Category Archives: Fifth Wheel Company

A Bit Of A Tour…

21 Friday Jun 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Fifth Wheel Company, Glastonbury, Rhuallt, The Old Oaks

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Well not really a tour, only two locations. The first leg was down from Manchester to Glastonbury and a stay at The Old Oaks. We first went there in 2012 and had five or six more visits in the next four years. So it had been quite a while really.

We were located in the Upper Oaks area on a premium pitch which was easily big enough for our 5th Wheel. The site was as pristine as you can get really and I was particualarly interested to see that the lawns were now cut with an electric rechargeable mower working 24 x 7. We kind of got attached to the one trimming the central area and I named him “Earl”. It became a bit mesmerising watching Earl trim the grass and we felt sorry for him when he was out there in the pouring rain working trimming away while everyone else was huddled in their caravan or awning. I really think he needed a cat companion sat on him keeping him company.

While we were there we had a few jobs to do in the caravan. We replaced the bathroom taps, kitchen taps and water filter tap. I’ve still got to install the new drinking water filter and connect the filter tap. We also cleaned the awning rails, which still need a bit of work on them with a tooth brush in the rails. Sue valiantly attacked the locker handles with something called “The Pink Stuff” which was recommended to us by The Caravan Nut…. and fine stuff it is too. It has almost brought the handles up to new condition. Another session and we should almost be there with them.

This is my spot…. find your own doughnut!

The big one was replacing the runners on the shower doors. I’d ordered a set from Amazon and they needed fitting. I never knew that shower doors were going to be so heavy! We removed the bi-fold doors and got the bottom runners replaced then came the task of re-installing the doors… you have to lift the things into the correct position then install the top runners… between the two of us we seemed to make it hard work, but got there in the end. The original runners had cracked as there didn’t seem to be a way of securing the doors while in transit. The method was to secure the doors in an open position… and now knowing the weight of the doors came to the conclusion that this was not going to work. The doors needed to be secured in the closed position so the weight was evenly distributed and the doors were held securely by the frame of the shower. A simple solution was to use a child proof door securing strap. These came with two buttons you secure with 3M VHB pads and one step secures the door in the closed position easily…. even with my weight pushing on it.

In the mean time we have been making the inside ‘ours’ if you know what I mean. The installation of some pictures and side lights makes it more like home.

The side lights are ones we found at IKEA. I shortened the mains leads to about 8 inches to reduce the amount of spaghetti cabling and used command strips to hold each light firmly in place. Each light has a dimmer and I selected warm tungsten effect LED bulbs to give that cosy feeling when watching TV and the rain hammering down outside.

We also supplemented the coat rail with a hat rack (again using command strips) to house my mahoosive collection of 6 baseball caps. This was finished off with a wall clock almost matching the wall colour with a style that we were looking for. The clock was a B & M special I think. Again held up with command strips. So far we have not had anything fall off using these strips.

Henry Fluffybutt III enjoying a belly rub

Sitting back enjoying the few days work it took…. and a big belly rub for Henry for putting up with all the too and fro while we did the work. You can see one of the side lamps next to Sue… turned up to full, this provide an excellent reading light as well and generating mood lighting at a lower level at night. All the sockets I installed have twin USB charging ports and I installed a 4 port charging station near the TV… just in case!

Stop No. 2…

From Glastonbury we headed back north, this time to Rhuallt in North Wales. Home of The 5th Wheel Company. When we bought our 5th Wheel they replaced the water heater/warm air boiler and the Thetford fridge. We had been developing a problem with the fridge door….. to the point when we closed the door you had to give it a gentle kick at the bottom to make sure the door closed properly. I sent some photos of the corners of the door as it looked as though it was racking and the corner joints were pulling apart. Simon at the 5th Wheel Company sent the photos off to Thetford and they agreed to replace the door without any hesitation. So we had scheduled a day to visit to get the door replaced… as we also had a few days to spare we turned it into a three day stopover. I do have to say the service from everyone at The 5th Wheel Company always exceeds expectations.

On Saturday, the trip from Glastonbury to North Wales was sunshine one minute and torrential can’t see a thing in front OMG it cannot rain any heavier nightmare. It didn’t help that a large proportion of the drivers on the motorway required driving lessons… the well known makes were doing their own thing as usual.

All set up at Rhuallt

As we passed Chester it was nothing but clear blue sky, a welcome change from the grey on and off again drizzle at Glastonbury.

