10 Saturday Aug 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General, Help Guides, Projects
Tags
blogging, Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, The Old Oaks, Touring, Towing, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers
It’s been a while since my last post, however it’s not been quiet in the Caravan Chronicles office. We have booked our next jaunt out and seeing as it’s our 30th Wedding Anniversary we decided to go back to The Old Oaks for a few days as we thoroughly enjoyed our last visit there… and it is one of the best sites in the UK! Continue reading
15 Monday Jul 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General
15th July 2013
Exactly one week ago we set off with the caravan for a few days to visit our friends Pete and Julie. Julie was not well and had been admitted to The Castle Hill Hospital having been diagnosed with Myeloma. Unfortunately in the early hours of this morning Julie passed away.
We have known Pete & Julie for over 18 years and first met when we were all flying. Julie will be sadly missed and fondly remembered.
S
Happier times…..Pete, Julie & Sue. Oxford C & CC Site 2011
12 Wednesday Jun 2013
Posted in Blog updates, Travelling in the UK
This month would have been the start of our third year of membership to the Camping and Caravan Club. Today we received our renewal notice, along with out membership cards for the forthcoming 12 months.
However, back in March we had booked in to Braithwaite Fold C & CC site at Bowness for three nights starting on Saturday 23rd through to 26th. The weather at the start of the week was not good and by Thursday there were travel advisories out for Friday and the Weekend with winds forecast 50+ MPH and on checking again on Friday, the advisories were still in place for the weekend and our friends that we were due to meet at Braithwaite Fold also had similar weather problems with gusting winds over 50 MPH in the Yorkshire Moors where they live and there was no way they could get across to the Lakes. Continue reading
08 Saturday Jun 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General, Web sites
Tags
advertising, Caravan, Caravan Blog, Caravanning, Caravans, transportation, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers
In the first 5 months and 8 days of this year, Caravan Chronicles has beaten the total number of views for the whole of 2012 and taken the total to over 73,000
Many thanks to all that have visited and especially those that have commented, rated posts, tweeted and linked some of my pages to Facebook and caravanning forums.
Here’s hoping I can double last years figures before the year-end.
Cheers
S
25 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Blog updates, Travelling in the UK, Weekend Break
Tags
Caravan, Caravanning, Caravans, Glastonbury, One Hairy Caravanner, The Old Oaks, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers, Warwick Racecourse
This time last year – (well 27th to 30th March actually) we were at the Caravan Club’s recently opened site at Bridlington. The weather could not have been more different. The North Sea at Bridlington was as calm as a mill-pond and we sat outside at a pavement cafe on the sea front enjoying a morning coffee in the warm sun.
The sea was almost as still as a mill pond
In fact the evening was so nice, my alter ego “One Hairy Caravanner” donned shorts and 
apron and deployed the Cadac to conjure up the evening meal. We had three fantastic days in Bridlington and enjoyed three days of great weather…. and as I look out of the office window now, it’s sunny, still blowing a hooley and the wind chill makes it feel like below zero out there. What a difference a year makes!
Looking forward to June, by chance (well Twitter actually), we came across a site in Glastonbury…. The Old Oaks – http://www.theoldoaks.co.uk Some of the reviews it has received and the pictures posted ment it had to be worth a visit. So we have a few days there and maybe visit The Fleet Air Arm Museum and the East Somerset Railway. On the way back we call in at Warwick Racecourse site for a couple of days so we can visit Warwick Castle again and do a bit of shopping. Now where to go in April and May?
A little landmark passed today at around 12:30. The blog had it’s 55,246th viewer, which means that today, just under three months into the year it has had exactly half the number of visitors it had in the whole of last year. Many thanks to all who have visited, posted and tweeted about Caravan Chronicles.
Here’s hoping for a wonderful hot summer!
S
28 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Reviews
Tags
Ash Dhir, Caravan, Caravans, Flojet Water Pump, Jonic Bedding, Maintenance, Modifications, One Hairy Caravanner, Swift Talk, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers
As promised in my previous post, here’s an update on the recent lighting upgrade and details of a problem we had with our Flojet water pump while away.
First the lighting upgrades. You may remember in my “Let there be light… or at least a little more light…” post I wanted to improve the light above the cooker area as it was a bit dark peering into the bottom of saucepans on the hob. I swopped out the single 12 volt 8 watt fluorescent unit for a double 8 watt fitting and installed an identical one above the hob area.
