Oxford – Southampton – Oxford

13 Friday Jan 2012

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I had a shoot to do in Southampton in September, and as Sue could get a few days away from the hospital we decided to go down for a few days. It would also allow us to catch up with some very good friends of ours that live on the Isle of Wight. The shoot was planned for the 24th September, so we thought rather than tow all the way down to Southampton in one go, we would break the journey with an overnight stop at Oxford C & CC’s site, then continue down to Southampton on Friday.

Sue catching up on a bit of light reading...

I searched the C & CC’s website for suitable places to stay…. we were not yet up-to-speed on CL’s & CS’s so wanted to stay somewhere a little larger. Having found a couple of sites, I checked them out on Google Earth and looked at the distance between them and my planned photo shoot. There was nothing close, in the end I Googled “caravan sites, Southampton” and a list of commercial sites appeared on a map… there was one that was perfect. Sunnydale Farm in Netley Abbey. I rang up to check availability… yes they had pitches free…. but as it was the end of Southampton Boat Show, the prices were higher. It still seemed a reasonable deal, £100 for 5 days, so I booked us in. Next, back on to the C & CC website and book us back in at Oxford for one night for the return trip north.

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5 days at Barnard Castle

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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We had to wait almost a month before our next trip. We had arranged with out friends, Pete & Julie (you might remember them from the ‘Hello World’ posts) that we would meet up somewhere. As they had traveled down to see us in Oxford, we decided to head over in their direction this time. I had always wanted to visit Beamish museum in the north east and this seemed like a good opportunity. I booked us in to the Camping & Caravanning Clubs site at Barnard Castle using the on line booking system. I sent an email to Pete with all the details… knowing that he can’t get internet… or a mobile phone signal in the valley where they live I gave him a ring on his land line to let him know so he could toggle off to the local library 20 miles away to check his email. The dates were fine with them. We would arrive on the Saturday and they would drive up on the Sunday to meet us. The route I’d planned was over the M62 and to pick up the A1M north, so there shouldn’t be any problems. Sue had done here usual job of loading up the plastic boxes ready for the trip. This was going to be for 5 days, our longest so far.

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Lake District weekend

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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Pleased with the success of our first weekend away in our new van, we wanted to go a little further. The next time we could get away was the following weekend – Friday 29th July… As we had joined the Camping & Caravanning Club when we had hired a caravan, it seemed sensible to make use of the membership. I logged on to their website and browsed for available places… We had ruled out the south west as we were in the middle of school holidays and guessed it would be mayhem down there. The lakes looked like a good idea, and the weather forecast seemed reasonable too. Troutbeck C & CC site had pitches available for the weekend… click, that was booked. The few days soon passed, I had made a couple of trips up to the caravan in the mean time checking things.. giving it a polish… doing all the man stuff and Friday morning we were ready to go. We went down to where the caravan is stored, loaded up, hitched up and set off up the M6 the 122 miles to Troutbeck. The tow up there was uneventful… even the tow up Shap passed easily and the weather was better than forecast. The torque remap done a couple of months earlier before we bought the caravan improved the towing capability of the Freelander and once we had got on the M60 it was almost like towing with an auto. The TD4 engine in the Freelander was the same engine as installed in the MG-Z and some BMW’s so a mild torque remap wasn’t going to shorten the life of the engine…. at least that is what I was told.

We arrived at the site and were greeted by the wardens. We booked in and were asked if we wanted the top end or the lower field. We opted for the top end. The warden waked down with us following in the car and he showed us pitch number 6 at the top of a ramp leading down to the lower field.

The view from our pitch over the lower field

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Our first trip…

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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Well, we had bought it, got all the equipment we thought we needed so I suppose we better try it out!

Where to go was the next question. As it happened, a chap had joined the Caravan Talk forum and was canvasing for help from the contributors…. what did they want in a caravan site. Now, that was a bit of a leading question and as expected, he got answers fired at him with both barrels… and what one person wanted was soon shot down by others as not being what anyone else wanted at all. I kind of felt sorry for him in a way, but admired him for actually taking the time to respond to all the posts. It was decided, we would visit this site for the weekend, so I ring up and booked in for Friday 22nd July for two nights. Oh yes…. I guess you want to know the site, Lady Heyes near Frodsham.

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Collecting our new van…

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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Well, I’ve very nearly brought you up-to-date. You now know – if you have read “Hello world” how we got to this point. The day of collection arrived – 6th July 2011 which coincidentally was the same date that 2 years previously I had set off with a group of other pilots to fly single engined aircraft round the world. I hoped that the same spirit of adventure waited for Sue and I with our new caravan.