The sunshine also gave us a chance to go over the 5th Wheel with an combined exterior cleaner and silicon polish… which really only took us a couple of hours. A few weeks ago we did a deep clean on the exterior that took us nearly two days. Mind you it was down to scrubbing all the locker frames with a tooth brush and most of the running rails. We gave it the first silicone polish back then and that causes the water to bead off really easy and also helps prevent black streaks which are caused by dirty water running off the roof. Yep, we still have to tackle the roof…. it’s a bit of a large task though.

Homeward Bound…

We left Rhuallt a bit later than we expected and headed home. The following day I had an appointment at The Christie for bloods and ti see my oncologist. Heading out of North Wales we decided to call into Chester Services… Flippin huge mistake. Chester Services has to be one of the worst services in the UK. Considering three days before we called into Gloucester Services on the M5 which is probably the best services in the whole of the UK…. maybe Tebay is close but as they are both owned by the same group… I’ll say Gloucester tops the list.

We entered Chester Services and missed the small “Caravans” sign and ended up back on the roundabout for a second attempt (things you do for a Costa Coffee) taking a bit slower and being a bit more vigilant we noticed the red – white text, the sign that said ‘HGV Caravans” So we followed it. It took us straight to the lorry park. I pulled in behind a refrigerated trailer and turned off the engine. We sat there for a minute or two trying to see how the heck you get to the main building as most of the perimeter was thick bushes you could not see through or over and no signs. I opened the door… and shut it again.It wasn’t a particularly warm day but the smell of emptied stale urine bottles and dumped poo bags was overpowering. The only thing that would cure this would be the purchase of a good jet steam cleaner and steam cleaning all the concrete and surrounding areas.

I did have a look on google earth to see if I had missed the caravan parking area… but alas there isn’t one. The best bet I think would be to pull into the coach parking area as this did not seem to have any coaches…. why would it with the smell wafting over from the lorry park.

Photo: Google Maps

I could not even see a way to squeeze in the main carpark…. the lanes between rows of parked cars was ridiculously tight. 4 minutes after we pulled in and turned the engine off, I was reversing out of the lorry parking lane and we were back on our way. Even the pull in behind the Drive Through Costa Coffee was too short… it had a mini in it and was full. We could not even use the Costa Drive through… although the building didn’t have an overhang…. it did have a steel height barrier. Another thing I noticed were the bushes at every road junction. They all needed a good trim as the sight lines were very restricted… at one point I had to get the Amarok half way across the road just to see if there was any traffic approaching the junction from the right. The shrubbery has encroached to the road edges since the satellite photo above was taken.

I understand that the Tebay group has gained planning permission to build a new service station serving the M62 / M56 at Tatton… which is now it would seem being held up by a central government planning enquiry. Why am I not supprised. https://www.tattonservices.com

So, we are now back at home, I had my bloods and checkup yesterday and all going well. I have a CT scan next week so we will know more after the results of that. It’s back to planning our next adventure hopefully another two or three stopper. Sue has been binge watching “Vera” on TV…. so I can feel a trip to the north east on the cards.

Take care and safe travels.

#Tourfest North West

30 Thursday May 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Donkey Creek Farm, Fifth Wheel Company, Weekend Break

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Tourfest North west was our first time attending anything like a gathering of bloggers, vloggers and the generally like minded. It was organised by The Caravan Addys with a little help from others I’m sure as it must be a time consuming task and hard work to bring everything together.

We opted to arrive at the wonderful Donkey Creek Farm a day early. We had planned to set off from our compound at around 12pm…. and part way round the M60 on the other side of Manchester Sue realised we had forgotten my Chemotherapy Tablets…. so we turned round and diverted back home.

Some where along the M61 we realised we had forgotten all the contents of the bread bin…. bagels, wraps, hoagies and sliced bread for the morning toast. Not that we would have had any jam… or honey as we had forgotten that too!

The next little disaster, notice I didn’t title this post as “Disaster at Tourfest”…. as some people do like a bit of click bate goings on. Turning onto Naze Lane less the half a mile from Donkey Creek Farm we picked up a chunk… well more of a small piece of steel in one of the rear tyres of the 5th wheel. Sue noticed it as soon as we stopped at Donkey Creek reception and it was defiantly flatter when we came out of reception than when we went in!

It doesn’t stop there…

On setting up we discovered we had also left my trousers at home too….

The first order of business was to sort out the puncture. I carry a 12 volt compressor and tried re inflating the tyre. I got it up to 50psi but I could hear a hiss, so I’d not just popped it off the rim. I didn’t really think I had but you have to try. I managed to find the offending bit of steel and wheedle it out of the tyre with my leatherman.

