Post by JaG - Jean & Graham on Nov 24, 2013 22:48:30 GMT
Our caravan adventures began way back in 1974. We had been married two years and just had our first child so were short of cash. At the time we had an Austin 1300 so we put a tow bar on, the first of 28 to date and almost all from Towsure and went looking to hire a caravan.
We found an old Eccles Topaz, which was 14 foot I think, to hire for the week. We decided to go to Golden Sands Holiday park, Mablethorpe and, as we lived in Swansea started saving for the trip.
Fuel was the obvious high cost so every time we filled the car up we would buy another gallon in a can. We stored it in 5 gallon drums, the ones with the cone tops until we had 25 gallons. Thinking about it now how daft was that, having 25 gallons of petrol in the shed. Even dafter was the fact we carried it all in the caravan on the way up and part way back until it was all gone.
We set off with wife, six week old son and wife's sister at 10pm to drive through the night to Skegness. Well, you can imagine it was not the best first towing experience to be had...an Austin 1300cc towing a 14 foot caravan that weighed quite heavy in those days. Amazingly we made it to Skegness unscathed at 8am the following morning. I do remember the tow back was a much more pleasant experience, though still hard.
It was another 4 years before we took the plunge to buy our first caravan, having done some tenting in the between years. It did not take long before we decided tenting was not for us. In the meantime baby No.2 arrived in 1977, one year before our first caravan. At the time we had a Datsun 180B, an 1800cc car which was more matched to the Sprite Alpine we had purchased. It even came with the standard cotton orange and blue awning which weighed really heavy.
Our first trip out with it was to North Wales for two weeks. It is remembered well because it was during the 1978 Farsnet Yacht Race when they were battered and bruised due to the terrible storms we had across the UK, including North Wales. Almost every morning the awning was lay on the ground in the pools of water.
Our second trip was down the Gower Coast. It rained, and rained and rained the whole weekend. We had to be pulled out with a tractor as the water was just below the door lip. We almost gave up caravanning there and then, except the sun came out the next time we went out. We had the Alpine for a couple of years until it rotted away.
This was stand in for the time being. How we all slept in this small caravan I will never know. I do remember that it was a case of 'you sit down while I stand up'. I think we only ever used it once to go to Farnborough Airshow for the weekend, after which it was sold.
We needed something bigger, much bigger, and this was it. We bought this for £300 and owned it for around 2 years. Initially we used it ourselves however, housing in our area was in short supply and it seemed a good idea to rent it out next to the house. We rented it to a work colleague for £20 a week for a year, making us £1,000. At the end of the rental we decided we needed something a lot more modern so we sold it to a caravan dealer in part exchange for an Ace Viceroy and got £400 for it, which we thought was a good result considering what we paid for it.
This was a modern caravan by our previous standards. As said it was bought from a caravan dealer in Derby. It's original price was £2,800 however we did a deal to take it with no warranty for £2,000. They knew, as did I that it has damp in the floor by the door. No problem, I replaced the rotten bit of flooring for £20 and never had another problem with it the two years we had it. We had a bit of spare money so decided to buy a brand new caravan from a local dealer.
This was our first new caravan, which we bought in 1979. In those days glass windows were still the norm and not many caravans had the all new plastic windows. They were also mainly basic as well with almost everything as an 'optional extra'. This included a heater and hot water so that was an extra expense before we started. Having said that the new price was only £2,200 which is less than we paid for the second hand Ace Viceroy. We kept this caravan for many years and had many a happy holiday in it. The end of it's ownership came prior to a family break up.
A couple of years without a caravan, a new partner and we were back on the road, Our first caravan together was this Abbey GT212 affectionately known as our 'passion wagon'. We had some lovely holidays with friends in it in Devon and other sites. two years on and we had an addition to the family, our grand-daughter, who we then brought up until the age of 18. As the Abbey was only a two berth we needed something different.
