I think one or two of you might have already guessed… we have bought ourselves a 5th wheel caravan. (Was it the pickup that gave it away?) So here it is…

Why a 5th wheel?

We decided that as we have now both fully retired that we would like to change the style of caravanning from a few days in one place then returning home to more of a few days somewhere…. then a wander somewhere else for a while then maybe move on again over a period of a couple of weeks before returning home. We can (and have) done this with our old caravan but packing up and then pitching again was becoming a chore for multiple stops. So we started looking at motorhomes as these had the advantage of more payload and a bit more elbow room. Something else we wanted to do was store our e-bikes inside rather than secure them outside when on site.

However when the cost of a suitable motorhome started to creep well above £100K…. we dismissed all the UK built motorhomes as most are just a caravan dropped on a chassis with an engine. So A-class it was. We looked at Carthago and really liked the c-line but my wallet went into cardiac arrest. We could cut costs a little if we cut some of our requirements and on top of that adding a vehicle that we could tow. It meant we were looking at the thick end of £150K. On top of this would be the cost of a towed vehicle and the decision to either flat tow or trailer. I believe that flat tow can be a bit of an issue in some European countries, but that might be hearsay. The yearly cost of two services, MOT’s, Insurance was also a big factor.

We started looking again at caravans with a new vision. The problem was for me, writing this blog for over 12 years now, I was a little nervous of investing in the mainstream UK offerings. It also left us with the original reason for changing over to a motorhome – the convenience of it all, that was still in our minds.

We had known about the 5th Wheel Company in North Wales for a long time, in fact a few years ago we sat in both a Celtic Rambler and a Dream Seeker at the Yorkshire Caravan Show and I had a bit of an affair moment with them. However back then we were still towing with our Land Rover Freelander (which we still own and is still going strong!) and the cost of a pickup and a 5th wheel was just not within our budget. But my brief dalliance with the 5th wheel remained in the back of my mind.

Just before we went to Sutton-on-Sea we had talked about maybe a 5th wheel instead of a motorhome. It has the load capacity (with this one we have about 950Kg available) plenty of elbow room, storage and it only requires servicing… no MOT or vehicle insurance only caravan insurance, this time we already have a pickup so no need to change vehicles. It is fitted with a 250 litre fresh water tank, grey tank, still uses a Thetford Cassette for the loo (so no issues trying to dump a black tank) so is exactly the same as a motorhome in a lot of ways. Plus it has a slide out for that all important elbow room (I’ll refrain from saying ‘enough room to swing a cat’ as Henry might be lurking around)… I’m getting ahead of myself.

I dropped an email to 5th Wheel Company asking if they could put us on a list just in case they had any pre loved units come in for resale. A few days later George from 5th Wheel emailed me back that they just happened to have both a Celtic Rambler and a Dream Seeker coming in and sent me the details they day we departed for Sutton-on-Sea.

Long story short… we received an email while we were in Sutton-on-Sea from George at the 5th Wheel Company letting us know they were having two opening days and asking if we would like to come along. The first one was Friday the day after we were due to return home from Hanworth Country Park.

5th Wheel Company Open Day

Friday was warm and clear blue skies and the run out from Manchester to Rhuallt was rather pleasant with light traffic. We were a bit early so stopped for a coffee at a service statin that overlooks the North Wales Expressway and parked looking at all the caravans and motorhomes passing by in both directions. I’ve aways wondered why so many caravans and motorhomes only seem to have one bike… there seemed to be a lot more with one bike that two and of course there were camper vans that looked like support vehicles for the Tour de France with six or seven on the roof or hung off the back.

When we arrived we were met by George and shown into the main showroom and offered coffee’s. We chatted to the couple manning the coffee table and discovered they had just sold their 5th wheel and bought an Inos caravan. Sorry I can’t recall their names. We had a look round the Dream Seeker and then the Celtic Rambler. For us, the Dream Seeker seemed the right ‘fit’. Although the Celtic Rambler has a larger bedroom we actually preferred the layout of the main living space.

The previous owners had opted for a few extras, a twin 11 kg Gaslow system with external filling point, twin 110Ah batteries and a 15 foot Carefree awning as well as a leather upgrade, Nature Pure water tap and a few other bits were included. Simon came over and introduced himself and we started chatting, answering my growing list of questions. He asked if we would like a test drive of a unit that had outside. It was a customers unit that they had permission to use. We hopped in and Simon took us out for a short run and then we swopped over and I had chance to get the feel of pulling just over 4 tonnes of Celtic Rambler. The unit was fully loaded with the customers belongings so it was a good test of reality. My honest opinion was to be a bit underwhelmed… I don’t know what I expected but it was such a non event towing it round small welsh backroads, through a couple of small villages and honestly the roundabouts, I didn’t even feel I was towing. OK the performance reflected that there was 4 tones back there but handling was no problem and even accelerating onto the Expressway, put your foot down it still went. Probably a bit better than some of the large motorhomes.

We got back and went and sat in the Dream Seeker again…. with another coffee. We spoke to Simon about figures, weight’s, costs etc and had another wander round.

The Drive Home…

The drive home was a little busier and full of conversations about what to do. Late afternoon and I think the whole of the North West was descending on North Wales. The queue round Shotton and back to the M56… and on the M56 was horrendous. Thankfully we were heading in the opposite direction.

That evening I emailed Simon to ask if he could just check the door opening size of the garage, Sue wasn’t convinced we could get out bikes in, I kind of thought we could but best to make sure.

Saturday morning Simon emailed me back a photo of the door with all the sizes on it.

I emailed him back simply saying…. “Put a Sold sign on it”.