Looking at where it had entered the tyre I didn’t really fancy a repair as it was right between two tread blocks. So a replacement was needed. In the past I’d have jacked the caravan up, removed the wheel and set off to find a tyre shop. However I’m a bit hampered nowadays so we needed someone to come out to us. I asked at Reception and they recommended a local garage… J Townsend & Sons (01772632238). I recognised the name as sometime back in 1998/99 they had done a full service and brake replacement on my old Land Rover Discovery 1 when I worked at Warton. Small world.

I gave them a ring and they said they would be out to me in about 20 minutes, and they were spot on time. They jacked the 5th wheel up in the correct place and removed the wheel. We were asked if we were staying in the 5th wheel overnight and as we were, he left the jack and stand in place to ensure there was support for that axle. Not a lot of people would have left a 5T workshop trolly jack overnight!

I had a wander down a few pitches for a quick chat with Martin – The Caravan Nut and Mrs TCN… which was really useful as Martin is the fountain of knowledge when it comes to cleaning products. He confirmed the “The Pink Stuff” would be a great product to use to clean up and re-whiten all the locker handles on the 5th Wheel. That was really helpful as I’d been reading about all sorts of self made concoctions on the internet for cleaning yellowed plastic and non of them sat comfortably with me because of what they contained. I left Martin and Mrs TCN putting the final touches to the show room shine on their caravan.

The following morning Townsends gave me a ring, new tyre all done at a total cost of £108, which for two visits didn’t seem out of order for me. Graham – Caravan Vlogger will be pleased to note I did manage to torque my own nuts before setting off for home.

So the current situation is…

I have my chemo tablets, no bread, no trousers and a new tyre on the rig. What else could go wrong?

It was now Friday and the day of the great arrival . Even though it was slightly inclement weather wise we set up shop ready to mark the arrivals out of ten based on reversing skill, use or not of a motor mover, amount of gesticulating of the reversing assistant and repositioning as the significant other was not quite happy with the exact location on the pitch and finally speed of erection…. of the awning!

No we didn’t….. HONESTLY ! We didn’t.

While we were sat out Hey Ho Let’s Tow stopped by for a chat and I can honestly say they are a great genuine family, it was a pleasure chatting to them and generally talking about all sorts. Sorry no pics but I feel at some of these events the stop and chat should be just that and not seen as a photo opportunity… if someone asks then that’s OK.

Friday night we were all due to go to a local social club organised by Tony & Deb…. I suspect more by Deb from the The Caravan Addys. However overnight I had started bleeding from my stoma. By late afternoon it was rather bad….. in fact blue light to the nearest hospital bad…. we hung on a bit and it subsided somewhat but it nixed on me going out to the Big Meet Up, buffet, disco and dancing that evening. Overnight it stopped and I started to feel a bit better. We narrowed it down to my trousers of all things…. yep bloody trousers featuring in the blog again!. The belt line on my trousers had been rubbing on my stoma and actually started a small bleed that actually seemed a LOT worse than it was. Phew….. I have never seen Sue actually worried before about a medical issue despite her 35+ years in medicine.

Saturday the weather was finally playing along.

Sun and blue skies. Himself decided that maybe a bit of fresh sea air up the nostrils was required… before his next scheduled nap.

You can never have enough Siamese on the internet….. well that is what Henry says.

Graham – Caravan Vlogger and Mrs CV stopped by for a chat and a quick nosy round the 5th wheel. It was really nice chatting to Graham after a couple of years of ‘chatting’ on line. Again Graham is genuinely as he appears on his channel…. a really nice chap.

Saturday evening was a bit of an informal do with various caravaners gathering, I was still cautious as I didn’t want to restart the previous days medical event so we ducked out of that but plenty of people stopped by for a natter including a chap that had hot rods and currently had a hot rod truck…. I never got his name but was great to talk to about everything from tyres to engine oil.

Sunday there were. couple of departures the main core however departing on the Bank Holiday Monday. We had booked through to Tuesday as we thought it might be quite on the roads… which it was.

So that was our Tourfest North West 2024.

Would we go again… heck yes hopefully with Tablets, Bread and Trousers!

Are you sure you remembered to pack my nom noms… this is serious dude!

In a few days we are off again this time to Glastonbury for a week staying in at The Old Oaks…. Gives us chance to call in to Clark’s Shopping Village and get a new pair of casual shoes! Then on the way home we are stopping in North Wales at the 5th Wheel Company while they do a couple of jobs and extending the stay for a few days…. and just maybe I’ll be back on the bike for short little trips for morning coffee.

Isn’t technology wonderful. I’m sat here at the Christie Hospital undergoing 5 hours of chemo via a drip and infusion pump and editing this post on my iPad which I originally started writing on my iMac back at home after drafting it on my Mac while at Donkey Creek.

