we first got it but still had 4 full weeks and about 8 weekends away last year. £220 a year storage £350 a year insurance new for old @ £16,000 £120 a year for servicing. Tow it with a Nissan Terrano the outfit weighs 3.5 tonne does 22mpg towing. Taken it to France 4 times no problems, won’t get as much use this year as we are off to Canada for 3 weeks but still expect to be away for a couple of full weeks and maybe a dozen weekends. won’t be selling any time soon unless I swap it for another new one.

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    scraprider
    Free Member

    had one for past 7 years, hate going aboard, prefer english hols , off to n wales this time , £8.000 van, towing car discovey 2 td5,not really that botherd about mpg tbh, great stuff , chuck the bikes init and the carrier, have got pleanty of space outside my house so no storage problems, use it when ever possible, last year we did nearly 2000 miles , furthest being scotland , closes being a farm in north devon which is so beautiful and quiet and 40 miles from my gaff.get one its great.

    sweepy
    Free Member

    Cheap as chips, and weve been all over the Highlands in it for 6 or 7 years now 😀

    bigbob38
    Free Member

    Saving up right now…. got a trailer tent that we have spent at least 8 weeks a year in for the last 4 years….
    Want to go away in winter too, so need something with walls 😯

    Towing – it’s ok, as long as you accept the 50mph limit I am told, however I am considering keeping the trailer tent for trips to the south of france… as it tows very well at 80 😆

    paulosoxo
    Free Member

    [/url] Untitled by paulosoxo, on Flickr[/img]

    Bailey Ranger 500/5. Multipla has been replaced with a Freelander 2. That’s our seadonal pitch on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, we pay £1100(ish) a season and go most weekends. This year the plan is to leave the Awning down until school holidays and try and tour it a bit more.

    KIDS LOVE IT!!!

    coolhandluke
    Free Member

    We got ours in 2005, a 1999 ABI Dalesman. We paid £4500 and it came with everything we could have needed. Found it in Autotrader. Recently sold (PX) for £2300 and we kept all the “extras” that came with it, eg awning, water things, car mirrors groundsheet etc so it didn’t cost us much in depreciation at all really.

    Here it is waiting to get on the ferry at Portsmouth for a hol in Brittany in 2008

    Here it is, with awning in Brittany

    Despite iffy weather and me forgetting a vital awning bit so had to bodge the thing up its still one of our favorite holidays.

    We’re off to France this year too but have a new caravan to do it in after selling the first one just before Christmas.

    Already looking forwards to it.

    Usually we go away for a long weekend / half term weeks etc but don’t usually go far. You don’t have to to make it a break.

    We take ours around Lancashire, N Wales or the Lakes, all within an hour of where we are.

    This is in the Lakes

    We tow towed the ABI with a mondeo and then my Octavia VRS. Mondeo was a good tow car due to its weight. Octavia is a good tow car because of its torque and power!

    Regarding what caravan to buy, find a layout you like. We were advised that you didn’t need a massive proper shower as you tend to use camp site facilities. We didn’t listen and the ABI had an almost full size shower that we used 3 times maybe 4. We the shower to store stuff in more than anything….

    Our new one (no photos yet) has a shower combined in the loo now and I doubt we’ll ever use the shower.

    Go to a large dealer and sit in a few to see how you feel in different layouts.

    RoterStern
    Free Member

    We’ve got a Hobby caravan which we use every school holiday except Xmas/winter (but that may change in the future). The main reason buying one was going on holiday to a hotel with three small children was just a stress nightmare (epsecially in mainly German toursit hotels as Germans tend to be very unsympathtic towards children) and staying in a holiday flat you tend to feel pretty isolated. When caravaning you tend to meet new people more easily and usually at breakfast there is a queue of kids waiting to go off and play with our three. We generally head down to Italy or Austria in the summer but I have also been camping in France, Spain and Portugal with my old camper van. I haven’t been camping in the UK for a while but if you head over to Europe you’ll see a difference in the quality of the campsites. Austria especially have these luxurious campsites with everyhing you can think of on offer (the last one we stopped at even had an indoor skate/BMX park!)

    The caravan is pretty big and it sleeps five when you fold down the dining table. We pull it using a VW T5 Multivan so I generally find I save on diesel as I have to stay at 100kph rather than flooring it on the Autobahns.

    Raindog
    Free Member

    We’ve got a 2002 Elddis Odyssey 534, quite a big van with a fixed double bed, which makes life much easier if one person wants an early night and one wants to stay up a bit longer. Although it tows very well (Nissan X-Trail Di) I find it pretty stressful dragging it around country lanes, so after a year of touring we got a seasonal pitch near Criccieth (roughly £1100 a year including winter storage, which is very cheap for the area). We got loads of use out of it last year, but we will probably sell it sometime over the summer as we fancy doing something different, and if you add up the costs of the pitch, insurance, servicing and repairs and then some depreciation it comes to a tidy sum – we reckon about £1800 – £2000 a year. We think this sort of money will pay for quite a few nights in B&B’s / holiday cottages outside of the peak season. If you have children and a seasonal pitch a caravan can represent excellent value for money, but if there are only two of you, or you want to tour and stay on “posh” sites it’s an expensive way to holiday. I’m not trying to put you off, just giving you another viewpoint. PS if you fancy a good van on a lovely site in Wales drop me an email 🙂

    Raindog
    Free Member

    Please also note that many UK sites will not allow Hobby sized vans, and you can’t legally tow them with most cars due to their size.

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