We're coming to the end of the first year's caravanning in our Eriba, so I thought I'd write about our experiences: places visited and problems overcome.

In fact, we've only stayed at five sites during the season. Two of them are Caravan Club sites, and on the strength of our visits I'm pretty sure we'll stick to CC sites in the future — at least, in the UK. Although we have a lavatory in our Triton 430, for reasons most of you will understand we prefer to limit our use of the washroom to tooth-brushing and nighttime No. 1s. Each of the non-CC sites has had toilets and showers, in every case these were cold, primitive and in short supply. In contrast the two CC sites (we stayed at both of them twice) had warm, clean and plentiful utility blocks.

These are the sites we've used.

The Buckle at Seaford.This site is primitive and pretty shabby. But it served a purpose, and is only half an hour from home, so for our first outing it was ideal, if for no other reason than it gave us practice in using the electric hook-up and cooking in a small space. Also the site is right by the beach, and there's a really good cafe for breakfast, with brilliant sea views, at the top of a flight of steps only a few yards away.

Fairlight Wood at Hastings. This CC site is small, and set out in a group of small glades in a forest a few miles to the east of Hastings. The approach road is narrow, but the wardens try to enforce a strict depart before/arrive after twelve o'clock rule. There's no way two caravans could pass if they flouted that rule. We liked the site so much that we went back a couple of months later. There's a great pub just a woodland walk away (The Two Sawyers, 10 mins). The beach and the petrified forest at Pett Level are only a few minutes away, with Winchelsea and Rye just a tad further. Hastings itself is a bit of a dump, but the Old Town is great for poking around in, and there are two excellent chip shops: The Codfather, on the Esplanade, which is dog-friendly, and Maggie's in the fishing harbour which is not, which requires pre-booking, and which serves the best fish and chips in the world (don't order the large, it will finish you for the rest of the day). There's also a dog-friendly cafe in Hastings (St Leonard's really), the Love Cafe near to Warrior Square. Great for Sunday lunch, and very good coffee too.

Stubcroft Farm is near East Wittering, just south of Chichester. It's a really friendly site, quite large but split between three or four small fields each surrounded by hedgerows. When we visited, the toilets and showers were either individual "festival" type cubicles, or portacabins. They were just about ok. Washing-up stations were in the open, with cold water only. The site owners place a big emphasis on it being a "traditional" site, and so they expect you to rough it a bit. However, they were soon to open a new, heated shower/toilet block, which will make a big difference. What they won't be able to change, though, is the access road, which is a quarter mile of potholes with the odd bit of tired and crumbling tarmac in between. Both our car and our caravan were damaged during this visit, and although I can't prove it I'm pretty sure it was the state of the road that caused it.

Rowans Park at Bognor Regis is another CC site. No access problems here — you drive straight in from a main road. Some people were conscious of traffic noise, but it didn't ever bother us. Once again, it's a small-to-medium site, with a mixture of hard standing and grass pitches, and another modern and luxurious toilet block. Like many seaside towns, Bognor has seen better days, but it is so near to so many good places to go that you can forgive the town its rather down at heel demeanour. Having said that, Hotham Park in the middle of town is great. Unlike most municipal parks there are no signs telling you what you can't do. It's dog friendly, safe, and full of squirrels! And it has a really good cafe that doubles up as a restaurant in the evening.

Blackberries, between Bath and Bradford-on-Avon, is a small, private caravan/camping site. I think there are less than 20 pitches. It's laid-back and peaceful, with some good footpaths nearby. The owner is a really nice chap, eager to make everything pleasant for you. However, it rained for much of the time while we were there, and the place was a bit of a mudbath. But that's a problem that isn't unique to Blackberries, so we made the best of it. What was a problem, though, particularly at the weekend, was the shortage of toilets and showers — one of each for men and the same for women. Oh, and the campers: although in themselves they weren't noisy, one of them threw up all over the washing-up area and didn't think it necessary to clear up. And the place itself could do with better directions and some new signage. We drove around narrow Wiltshire lanes for almost an hour, with the fuel needle hovering in the red, only to discover that we'd been past the site at least once already but the signpost was only visible from the opposite direction. Not good for stress levels. We were glad to get back to Bognor for the second week of that holiday!

Incidentally, at neither of the Caravan Club sites was any mention made of which way to pitch the Eriba. We don't have an awning, so maybe it wasn't going to present a problem anyway, but we pitched with the hitch pointing forwards and the car against the caravan's nearside.

During the season we've had a few problems with our Eriba. Some were just bad luck; others were down to lack of pre-sale preparation. Most of the latter were minor: broken bottle rack in fridge; missing door catches in washroom; leaking tap in the sink; the front of the Truma gas fire refusing to stay attached. One was not so minor. The 13-core cable had been scuffed and repaired with black insulation tape, but two of the cables inside were intermittently shorting. And the big plug on the end of the cable was without its cap and was damp inside, leading to more shorting. On one of our early trips we discovered we were without some of the Eriba's road lights, but it was impossible to tell which lights were lost because they changed every time we wiggled the plug. Of course, this happened over a bank holiday and we couldn't find a caravan electrician to fix it until after we were due back home. In the end, I replaced the cable myself, following AC's instructions. What was bad luck, and impossible to predict, was a water leak in the wardrobe. I followed a thread on Eribafolk which had me examining window seals and waist trims, but they were all secure and tight. Eventually, last week, I narrowed it down to the place in the roof where the gas flue emerges. The mastic had dried out, allowing water to seep under the rubber sealing ring. I managed to locate a very expensive (£21) tube of the correct stuff (Terostat 2759; thanks, Pop540), and at the weekend I took the flue to pieces, raked out the old pug, and reseated the rubber ring in some nice new sticky gloop. Let's hope that does the trick.

A final problem we've had was probably my fault, in that I used a mobile towbar fitter out of the Yellow Pages to upgrade the CRV's electrics. When we changed to the Honda after Stubcroft Farm, it already had a towbar and a 7-pin socket, so I called in this chap from the classifieds to fit me a 13-pin socket and a split charge device. He was here and gone within half an hour. Job done. But it turns out that he'd taken the live feed for the Eriba from the rear wiper motor instead of from the car's battery. The result was that, when hitched and connected, the fridge relay in the Eriba was cycling on and off and causing the BIP to overheat. Apparently the relay sensed a voltage, switched on, but then realised the voltage was too low and switched back off again, and so on ... It cost me more to get it fixed than the first chap charged to do the job in the first place, but, as Aaron Calder said somewhere not too long ago, you pays your money and you takes your choice. I learned my lesson.

I just want to acknowledge practical, if hands-off, help from four members, Aaron Calder, Agger, JohnE and Pop540, and one non-member, Simon Barlow, who writes the excellent Caravan Chronicles blog; and, just as valuable, cheerful friendship and encouragement from Deeps, Pepe Le Pew and Randa France. Thank you, one and all.

Martyn