See you on the road!

More Jobs Ticked Off…

19 Sunday May 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Caravan Road Lights, Donkey Creek Farm, Electrical, Fifth Wheel Company, Maintenance, Projects, Water & Plumbing

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OK we are still working on a few bits and pieces but the weather on Friday and Saturday was ideal for cleaning the outside of the 5th Wheel. So while Sue made a start on the cleaning of the nose cap, I finished the first stage of the water pump relocation project and upgraded the wiring.

At some point the original wiring had been modified to include a 10 Amp socket in the wet bay to allow the use of an external pump to fill the fresh water tank. We still wanted to use this as the original external electrical connector was missing the original plug and it was just easier to sort out the wiring. It had been modified using 6 amp rated cable to both eh internal water pump AND the 10 socket. All fused on a single 10 Amp fuse. The wiring I upgraded to 16 amp rated cable but retained the 10 Amp fuse. So there should be no issues with cable rating in the future.

You can see from the photo above some of the work involved in moving the water pump. It was originally mounted where the holes are on the vertical wall. This resonated quite badly as it is located just under the bathroom and was particularly loud at night if the loo was flushed.

So to reduce the vibration from the pump before mounting it in a different location I made a aluminium cradle to mount the pump to and sat this on rubber isolation mounts before mounting it to the floor using stainless steel bolts, washes and lock nuts….. in fact I used stainless hardware for all the mods.

The next job was to install a 0.75 L SeaFlo accumulator with the bag set to 15psi and isolate this from water knock caused by the pump using a stainless jacket flexible hose in a loop. I have another stainless hose that will be used in a future upgrade that will allow this pump to be used to draw water from a 120 litre bladder in the back of the pickup truck….. but for now that’s going to be a end of season upgrade.

The two valves [in blue] are used to isolate the feed from the water tank and the output from the pump and are a bit untidy…. these will be repositioned shortly as I’m going to add an outlet to allow me to connect a hose so I can wash off the bikes and flush the grey water drain pipe when I disconnect after dumping on a serviced pitch. I’ll also swing the pump filter 90 degrees for a bit of space saving and I’m thing about a water treatment pre filter between the tank and pump. We have a filter on a separate clear water dispensing tap the we use for the kettle or food prep…. but this would allow all the taps to be protected.

The result of moving the pump, anti knock loop and accumulator is that now we cannot hear the water pump running in the caravan. Result!

Sue working hard cleaning the front locker wall after going a grand job on the front cap above. The task of cleaning…. including the use of a tooth brush around all the door seals eventually took two whole days.

If anyone has tips about restoring the plastic handles on the lockers I’d be grateful if you could leave a comment. I’ve been steered to something called “The Pink Stuff” miracle cleaning paste by a couple of other 5th wheel owners

Let there be light…. more light in fact!

The other title upgrade was to the rear of the 5th Wheel. I have been reading up on some proposed lighting changes for articulated trailers in some countries. What used to be called front and rear marker lights seem to have gone through a name change….. these are now called “edge out lights”.

If you are parked in a straight line they are not required to be seen, but if you park at an angle exposing the edge of the trailer, the edge is required to be seen by either on coming traffic or following traffic… depending on the angle you are parked at. I’m not exactly sure how this affects things in general in the UK, but it was interesting that I picked up on the watching a couple of training videos about hitching and unhitching a articulated trailer in preparation for your HGV test.

As I understand it, if you are stopped and an edge of the trailer is exposed past the normal line of the prime mover unit and trailer straight line width then this edge must be marked with lights.

From the front our ‘marker lights’ seemed to be located in the correct position…. but I could not find out about the rear in much detail, so a quick chat with a man that knows all about this he pointed me in the right direction. Although that said he was also unclear as how this would affect 5th wheel caravans as he thought it might only apply to commercial vehicles. I did mention that the VW Amarok as most of the heavier pickups are actually listed and taxed as commercial vehicles. That brought some “Hmmm’s and Ahhh’s” into the conversation….. including “in that case you will need the ‘angles of death’ stickers in Europe….. Angles Morts”

These lights show red to the rear and orange to the front. As they are located at the widest part of the trailer…. on this side that has to include the awning frame they indicate the edge of the trailer to the rear…. and from the front the amber side also indicated the edge of the trailer to oncoming traffic.

