Our Caravan Story

For most of my adult life I’ve worked in the aviation industry, which has meant that i’ve had fortunate access to global travel. In 2015, when our family was completed with our youngest daughter, our circumstances changed and it was no longer simple or cost effective to jump on a plane for a break and some family time. We’re happiest outdoors & we started to explore the idea of camping.

Leisure time is important to us as a family so I started looking at cheap, old, caravans - around £1000 budget. I’m not going to lie, I hadn’t really thought it through, my house at the time was mid-terrace with no driveway and on-road parking and we had a car incapable of towing anything. My parents thought I had lost the plot. We were not equipped & it was a harebrained scheme.

We knew someone who had decided to stop caravanning, they were selling their 1994 Coachman for £2500 complete with everything we could need, including a storage spot in a barn on a campsite 5 minutes from home. It was meant to be, we snapped their hand off and our caravanning journey began with a 7 year old and a 1 year old.

The campsite that we stored on towed the old caravan out to whichever pitch we had booked & it was often waiting for us on a Friday evening when we’d all finished work. We spent many a summer evening watching our eldest daughter make friends easily with new children each time. She grew in confidence from a child who was scared of the dark to a child with a glow stick around each wrist so that we could identify our one in the dark. Our baby also enjoyed being filthy and running around the campsite. We camped from April to October half term saying a reluctant goodbye at Halloween until the next year.

In 2018 we decided to upgrade, we wanted some more room & the luxury of not having to make beds up. We had never towed the Coachman because we were warned that it was probably not roadworthy, the floor had delaminated in the middle. I advertised it ’warts-n-all’ on Facebook Marketplace & sold for £600 to someone who fixed trailers for a living. We kept most of the equipment for our next caravan, including the awning.

My husband was desperate to get back to the New Forest where he had spent many caravanning years as a child. We awkwardly purchased our second caravan from someone we knew, unfortunately, we were too trusting and it was extremely faulty. We call this one the Lemon Van. It was a Bailey Senator Carolina 2004.

We were devastated, and rightly so. I‘ll dedicate an entire post to the lemon.

In 2020, coronavirus took over everybody’s lives and suddenly something changed within the caravanning world, it became popular again due to the self contained nature of these little pods & as the UK borders remained closed, demand took off. I listed the lemon for sale in 2021, again, with a very honest list of everything that was wrong with it. The buyer didn’t care, they just wanted a home for the summer to spend their holidays & we recouped half of our money.

We purchased our newest caravan, the current one, from a dealer. It cost us more than we were looking to spend but we are thrilled with our 2013 Swift Challenger 565. This one also caused us problems and it had to be returned immediately under warranty but we have been very happy with her since then.

So, here we are 7 years later, we love caravanning and have learned a lot along the way, so have decided to share in the hope that it’s of interest to others. Thanks for reading!