Caravanning top tip: Levelling it

Getting a caravan level on the pitch is important or the water won't drain away and you'll roll out of bed at night. Forget ramps and levellers though, the easiest method is much more simple. On arrival, unhitch and park the car. Get a glass and place it on the kitchen worktop and then fill it to the brim with red wine. If the level of the wine doesn't match the rim of the glass, drink the wine, refill the glass and check the levels again. Repeat until the wine begins to appear level with the rim of the glass. Sorted.

Trip #6 Lucksall, again (March 2012)

After the stay here towards the end of last year, the fine folks at Lucksall offered us a complimentary weekend so off we trotted last week for a wee Friday to Sunday stay.

On arrival we were given a choice of five pitches choose from so we plumped for the middle one and settled in. Now we've not caravanned in cold weather before and although it was reasonably warm during the day, it was still mid-March so was getting a tad nippy at night. No problem thought I, pop the heater on the middle power setting, set the thermostat at about 20 or so and we'll be all toasty and warm.

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Lonely caravan

In the absence of any stays in the caravan for the last few weeks, here's a picture which must surely tug at the heart-strings of any caravanist. The fact it's sitting down on the tow-hitch just makes it look all the more unwanted. (Click for a larger version)

Makes you want to go and offer it a reassuring pat and an 'It'll be OK'!

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Bad towing day

At the moment I'm not towing the caravan but instead have my regular work-day trailer which is pretty much the same size as the caravan anyway.

I was driving from Cheltenham to Rotherham and everything was going perfectly nicely, just tootling along around lunchtime minding my own business, until I came to a main road through Rotherham which had a church part-way down it, at which a funeral was taking place. With big black horses for pulling a carriage, the works. And very handily, the church was right on the brow of a gentle hill so you can’t see much past it. All the parked cars and horses for the funeral were completely blocking up my side of the road for a good 150 yards or so, so I waited until nothing was coming, then pulled out to go past and the queue of traffic behind followed me.

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Trip #5 Lucksall, Hereford (October 2011)

We like Hereford a lot and almost moved there permanently once but the drag to and from the M5 which I would have to do almost daily was a bit too much, but that same drag of A or B roads makes it great for caravanning as it's not only a beautiful county but also quiet. After my choice of Cuckoo's Corner earlier in the year met with some disapproval from Margo ("nice site, but I'm not sleeping next to what sounds like a dual carriageway again"), we went for Lucksall on the other side of Hereford.

The weather for the last weekend of October was looking good, so forgetting it was school half-term, we headed off to a family site.

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Trip #4 Ross Park, Devon (September 2011)

As the first (part-)summer with a caravan was getting to an end we managed to squeeze in another four-dayer and it had to be the natural home of the caravan and caravanist, Devon. If you have a caravan and don't take it to Devon regularly the some well-dressed bouncers from the Club come round in a fleet of Rover 75s and confiscate it. Margo had chosen the Ross Park caravan site in Ipplepen, near Newton Abbot in Devon and what a discovery - this is the standard by which we will judge all caravan sites on and I have to say, after staying here, why didn't I discover caravanning 10 years ago??

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Trip #3, Cuckoo's Corner, Hereford (September 2011)

The thing that attracted us to a caravan initially was the idea of going somewhere quiet in a bit of nice countryside with the dogs and a bottle or two of wine and being able to do so fairly frequently, while not having to sleep on the ground under little more than a stretched-out pac-a-mac like the tentists do. (Campers - a bit of good advice - if your tent is smaller than the car parked next to it, sleep in the car!). Hereford is about an hour from home and the Cuckoo's Corner site seemed to meet our requirements perfectly - small site, Herefordshire is a great county, loads of places to walk the dogs, and not far enough of a journey to cause untoward rear-end doggy problems.

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Trip #2, the first long one (August 2011)

After the success of our jaunt to Coventry, we decided that we ought to give it a proper go, so mid-August we headed off to the Sandy Gulls park in Norfolk, about 15 minutes or so south of Cromer.

I want to be clear up-front that it was not the intention of this blog to become a poo-focused gutter-dwelling literary dirge, but unfortunately trip number two did end up continuing with the theme of the first one a couple of weeks earlier. This was mostly down to one of our beasties not being overly happy with the car and it turned out that five hours or so was about 30 minutes longer than he was prepared to take, giving up a nice loose deposit right in the middle of the dog cage which both he and the other dog then padded about in for a while. And so the trip commenced, with a stinky arrival at the site, pondering how one cleans up two dogs and their dog-cage before even thinking about setting up the caravan...

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Trip #1, the first outing (August 2011)

Where does one go for a first trip when new to caravanning? There are so many sites to choose from, many boasting seafront locations, secluded woodlands, unspoilt moorland or dramatic mountains, that it becomes impossible to choose. In the end we decided to start at the pinnacle of UK tourism to give us the best possible view of caravanning, so we went for a weekend to Coventry...

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The beginnings

Prologue - the slippery-slope towards caravan-ownership, July 2011

We were looking at B&Bs and the hitherto-hideous caravan possibility raised it's head again - "we can buy a caravan, pay the site fees, and still be quids-in compared to the cost of some of these hotel, plus the dogs won't be quite as much of a problem in a 'van." (See how easily that slips in - " 'van " - like a natural already...).

At something of a loose end one Sunday afternoon we meandered over to Cotswold Edge Caravans for a bit of a gander at what these things looked like. Prices were, to us, jaw-droppingly expensive but tucked away in the corner was a small caravan and as we walked over I would swear the sky brightened. It was a small two-berth Abbey Vogue 216 GTS, and that 'GTS' was important as what could possibly be more sporty and 'Top Gear' than something with 'GTS' in the title - that's almost a Ferrari.

We walked away but 24 hours later the decision was made, money handed over and the deed was done, we were now members of that plague upon the motorways of Britain, caravanners...