A really handy thing for me is when driving even during the day I have my side lights on. The amber light I can see in my side mirrors and it clearly marks the end of the trailer…. in inclement weather this has become a bit of a game changer as I now can clearly see even in a lot of road spray where the back of the trailer is.

when following lorries I always notice how bright these tiny LED rear lights on rubber stalks are that stick out from the side of the trailer…. I tend to notice these before I sometimes see the rear light cluster….. these are the same… they are CE marked along with the UK / Euro markings so must be compliant with regs but they are brighter that the 5th wheels rear red side lights….. and the more rear lights I have hopefully will reduce the chance of someone getting to intimate with the rear of the trailer!

Personal note….

Thanks to everyone asking how I’m progressing….. the chemo is going well and I seem to be quite lucky as I have very few side effects to the point that really the couple I have is a mild inconvenience.

I have settled down in to a routine of having a stoma and bag…. bit of a shock to me when I had it done as it wasn’t mentioned in the pre-op that this might be an outcome….. but there again it might have been…. I was on that much medication I was convinced that I’d had a conversation for about an hour with a man stood at the end of my bed dressed in 1040’s clothes complete with trilby hat and chain smoking staring up the ward never taking his eyes of someone I could not see because of the curtains around my bed. He told me he was tasked with keeping an eye on this person as he was suspected as being a spy for the Germans.

What the hell were they medicating me with!!

Only a few days away from the big TourFest North West at Donkey Creek Farm… if you are going please drop by and say high. Sue and I would love to see you. Henry might be a bit noisy though!

A Few Little Jobs Done…

03 Wednesday Apr 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Fault Finding, Caravan Servicing, Donkey Creek Farm, Electrical, Fifth Wheel Company, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Technical

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It seems such a long time since I posted anything.

Last time out with the Dreamseeker I noticed that the charging voltage when we were hooked up to the truck was only about 12.1 to 12.3 volts as measured in the Dreamseeker battery box.

I know that the VW Amarok puts out 14.6 to 14.8 volts, measured at the 13 pin socket AND indicated on the digital voltmeter I installed in the dash. So it was time to do a bit of investigating.

After measuring the resistance of the charging circuit and fridge circuit it was clear there was a bit of an issue. First stop was to disassemble the Dreamseeker’s 13 pin plug. All became clear…. The cable had been terminated in the socket with soldered ends and were suffering corrosion (solder very dull) and cable degradation….. the copper conductors when stripped of their insulation were black. All in all not good.

I wanted to replace the whole 12 core cable with a replacement but unfortunately I didn’t have a length in stock long enough. I usually keep a length suitable for replacing the cable and plug on a normal bumper tow caravan.

The simple solution for the time being would be to cut back as much as I could and install a new 13 pin plug with correctly crimped ferrules on the cable.

I cut off the old plug and stripped back the protective cover from the cable allowing enough to shorten the individual conductors to the correct length and inspect them for internal corrosion before crimping on the ferrules ready for termination.

The torque setting for these terminations are listed as a minimum of 5Nm to a max of 8Nm so I set my torque screwdriver to 6.5Nm. A happy medium I think.

The new plug was reassembled and I could get on with testing it. At the Amarok I measured 14.7 volts on the leisure battery circuit (same on the fridge circuit) and at the leisure battery I measured 13.9 volts and 9 amps charge, which considering the two 110Ah AGM leisure batteries are at the rear of the Dreamseeker I was happy with the loss.

Something I’m going to try…

While I was doing all this I started thinking (I’d also just seen the price of 13 core trailer cable per metre!) Why are we using this cable?

I have a length of woven kevlar cable sleeve (used in the aviation world) and I could thread my own cable…. upgrading the 1.5mm2 to 2.5 and the 2.5mm2 to 4mm and the “cable” would… (actually is…. as I have made one up now)… a lot more flexible than the existing product as it allowed the individual cables to move and slide past each other. I also used marine grade coated copper cable, so no corrosion of the strands.

4mm2 cable was a bit of a faff to terminate in the commonly available 13 pin plugs, but I believe the genuine ” German Jager manufactured plugs are acceptable for 4mm cable and they even have a crimp terminal version. So I’m going to do a bit more investigating as if I can get 4mm2 leisure battery and fridge circuits from end to end, that will reduce the voltage drop… which is always a step forward.

I’m also looking again at a high current circuit using Anderson connectors between the Truck and 5th Wheel. Currently I’m thinking of a 50 amp circuit with a 30 Amp DC to DC charger installed in the Dreamseeker…. ready for the battery upgrade. (along with a solar install, when I can find a suitable company to work with on that project)

Tourfest Northwest… as arranged by “The Caravan Addys”

Sue and I will be at Tourfest Northwest hosted at Donkey Creek Farm near Warton in May (24th to 28th) drop in and say “Hi”……” see you in a bit“

Sutton-on-Sea In September

16 Monday Oct 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Bikes, Cherry Tree Springs, Fifth Wheel Company, MiRider, Sutton-on-Sea

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Just like to say a huge thank you to so many people that have commented or emailed me over my last post. It has cheered me up no end…. it really has. Enough to rattle this post off!