Good even bright light over the sink/prep area and the cooktop
Well it was a great success! My alter ego “One Hairy Caravanner” does not have any excuses for not being able to see right into the bottom of every pan! Having the advantage of being able to switch between one or two tubes above the sink/prep area and the hob area is great too.
The light output from the two fittings was even and well diffused although the colour temperature was a little cool, which is fine for task lighting in the kitchen. Once the prep is done, it’s easy to just switch from two tubes to one therefore reducing the power being consumed which is important if you are running on battery alone. All in all, for us a simple little project well worth doing.
No more cooking in the darkness! Again bright diffused task lighting right above the cooking area. (That’s OHC’s Spicy Tuna Pasta cooking by the way)
The other light I installed just above the heating and water heater controls works well too (“Let there be light… part two”). It was now so much easier just to flip a switch to clearly see the controls and as we store the drinks bottles in the recess… we could check on the contents so much more easily! It’s also handy when coming back to the caravan in the dark. Switching on the light from the doorway provides adequate illumination to enter the caravan to turn the main lights on.
Something else we need to update you on as well is our recent purchase of Jonic bedding. After our initial problem (“Things that make you go Hmm…”) we received a replacement mattress cover and two replacement bottom sheets. Not wanting to wash the sheets first in case we needed to return them, we took one of the sheets with us to check to see if it would fit. We compared the corner seam on the Jonic sheet we had fitted against one of the replacement sheets. There was an obvious difference. The replacement sheet corner seam was about three inches longer which ment the fitted sheet would wrap nicely under the mattress. So a huge 10/10 for Jonic’s customer service! We also have to report that the 10+5 duvet, even though light in weight, kept us warm even when the outside temp was down to 1 or 2 degrees at night.
The only other update was about the little device I made in “A little winter warmer…” the inside cover for the bathroom roof vent. Well I am happy to report that too was a success. We were only using the electric towel rail to maintain the temp bathroom once we had used the blown heating system in conjunction with the electric towel rail to get the bathroom to a comfortable temperature despite the outside temperature being only 1 or 2 degrees at night.
OK… now to the problem!
The problem we had on the last trip was to do with the Flojet water pump. When we turned any of the taps on, there was a delay in the pump kicking in.
How it should work
As it is a pressure water system, the pump should run to pressurise all the water in the pipes. Once a certain pressure is reached, the pump switches off. Now turn a tap on and as the water starts to flow through the tap, the pressure in the pipes drops and this drop should trigger the pressure switch to turn on the water pump, maintaining an even flow until the tap is turned off again, when the pump will continue to run until its pre set pressure is reached and it shuts off.
What was actually happening
When we turned a tap on, initially water would flow then reduce to a tiny trickle and stop within a couple of seconds. It would then take 15 or 20 seconds for the pump to start and water would flow again. Turn the tap off and the pump would continue to run until the system was back up to pressure and the pressure switch shut the pump down.
I suspected that the pressure switch was at fault, but not having the paperwork with me for the pump and it still being inside the two-year warranty period, I didn’t want to go poking around while on site. When we returned, a quick posting on “Swift Talk” forum soon got a reply from Swift’s Ash Dhir who posted a link to a page that gave me the info to solve the problem. A couple of other people also posted that they had similar problems and Ash’s info worked for them… and someone else also provided a helpful bit of advice regarding the pressure release valve on the water heater. If you want to know more… sign up to Swift Talk!
So now I have the fix, I’ll be toddling off to the van in the next day or so to do a spot of screw turning. I’ll let you know how I got on.
S
18 Monday Feb 2013
Posted in Blog updates, Clothing, General, Gifts, Humor
One of the tee shirts from caravangifts.co.uk
You know how it is… you are Googling your way round the wibbly wobbly web for something and you get side tracked… I was actually looking for some of my photos that have been used on other websites without permission and like most times I end up Googling, I got side tracked again…. with an interview on the Spread Shirt Blog who were interviewing a chap called Jeremy, who just happens to have a website called CaravanGifts.co.uk and sell some fantastic caravan gifts – tee shirts, polo shirts, mugs in fact all sorts and all caravan, motorhome and camping related. I’m not sure how I missed this site in the past. From some of the designs, it’s obvious that Jeremy is a caravanner too!
There are dozens of different prints available and if you can’t find something that you like, or you have a slogan that you want on a tee shirt, there is even a section where you can design your own, which I found easy to use and within a couple of minutes had come up with my own natty design…..
My own Caravan Chronicles “Keep Calm” polo shirt designed on the Caravan Gifts web site
So if you have a hankering for a bit of caravanning apparel for the coming summer… drop in to CaravanGifts.co.uk. Now let me see… how many Caravan Chronicles polo shirts should I order and in what colours… Hmmm.