And this was the worst caravan we ever owned. We bought it for £1,000 from Billing Aquadrome from a dealer there. It looked OK and the salesman assured us it was a good sound caravan. We had a couple of holidays in it and that was when we noticed the walls becoming soft, yet they were dry. That was because it was riddled in dry rot...the whole of one side and all of the rear. We decided that we had to do something with it as it was worthless the way it was. In the back garden it was stripped down the whole of one side and the back end. Over several months I rebuilt it to a good standard and eventually it was good enough to sell. I thnk we got £750 for it so we were very lucky. While it was being rebuilt we looked around and found a replacement - the Lynton Sabre GXL.
Without doubt the best caravan we ever owned. We bought it privately for £2,300. It had been stored in a barn for eight years so was in excellent condition and was made in 1982, making it thirteen years old. It was spotless throughout, just needing a good clean and new curtains, which a friend made for us. It was unique in so much as it had two doors, one each side. It was quite amusing walking in one door then appearing out of another the other side.
We had that caravan for ten years. Every year we went down to Cornwall for our main holidays in it. One year we left it in storage down there and went down five times during the year. We travelled thousands of miles with it and the only reason we sold it was because we had bought an apartment in Turkey and thought we had finished caravanning for good. How wrong we were! My wife cried her eyes out as it was towed off the drive. We gave away everything with it and sold it for £1,000. It was worth almost double that.
Within six months we had withdrawal symptoms and were looking at options. As we did not want to go caravnning we decided we would try something different, a campervan.
We were nearing retirement and wanted to do something different, and there is nothing more different than this purchase. We were 'born to be wild'...we wish! We found it advertised on a Japanese Auction site and decided we wanted it. We found an importer in Folkestone to buy it at auction and bring it back for us. The full story can be found here.
Full conversion photos can be seen here.
Article by 'Unusual Motorhomes' can be see here
The bit that is not mentioned in the link is that David at Wellhouse Leisure told us he actually knew who used to own the campervan in Tokyo as he travelled there regularly to buy his vehicles. We always wondered why it only had 18,000 miles on the clock, yet was 14 years old. It was because it belonged to a high class Pimp in Tokyo and was a Street Cruiser. When it left Japan it had a sophisticated Sony tracking system on it (well it would have wouldn't it), a TV, video,all of which disappeared on the boat on the way over. Unfortunately we could not insure it so there was no claim on it. We sold the chandelier with red light to a friend with an RV.
We kept the campervan for 18 months however, it had to go as it did not suit our purpose. With my wife being partially disabled we had to carry the mobility scooter in the campervan. If we wanted to go anywhere we could not walk and, if it was too far we had to pack up the campervan. The final straw was spending five days in the pouring rain in the campervan....in Skegness. We sold it for £14,000 via a local dealer near home to someone in Devon. It was the perfect yuppie van. I missed it so much as it was a real poser van that everyone, without exception wanted to look at. Driving up the High Street playing Shaggy's Angel at full blast through the two ten inches speakers with the windows open was awesome. The sides of the van virtually bent. Still, it was fun while we had it and time to grow up. I had had my mid life crisis.
Whilst we were in Morcombe with the campervan we decided to visit a local caravan dealer to see a caravan we had seen in an advert before we came. We had scoured hundreds of caravans for sale and narrowed it down to a few. This was one of them.
We were very impressed with the finish on it especially as it was three years old. Everything still had the plastic protection on it including the seating. It turns out the owner had bought it, sited it and never used it so it was virtually a new caravan. It had fixed single beds, which was what we were looking for and a motor mover, a handy accessory as we live on a steep hill with a steep drive that was difficult to reverse into and less than a foot clearance on each side. the cost...£10,000, right on our budget.
As we had nothing to tow it with they agreed to store it for us while we sold the campervan and bought a towcar. It would be another two months before we picked it up with a Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4.
It was luxury beyond anything we had ever had. The Alde heating system was radiators and kept the caravan an even temperature though took an hour to reach temperature. The beds were proper mattresses and the shower on one side of the caravan, and the washroom on the other could be joined together to give you a huge washing area.
The downsides we found at a later time was no cuddles with single beds, radiators under the beds so it made you perspire within an hour of it being turned on. It was like being cooked on a simmer. There was no way they could be bypassed either. The L Shaped lounge. If you wanted to sit together we had to pull out the double bed, which was a nuisance.