We recently went back to Cherry Tree Springs at Sutton on Sea for an 7 day break. We had been there earlier in the year and really liked the atmosphere and the people there. As we have been trying independent sites this season over Caravan & Motorhome Club sites, I did a comparison. To stay at the C & M Club site for the same dates would have cost £280.00. We paid £178.50 at Cherry Tree so a saving of £101.50…. in fact we stayed an extra night making 8 in total so saved even more!!!

The facilities block is as you would expect… really clean, plenty of hot water and warm. The rest of the site is really well maintained and the pitches are level with plenty of space for parking and room for a large awning.

Even with our slide out… out, I still had room for the VW Amarok and plenty of room on the other side for our huge roll out canopy.

Apart from a couple of days the weather was blueish skies and warm for September which allowed up to get a bit of cycling in. Having the MiRider bikes stored in the garage in the frame I made (read “Rack’em Up“) makes it easy to get them out ready for a quick ride out. Mornings were usually a cycle, north up the coast to Mablethorpe for morning coffee, either sat next to the beach…

… or sat up on the elevated section in front of the cafe next to the life guard station. The coffee there is much better we think.

Top Tip

A great little shortcut on the bike to get to the front…

If you turn right out of Cherry Tree Springs enter Huttoft Road and follow this for about 300 metres… the first turning on your right is Bluestone Road. Turn right and cycle 70 metres up Bluestone Road. At the end is a T-junction, turn right and 8 metres on your left is a walkway between the houses. Take the walkway and at the end is Walkington Way. Cycle along walking ton Way to the end to another T-Junction. Turn left and ride for 100 metres and on your right a steep ramp up to the top of the Roman Bank… this will get you on the prom and you can cycle all the way to Mablethorpe on it. If you turn right at the end of Walkington Way you can fool Huttoft Bank all the way to Chapel St Leonards.

Its a quick little cut through and allowed us to get to the sea front in about 6 or 7 minutes

Another nice cycle ride is to follow Huttoft Bank south to Chapel St Leonards… it’s a bit further but easy cycling and stop off at North Sea Observatory, Chapel Point for a coffee….

We can both recommend you try out their toasted tea cakes…. The coffee is rather good too! looking at some of the plates being brought out to other customers, the English breakfast looks rather good as well. Unfortunately cycling with a full English onboard is not something to be undertaken lightly.

The nice thing about Cherry Tree Springs is there always seems to be someone to have a chat with… not in an intrusive way but sat out with Henry – yep he’s getting better at this now with his little harness on and rather like the attention he gets.

The 5th wheel aways attracts attention and we had a few people stop and talk to us about it. We have done a couple of walk throughs and I’m now getting dab hand at going through the usual questions about what its like to tow (easy peasy, much easier than a bumper pull) and what needs to be done to a pickup to convert it and the weights. Everyone still has a jaw dropping moment when I tell them our user payload is 960Kg… which is slightly more than half of the total weight of our old caravan fully loaded! (PS 5th Wheel Company…. I think we deserve some tee shirts!)

The next step I think will be to install some solar…. and we have a nice flat roof as I found out when I stood on the bed and poked my head out of the front skylight… I think it will be easy to get 800 or 1000 watts of panels on there!

Currently I’m leaning towards Renogy’s kit as the big blue seems to be getting very overpriced and you need so much of it box wise to make a system. But that’s for the future… and maybe if I can get them to work with me on it.

PS If you do stay at Cherry Tree Spring….. give Square Pizza in Sutton a go…. the details are in reception…. not found anything that beat’s them outside of the USA (so far!)

An Appointment In Rhuallt…

04 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Fifth Wheel Company, Rhuallt, VW Amarok

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It’s Wednesday 28th June, and we have an appointment in Rhuallt… we are going to the Fifth Wheel Company for the big handover when we collect our 5th wheel caravan. This not just a handover, it’s a Fifth Wheel Company handover. Which means 3 days of training, acclimatisation and adjustment to a 5th wheel caravan and the all important hitch installation in the VW Amarok which will be completed by the technical guys at the Fifth Wheel Company.

The previous week…

We had spent the previous week unloading our Swift Celebration 550 of its contents…. 12 years worth of touring “stuff” which initially didn’t seem like much, but stacked up it filled my workshop, I mean really filled my workshop. I had also tackled removing the sports bars from the Amarok, along with the bike carrier as well as the sliding bed and inbuilt tool box. I was now out of space in the workshop.

