The Prologue…

One of the big debates in the caravan world is how to carry your bikes. Our continental cousins have the advantage that their caravans come with a longer ‘A’ frame allowing a bike rack to be installed on it. Fiamma have an excellent range dedicated to just that. In the UK though, caravan manufacturers seem to prefer the stubby ‘A’ frame and basically because of this and the fact that UK vans seem to come pre loaded with the weight of a small elephant already on the hitch, we have to come up with alternatives.

The old bike rack, even on its highest setting, it would not clear the caravan 'A' frame and it was unstable too.

Somehow carrying the bikes on the roof is a bit of an aerodynamic disaster as far as I’m concerned and Sue was adamant that they were not going inside her shiny new caravan so the only place left  was to hang them off the back of the Freelander. We had a bike rack from a well-known car spares shop that fitted on the spare wheel and up to now had worked fine. The problem was it carried the bikes too low to allow us to tow the caravan. I’d adjusted the frame to lift the bikes as high as I could get them, but it wasn’t right and it seemed unstable. Time to look at alternatives. Fiamma was a logical place to start. They are well-known for producing equipment for caravans and motorhomes and have a range of bike racks that are designed with this in mind. Continue reading →