We had many happy holidays in the caravan spending on average 70 nights a year in it. We owned it for two years and never intended to sell it at all. In August 2011 we went to the Feast of Lanterns at Newark. There were caravan dealers there and, while my wife was having an afternoon nap I spent time wandering around the caravans looking for ideas to add things.
Then I saw inside..........the Adria Adora 612DP, a dream and a half. Not the same quality build as the Fleetwood Heritage however it looked so practical and ticked almost every box. It had a full sized double bed with no corners missing in the middle, which meant we could get out either side, wardrobes either side were deep as well. It was 7' 8" wide, wider than the Heritage. There was a U shaped lounge and a seperate decent sized shower cubicle in the bedroom. The washroom was small though big enough. The heating system was a wall mounted gas fire with the option of using blown air when on EHU, so another handy addition.
The salesman managed to offer me £8,000 for our 5 year old Heritage and knocked another £1,000 off the Adria to make it £7,000 with the Fleetwood Heritage taken in. Included in the price would be transferring the solar panel and motor mover. I rushed back to fetch my wife and tried to hide my excitement saying to her we could have a browse at caravans to fill in time. The effect was immediate. She fell in love with it and while the salesman walked over to see the Fleetwood Heritage she had done the deal. We picked it up two weeks later.
We never seemed to be at home and spent every minute we could in it on sites all over the country. We sought out cheap winter deals and did many rallies as well. One of the things we wanted to do was go to Europe, something we had never done. We started planning in September 2011 for September 2012. It was like a military operation with 16 sites prebooked over 42 days, travelling from Dover, through France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg. See trip details here.
It was so successful we planned another for August/September 2013..44 days to Western France/Northern Spain. Another success can be seen here.
In the two years we have had the Adria we have spent over 170 nights in it. It is perfect for our needs and during the seven weeks we have recently spent in it we missed nothing from home. During those seven weeks we only ate out three times. Everything functioned in the caravan as it should and there were no mishaps worth mentioning. We see this as a long tern caravan....then again, we saw the last one like that as well, and look what happened.
Eccles Topaz
We found an old Eccles Topaz, which was 14 foot I think, to hire for the week. We decided to go to Golden Sands Holiday park, Mablethorpe and, as we lived in Swansea started saving for the trip.
Fuel was the obvious high cost so every time we filled the car up we would buy another gallon in a can. We stored it in 5 gallon drums, the ones with the cone tops until we had 25 gallons. Thinking about it now how daft was that, having 25 gallons of petrol in the shed. Even dafter was the fact we carried it all in the caravan on the way up and part way back until it was all gone.
We set off with wife, six week old son and wife's sister at 10pm to drive through the night to Skegness. Well, you can imagine it was not the best first towing experience to be had...an Austin 1300cc towing a 14 foot caravan that weighed quite heavy in those days. Amazingly we made it to Skegness unscathed at 8am the following morning. I do remember the tow back was a much more pleasant experience, though still hard.
Sprite Alpine
It was another 4 years before we took the plunge to buy our first caravan, having done some tenting in the between years. It did not take long before we decided tenting was not for us. In the meantime baby No.2 arrived in 1977, one year before our first caravan. At the time we had a Datsun 180B, an 1800cc car which was more matched to the Sprite Alpine we had purchased. It even came with the standard cotton orange and blue awning which weighed really heavy.
Our first trip out with it was to North Wales for two weeks. It is remembered well because it was during the 1978 Farsnet Yacht Race when they were battered and bruised due to the terrible storms we had across the UK, including North Wales. Almost every morning the awning was lay on the ground in the pools of water.
Our second trip was down the Gower Coast. It rained, and rained and rained the whole weekend. We had to be pulled out with a tractor as the water was just below the door lip. We almost gave up caravanning there and then, except the sun came out the next time we went out. We had the Alpine for a couple of years until it rotted away.
Sprite 400 - Library Photos
This was stand in for the time being. How we all slept in this small caravan I will never know. I do remember that it was a case of 'you sit down while I stand up'. I think we only ever used it once to go to Farnborough Airshow for the weekend, after which it was sold.