As usual, it was raining when we arrived at Glossop Caravans. We were early, so sat in the car watching the rain pour off the roofs of the caravans in front of us. If you have ever been to Glossop Caravans, you will know that the car park is up a steep ramp and overlooks the site so you can see almost everything. I have to take my hat off to the chap manning the car park, throughout  the time we were there, he never deserted his post and remained directing traffic in the downpour. Glossop Caravans were very efficient, the day before we were due to collect, they telephone us with the exact time we needed to be there and with a list of items that we needed to bring with us. I had in the boot of the car one 110Ah Leisure Battery and one Safefill Gas Cylinder…. and a bunch of paperwork.

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Hello world! – Pt4

12 Thursday Jan 2012

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The hunt is on for a caravan that ticks all the boxes on our list. Searching on the internet comes up with a number of forums dedicated to caravanning as well as all the different manufacturer web sites. One of the first sites I look at is Bailey’s…. the Orion range. Wow… that looks good, there are a couple of videos on the site of some chap called Andrew Ditton taking them to the beach in Spain and somewhere knee deep in snow. I really loved the idea of the Alu-Tech construction system, it seemed right.

Unfortunately, we were looking just at the time the wheel detachment issue was coming to light with one of the Bailey range and on the forums, there was lots of speculation about the mechanical fastening system of the Alu-Tech construction. This knocked Bailey of our top spot for the manufacturer of our soon to be pride and joy.

We had previously been up to Glossop Caravans to look round when we were looking for what we thought we wanted when hiring. It was time for another visit. Originally it was our intention to buy a second hand van, maybe twelve or eighteen months old, but after wandering round all the pre-owned vans, there was nothing we liked or came close to ticking any boxes. What had seemed like an easy task, finding a suitable caravan, suddenly became a lot harder. If we couldn’t find something at one of the biggest dealers in the North West, what chance did we have.

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Hello world! – Pt 3

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Our first attempt at packing the caravan up went rather well… we were up early, I’d cooked breakfast again and we had washed up and stowed everything away. During the course of breakfast we had reflected on the first two nights… and what had been a firm decision on the type of caravan we wanted had to be revisited. We definitely wanted a full rear washroom and we definitely wanted a fixed bed! There was a turn about, after looking at fixed beds back at Glossop Caravans a few weeks ago and deciding they were not for us… we had decided a fixed bed was the way forward. We had also revised our list of things we thought we wanted… but this was very flexible at the moment.

It only took us 20 minutes to pack everything away and hitch up… which was surprising, I’d read stories of people spending all morning packing up and hitching up. I had the feeling we were not getting this right somehow. We finally drove round the access road to Kelvedon Hatch at just before 10:30 in the morning and set off for Canterbury.

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Hello world! – Pt 2

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Hi again… you still reading?

Ok where were we, Oh yes… so everything was booked. Now all we needed to do was learn how to “caravan”.

The internet is a fascinating repository of ‘stuff’. I soon learned about electrical hook up’s, how to level a caravan, towing tips, water systems, gas safety, and most importantly the right and wrong way to empty a Thetford Cassette toilet….

Another thing became obvious… we needed to buy stuff. Some light weight crockery, knives and forks, towing mirrors, green solution, pink solution… the list was growing. Again, a search of the internet and we found we had a “Go Outdoors” store near us in Stockport… off we went with our shopping list. Thankfully we managed to get most things we needed in one go, that was untill I read something else on the internet about caravanning and decided we could not possably do without it and must have it immediately … which resulted in several more trips to Go Outdoors and a few places Sue never knew about!

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Hello world!

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Well, I guess this is the start of just another caravan blog. I didn’t know really what to call it, as I didn’t know where I was going with it. This is my second blog.

The first one was easy as it was all about one particular event, me and a bunch of other pilots in a handfull of small planes flying round the world… if you really want to have a look its called “Round The World Flight“

So, whats this blog all about then?

In May 2011 I had a photographic shoot to do in Essex and normally I’d have driven down from the North West, done the shoot and driven home again. A round trip of 400ish miles and a very long day. As Sue had some time off we decided to hire a caravan to see if it was something we would enjoy. Now you don’t just sit there reading a paper and suddenly announce to your partner “I think we will hire a caravan next week dear” how did we get to this point?

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