S
PS…. If you are into bikes… the engined variety, Jeremy has a site for that too – www.biker-t-shirts.co.uk
Images (c) CaravanGifts.co.uk
02 Wednesday Jan 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General, Maintenance, Modifications
Here is a few things I’d like to see for 2013….
Bathroom Vents
For caravans with bathrooms, why do they put the skylight in the middle of the bathroom and not in the shower cubicle? If you look at the majority of travel trailers and motor homes in the USA, they install the roof vent in the shower cubicle. A couple of reasons.. one it means that you don;t have to turn on the light in there when it’s daylight outside, but for me the key one is that any steam is allowed to vent out straight from the cubicle when the shower door is shut, rather than letting it drift into the bathroom and raising the humidity level to a point where over a period of time it could potentially start to affect the structure of the caravan. I also think that it would improve the chances of keeping the bathroom warmer in colder months as cold air would be drawn into the shower cubicle, so with the shower door shut it would reduce the cold air in the bathroom while still providing the required ventilation.
Brake Assist Systems
Currently in the UK there are three or four brake assist systems, one of the most popular is AL-KO’s ATC Trailer Control system. This is an excellent product, but for me it only goes part of the way and offer true braking assistance. There are other products such as Insync’s offering that offer braking assistance but no active stability program.
I’d like to see a unit with a similar stability program to ATC, but with the added advantage that the caravan brakes are applied when the vehicles brake lights are activated. Currently the over-run system fitted to caravans only operates the caravan brakes when the braking force exceeds a certain deceleration rate and allows the damper in the coupling to compress operating the brakes. Now for any van this limit is going to change… fully loaded for a two-week trip abroad is going to have a different operating point than when talking the van empty for servicing as the towed mass of the van will be different.
AL-KO Overrun brake coupling
However, if the braking system was activated by the tow vehicles brake light circuit, you could apply 50% or 60% of the caravans braking effect no matter what the loading almost instantly. This will also help in marginal conditions. On ice at 10 MPH while manoeuvring on site, the caravan brakes will never activate when you depress the brake pedal, you rely on the vehicle brakes to do all the work and the four patches of rubber have to be able to provide enough friction to stop the tow vehicle and the caravan. If the caravan’s brakes could be operated, then the four patches of rubber suddenly increase by 50% to six patches of rubber.
Oh if it were that simple! Any assistance with the braking effort of the caravan via other means will have an effect on the over run coupling. If you brake the caravan partially via a brake assist unit then the point at which the overrun coupling can apply the brakes will change and it is possible that the break assist unit could stop the overrun coupling from working correctly in some braking circumstances. The big issue could be if you have a system fitted that reduces the designed braking effect of the manufacturers overrun coupling, in the event of an accident, could the insurer technically claim that the braking had been knowingly compromised? I think that this is why AL-KO have a different system for Australia and New Zealand and with the exception of the UK and Europe the rest of the world ditched overrun systems a long time ago.
“All right at the back?”
Manufacturers have grasped on to the fact rear view cameras are becoming an essential safety feature… well at least in motor homes they have. Us poor caravanners have to find clever ways to install rear view cameras and run cables without making warranty voiding holes in our expensive investment. Now I know it’s easy for a manufacturer to install a system in a motor home as he’s in control of everything from camera to screen and all the spaghetti in-between With a caravan its a bit different as the manufacturer only has one end of the puzzle to play with, but a bit of thought into the design and assembly of the back panel could make the difference. It would be easy to design into the mould a mounting point that could be used to mount a camera and a suitable bit of pvc tubing run down the inside or a moulded trim strip that can be popped out like a bit of trunking that would allow at some point in the future a couple of cables to be installed. So, to all the caravan manufacturers out there, here’s the challenge – are you going to be the first to lead the way?
And finally…..
A gadget for all female caravanners….. an extension tube and nozzle that plugs into the blown hot air system that allows it to be used as a hair dryer when there is no EHU or a low amp EHU.
S
01 Tuesday Jan 2013
Posted in Blog updates, General, Humor, Uncategorized
Tags
2013, Caravanning, Caravans, Touring, travel, Travel Trailers
Just a quick post to wish everyone a Happy New Year and thanks for reading Caravan Chronicles. Have a safe year caravanning or motor-homing no matter where you are and where you roam.
And remember………
Happy New Year
Simon & Sue
Caravan Chronicles 