Sprite Major
We needed something bigger, much bigger, and this was it. We bought this for £300 and owned it for around 2 years. Initially we used it ourselves however, housing in our area was in short supply and it seemed a good idea to rent it out next to the house. We rented it to a work colleague for £20 a week for a year, making us £1,000. At the end of the rental we decided we needed something a lot more modern so we sold it to a caravan dealer in part exchange for an Ace Viceroy and got £400 for it, which we thought was a good result considering what we paid for it.
Ace Viceroy
This was a modern caravan by our previous standards. As said it was bought from a caravan dealer in Derby. It's original price was £2,800 however we did a deal to take it with no warranty for £2,000. They knew, as did I that it has damp in the floor by the door. No problem, I replaced the rotten bit of flooring for £20 and never had another problem with it the two years we had it. We had a bit of spare money so decided to buy a brand new caravan from a local dealer.
Fleetwood Colchester 1500
This was our first new caravan, which we bought in 1979. In those days glass windows were still the norm and not many caravans had the all new plastic windows. They were also mainly basic as well with almost everything as an 'optional extra'. This included a heater and hot water so that was an extra expense before we started. Having said that the new price was only £2,200 which is less than we paid for the second hand Ace Viceroy. We kept this caravan for many years and had many a happy holiday in it. The end of it's ownership came prior to a family break up.
Elddis Abbey GT212
A couple of years without a caravan, a new partner and we were back on the road, Our first caravan together was this Abbey GT212 affectionately known as our 'passion wagon'. We had some lovely holidays with friends in it in Devon and other sites. two years on and we had an addition to the family, our grand-daughter, who we then brought up until the age of 18. As the Abbey was only a two berth we needed something different.
Buccaneer Elan 14
And this was the worst caravan we ever owned. We bought it for £1,000 from Billing Aquadrome from a dealer there. It looked OK and the salesman assured us it was a good sound caravan. We had a couple of holidays in it and that was when we noticed the walls becoming soft, yet they were dry. That was because it was riddled in dry rot...the whole of one side and all of the rear. We decided that we had to do something with it as it was worthless the way it was. In the back garden it was stripped down the whole of one side and the back end. Over several months I rebuilt it to a good standard and eventually it was good enough to sell. I thnk we got £750 for it so we were very lucky. While it was being rebuilt we looked around and found a replacement - the Lynton Sabre GXL.
Lynton Sabre GXL
Without doubt the best caravan we ever owned. We bought it privately for £2,300. It had been stored in a barn for eight years so was in excellent condition and was made in 1982, making it thirteen years old. It was spotless throughout, just needing a good clean and new curtains, which a friend made for us. It was unique in so much as it had two doors, one each side. It was quite amusing walking in one door then appearing out of another the other side.
We had that caravan for ten years. Every year we went down to Cornwall for our main holidays in it. One year we left it in storage down there and went down five times during the year. We travelled thousands of miles with it and the only reason we sold it was because we had bought an apartment in Turkey and thought we had finished caravanning for good. How wrong we were! My wife cried her eyes out as it was towed off the drive. We gave away everything with it and sold it for £1,000. It was worth almost double that.
Within six months we had withdrawal symptoms and were looking at options. As we did not want to go caravnning we decided we would try something different, a campervan.
Toyota Hiace - with attitude!
We were nearing retirement and wanted to do something different, and there is nothing more different than this purchase. We were 'born to be wild'...we wish! We found it advertised on a Japanese Auction site and decided we wanted it. We found an importer in Folkestone to buy it at auction and bring it back for us. The full story can be found here.
Full conversion photos can be seen here.
Article by 'Unusual Motorhomes' can be see here
The bit that is not mentioned in the link is that David at Wellhouse Leisure told us he actually knew who used to own the campervan in Tokyo as he travelled there regularly to buy his vehicles. We always wondered why it only had 18,000 miles on the clock, yet was 14 years old. It was because it belonged to a high class Pimp in Tokyo and was a Street Cruiser. When it left Japan it had a sophisticated Sony tracking system on it (well it would have wouldn't it), a TV, video,all of which disappeared on the boat on the way over. Unfortunately we could not insure it so there was no claim on it. We sold the chandelier with red light to a friend with an RV.