What followed was a cleaning frenzy.. Sue tackled every surface of the caravan, the loo, shower and sinks were cleaned and polished. The carpets were brought home cleaned and vacuumed to within an inch of their lives and returned to the caravan. We removed the Safefill gas cylinder and I started collecting all the original accessories for the caravan…. Alko Hitch Lock, Alko Wheel Lock, Alko Jack (still in its original protective wrapping) and I even had the original braided gas hoses along with the steady winder. As we were leaving the Fiamma sun canopy on it I found all the original bits to go with it. All the original paperwork from Glossop Caravans along with the Folder from Swift that came with the caravan contains all the manuals for the installed equipment was put in the front draws.

The big day…

Even though the pickup bed was completely empty we could not get everything in the truck that we needed to take over so we boxed up everything we thought we would need and loaded the boxes on the floor of the caravan. It was a lot of stuff. It filled the caravan floor forward of the axle and the truck bed.

Henry was put in his carrier and secured in the Amarok. He seems to have got quite used to the journeys now spending his time either looking out the window at passing cars or sleeping. The run over to Rhuallt from our storage site was a little over an hour as the traffic was light especially along the North Wales Expressway.

We pulled into the carpark and leaving Henry in his carrier… with both back windows three quarters down so he could see out and had a bit of a cross breeze went in to meet Simon again. In the reception area was a sign welcoming us by name to the Fifth Wheel Company (We didn’t get that when we picked up our other caravan) Simon showed us into the showroom where our caravan was parked up all shining and the lights on inside. Time for some paperwork to be exchanged along with the required number of beer tokens.

All change…

I pulled our old caravan… that technically was now not ours, up to the showroom roller door and we started the process of transferring all the boxes from our ‘technically not ours” old caravan to the 5th wheel caravan. The plan was to get everything out of one caravan into another then Simon would tow the 5th wheel caravan a couple of hundred metres along the road to Rhuallt Campsite which adjoins The White House Restaurant and Hotel where we could spend the rest of the day transferring everything over from the Amarok and putting everything away.

We parked up our old caravan next to a rather splendid Ineos caravan next to the factory and said our farewell’s to it. Even Henry watched it through the back window as I unhitched and pulled away. I think really he was thinking it was snack time and that is where his snacks usually materialised. 12 years of caravanning, and the reason this blog came into existence was ending but a new chapter was starting. One that had more wheels in it than you could shake a stick at!

We followed Simon the short distance up the road and pulled into the carpark of the White House which leads through to the camp site. First snag… there was a conference on in the hotel and the car park was packed and Simon could not make it round the 90 degree bend due to two vehicles parked in areas that were not marked parking bays. A short delay, cars were moved and Simon finally got it on to the pitch. There are a number of pitches reserved for 5th Wheel caravan as this is where you can overnight when you bring your caravan for servicing. We went briefly through the unhitching process and then in a little more detail the actual setting up, connection and operating the slide out and a run through of powering up everything. He then left up to start putting everything away and said he would come back in a couple of hours to answer any questions we had and run through anything we were unsure of.

The pitches were obviously designed for 5th wheel units. With power, water and drains set up for dumping grey water tanks. We filled up the 230 litre fresh water tank and turned on the water heater. Our unit is not a new caravan, but it has gone through a full factory refurbishment that included a brand new Truma Combi 4E with iNet controller, brand new Thetford N4000 fridge, new twin 11 litre GasLow refillable bottles and a full reseal as well as lots of other details. It was also fitted with a SOG fan system on the Thetford toilet. It came with a Samsung TV and LG Sound bar installed. The brake system is electric over hydraulic and I was later to find out just how good this was.

Storage… OMG the storage!

We eventually got everything stowed away… everything we had brought with us… and we had not really filled any storage compartment or cupboard. In fact we has storage cupboards and compartments that were still empty. Then we found more storage under the seats in the slide out… and even more behind the wardrobe. It also has a huge under floor locker (As we are now currently set up our available user payload is around 960kg.

Simon called back to see how we were getting on and if we had any questions. I’d noticed a couple of things and he headed off to the factory and returned within 20 minutes with replacements. I will probably repeat this several times but I can’t get over just how good the service and all our dealings have been with everyone from the Fifth Wheel Company. It is exceptional to say the least.

Simon left us to enjoy the rest of the day in our caravan. Tomorrow (Thursday) we have the day to ourselves… which would include a run out to to do a bit of shopping. Friday Simon was going to collect the Amarok and take it down to the factory to have the Reese hitch installed, the electrical conversion and additional systems installed for the electric over hydraulic brake system and air assist bags installed on the suspension which would allow the Amarok to be plated to a GTM of 6400kg.

