Although it might seem quiet here at the Caravan Chronicles pitch there have been a few things going on behind the scenes so I thought it was time for a catchup and a chat.

A lot of people have been asking why I haven’t done any YouTube videos? Well the simple fact is they are flippin’ hard work…. plus I don’t particularly like being on video. I’m not a ‘presenter’ by any means… (mind you I’m not a writer either but enough people seem to read this blog). I really don’t know how Andrew Ditton, Dan Trudgian and all the others have time to produce the amount of good quality content that they do. Hats off to you guys!

I also missed a milestone some time ago. I was watching the stats counter tick away waiting for the blogs 20 millionth page hit/view what ever you want to call it and for some reason I stopped watching. It was a few days ago that I thought to check and blow me it had ticked past the 21 million! I started to look at how I’d hit this figure and it seems that a lot of my technical stuff has been linked to in various leisure (and boating) blogs and forums around the world so a lot of hits are derived from people searching on these. I also seem to be developing a wider audience ‘down under’ in “Straliah…… Yessssss”  – I really should stop watching John Cadogan videos on YouTube!

While I’m mentioning Australia, My friend, well-known author Collyn Rivers has launched his new website RVBooks.com.au

Collyn has been writing  books about Caravans and Motorhomes in Australia and New Zealand for a number of years and now all his books are available as eBooks from the website.

Collyn is also an engineer with quite a pedigree and his technical articles are superb in their detail and explanation. Although tailored to the Australian and NZ markets, Collyn has started to introduce information relating to European manufactured caravans and motorhomes as imports are starting to do surprisingly well down under.

In a recent email from Collyn he explained….

“Caravan rollovers have sadly reached serious proportions here as more and more newcomers do not understand that it is not possible to get away with towing 3.5-tonnes at 100 km/h (62 mph) behind a 4WD that weighs only 2.5 tonnes and increasingly with a tow ball mass of little over 5%! This year so far over 200 have overturned almost overturning the 4WD as well. Sadly most owners seem to be in denial”

Have a read through some of the technical articles he has written, the explanation and answer is quite clear.

What else…

Is it me or are available pitches getting harder to find?  OK I know I have been trying to get into the C & MC’s Bristol site for the last three… maybe four years without much success but sometimes it’s almost as difficult to get into other sites too. I know both clubs are undertaking rolling refurbishment and upgrades to a lot of sites and sometime this includes adding additional pitches. But I wonder if more thought should be going into looking at developing new sites? I know the figures put forward by the leisure industry at large all show ‘staycations’ hitting new levels with year on year increases not seen before and the NCC announced record levels of caravan and motorhome ownership which puts pressure on existing sites.

Trying to find suitable space to develop a new caravan site must be a nightmare… let alone gaining planning permission, but a thought did cross my mind. Thinking about the Bristol site, maybe it’s overwhelming popularity is because it is right in the centre of Bristol and ideal for a city visit. I wonder if there are opportunities being missed looking at brownfield sites that could be developed within cities.  Just my thoughts!

New Caravan?

As you know from some of my previous ramblings, probably for the last 12 months or so we have been thinking about a new caravan and kind of narrowed it down to a twin axle, centre bathroom layout and ideally a twin bed, but that was about it. Despite going to view a few, nothing jumped out at us and it has been interesting to watch Dan Trudgian and family go through a similar process. So what did we choose…. well lets say we’ll start looking again at some point in the future…. maybe.

I think that’s about it for the moment.

S