We kept the campervan for 18 months however, it had to go as it did not suit our purpose. With my wife being partially disabled we had to carry the mobility scooter in the campervan. If we wanted to go anywhere we could not walk and, if it was too far we had to pack up the campervan. The final straw was spending five days in the pouring rain in the campervan....in Skegness. We sold it for £14,000 via a local dealer near home to someone in Devon. It was the perfect yuppie van. I missed it so much as it was a real poser van that everyone, without exception wanted to look at. Driving up the High Street playing Shaggy's Angel at full blast through the two ten inches speakers with the windows open was awesome. The sides of the van virtually bent. Still, it was fun while we had it and time to grow up. I had had my mid life crisis.
Fleetwood Heritage 560
Whilst we were in Morcombe with the campervan we decided to visit a local caravan dealer to see a caravan we had seen in an advert before we came. We had scoured hundreds of caravans for sale and narrowed it down to a few. This was one of them.
We were very impressed with the finish on it especially as it was three years old. Everything still had the plastic protection on it including the seating. It turns out the owner had bought it, sited it and never used it so it was virtually a new caravan. It had fixed single beds, which was what we were looking for and a motor mover, a handy accessory as we live on a steep hill with a steep drive that was difficult to reverse into and less than a foot clearance on each side. the cost...£10,000, right on our budget.
As we had nothing to tow it with they agreed to store it for us while we sold the campervan and bought a towcar. It would be another two months before we picked it up with a Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4.
It was luxury beyond anything we had ever had. The Alde heating system was radiators and kept the caravan an even temperature though took an hour to reach temperature. The beds were proper mattresses and the shower on one side of the caravan, and the washroom on the other could be joined together to give you a huge washing area.
The downsides we found at a later time was no cuddles with single beds, radiators under the beds so it made you perspire within an hour of it being turned on. It was like being cooked on a simmer. There was no way they could be bypassed either. The L Shaped lounge. If you wanted to sit together we had to pull out the double bed, which was a nuisance.
We had many happy holidays in the caravan spending on average 70 nights a year in it. We owned it for two years and never intended to sell it at all. In August 2011 we went to the Feast of Lanterns at Newark. There were caravan dealers there and, while my wife was having an afternoon nap I spent time wandering around the caravans looking for ideas to add things.
Adria Adora 612DP
Then I saw inside..........the Adria Adora 612DP, a dream and a half. Not the same quality build as the Fleetwood Heritage however it looked so practical and ticked almost every box. It had a full sized double bed with no corners missing in the middle, which meant we could get out either side, wardrobes either side were deep as well. It was 7' 8" wide, wider than the Heritage. There was a U shaped lounge and a seperate decent sized shower cubicle in the bedroom. The washroom was small though big enough. The heating system was a wall mounted gas fire with the option of using blown air when on EHU, so another handy addition.
The salesman managed to offer me £8,000 for our 5 year old Heritage and knocked another £1,000 off the Adria to make it £7,000 with the Fleetwood Heritage taken in. Included in the price would be transferring the solar panel and motor mover. I rushed back to fetch my wife and tried to hide my excitement saying to her we could have a browse at caravans to fill in time. The effect was immediate. She fell in love with it and while the salesman walked over to see the Fleetwood Heritage she had done the deal. We picked it up two weeks later.
We never seemed to be at home and spent every minute we could in it on sites all over the country. We sought out cheap winter deals and did many rallies as well. One of the things we wanted to do was go to Europe, something we had never done. We started planning in September 2011 for September 2012. It was like a military operation with 16 sites prebooked over 42 days, travelling from Dover, through France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland and Luxembourg. See trip details here.
It was so successful we planned another for August/September 2013..44 days to Western France/Northern Spain. Another success can be seen here.
In the two years we have had the Adria we have spent over 170 nights in it. It is perfect for our needs and during the seven weeks we have recently spent in it we missed nothing from home. During those seven weeks we only ate out three times. Everything functioned in the caravan as it should and there were no mishaps worth mentioning. We see this as a long tern caravan....then again, we saw the last one like that as well, and look what happened.