Henry just checking in with Sue and making sure She knew where the cat biscuits were stored.

During the course of Thursday we had new neighbours arrive in their Celtic Rambler… Gary and Helen, who were also newish to Fifth Wheel life having taken delivery of their unit last November but it was really great to chat to them as they had some really helpful tips about things they discovered since starting out with a 5th wheel. It was also great that Gary spent a little time going through some of the things he had come across hitching and unhitching…. useful information if we ever come up against similar situations.

Friday morning and Simon appeared early to collect our Amarok. As it drove off we set about re-organising stuff we had previously put away as talking the evening before we realised the whole way we had caravanned before would change. I took the opportunity to do a test dump of the grey tank using our colapz waste pipes from the previous caravan and swopped fittings on our blue water hose so I could connect to the tank filler.

That afternoon Simon returned with one of the company vehicles and we went through hitching up and unhitching a couple of times until we had… saying mastered it would be wrong…. become familiar with the sequence might be a better way of putting it. I think we will be using the checklist for a while longer! There are quite a few more steps to hitching, but I’ll swear it is easier than hooking up a caravan on a tow ball. Sue called the list out as I went round going through the process. I guess if I can remember the Emergency checklists for aircraft I’ve flown then this will become as easy as that.

Simon returned late in the afternoon with our Amarok…. all converted, new weight plate fitted and the truck bed was looking really clean. They had managed to install all the connectors in the side of the bed rather than in a box ad it looked really neat.

We still had lots of room in the bed of the truck and one of my future projects is to re-install the slide out tray back in. It will need shortening but I think it will be achievable.

OK, I know you are going to ask….. why is there a 13 pin plug hanging out next to the two sockets? Well part of the installation was to move the connections for the tow bar mounted socket over to the pickup bed so that is the primary connection for the 5th Wheel. The 13 pin plug is effectively a short extension down to the tow bar so I retain all the functions at the ball hitch for towing our trailer. All I have to do is plug it in to the thirteen pin socket in the pickup bed. I have now put a green cap on it and it is secured in a clip.

The installation has also allowed me to continue using our Roll-N-Lock bed cover and as an added bonus, If I want to fit the bike rack on then I can do easily within a few minutes. Obviously we can’t tow the 5th wheel with the bike rack on.

Wagons roll…

Saturday morning arrived…. put the awning away (something that took about 1 minute seriously!) dump the grey and fresh water, turn the gas off. Sue stowed all loose items, bought the slide in, stowed the waste pipe, and dropped the tailgate.

Reversed and aligned up on the hitch adjusted the hitch height using the electrical landing legs, reversed on with a small ‘clunk’ as the jaws closed going the pin. Quick pull test, and as I hooked up the 13 pin plug and the break services plug Sue raised the landing legs. Henry stowed in his carrier… looking quite satisfied with the trip in general as he seems to have found a few new spots to snooze in we were ready to pull out. From the point of us saying “Right shall we make a move” I guess it took less than 30 minutes before we were ready to pull out. It really was easy to break camp.

Final walk round and photo

Pulling out of the site onto the road wasn’t difficult. I need to adjust my mirrors slightly as I’d like to see a bit more of the 5th wheels tyres on the road, especially for cornering. The first real test was approaching a small roundabout a few hundred metres up the road…. I didn’t think we were slowing enough and I was going to overshoot onto the roundabout, so I pressed the brake peele a bit harder… then the trailer decided that meant it must be a sign more brakes were required and it obliged… wow those brakes do work well. I don’t think there is a delay as such, you just have to give them a clear sign of what you want them to do. So a little feathering of the foot brake to shed a few miles per hour you don’t really feel them, but add a bit more pressure than that then they come on enthusiastically for a millisecond until they judge just how much you want to slow down by then match you somehow. You feel them come on then ease up to match you. Never had that on a trailer before.

The trip home was rather uneventful…. except for the looks that you get… I don’t think we would have got more looks if we had been driving a bright pink soft top Ferrari with a giraffe in the back seat.

A Huge Thanks…

I’m going to say it again. A huge thanks To Simon, George who we initially dealt with and to all the staff at the 5th Wheel Company. This not sponsored, we didn’t get or receive any special discounts and although Simon was aware I wrote a blog, I really don’t think this influenced the way we were received or treated. We spoke to Gary and Helen (our neighbours) and they said the same. The service and level of commitment to the product and their customers is second to none, especially in this industry.