Why?
Why do we do it?
Let's face it, there's nothing about caravanning that's easy.
Towing is a breeze when the caravan isn't attached to the back of the car.
You can see stuff in the mirrors, you don't need to worry about the builder's van in your blind spot with its nose between your arse cheeks waiting to jump out and overtake precisely when you need to pass a truck thundering along the inside lane at 60.9 mph, and reversing is a piece of cake.
Not to mention your fuel consumption tanking to half of what it usually is.
When you get where you're going - at least an hour and a half later than you intended - you have to remember how to assemble a complicated flapping monstrosity that doesn't fit properly, collects vast quantities of rainwater in its roof and threatens to end up in the next field if the wind rises above dead calm even if you've nailed it to the grass with big nails and silly rubber mallet.
You have to fill a big plastic barrel with water from a muddy tap which is at least four hundred yards away from where you are before you can wash anything or have a wee in a toilet so small you can't help thinking that Ernest Thetford was a midget as well as a comedian.
If you're foolish enough to take a little telly with you, you spend ages fiddling with an aerial - which is outside - while you're inside trying to find a channel which isn't showing a blizzard.
You have to unfold your uncomfortable outside furniture and find somewhere to put it where it isn't listing heavily to port or where one of your chair legs goes down a hole just as you sit on it.
You can't cook proper meals because the proper stuff for cooking proper meals is in your kitchen at home; you have to share most of what you eat or drink with a selection of insect life which enjoyed an hors d'oevre of your blood beforehand and when you've finished what hasn't slid off your lap into the grass, you have to wash up in a silly little sink the size of a pudding basin.
If you have a toilet inside, you have to empty it yourself. You have to tug a little plastic suitcase on wheels across a bumpy field like an ill-prepared tourist disembarking from a tiny plane at a remote airstrip somewhere in darkest Africa, the only difference being that if you are an ill-prepared tourist disembarking from a tiny plane at a remote airstrip somewhere in darkest Africa, your suitcase isn't full of soggy toilet paper and blue turds.
The likelihood is that unless you've had a skinfull you won't sleep well - at least for the first couple of nights - because you're either too hot or too cold, because you're tangled up in your expensive Duvalay like a half-unwrapped toffee or because you didn't get it all level before spending hours attaching the awning and unpacking everything you brought with you.
Because nothing has a proper place inside your little tin snail, stuff is strewn all over everywhere, and it takes five times as long as it would if you were at home to organise anything and everything. We can count on spending the first half of any day out sightseeing trying to get ready to go, and you can guarantee that someone will say 'Bloody hell. Hang on a minute...' just as you turn out of the campsite onto the main road.
And if it rains you get wet. Now I realise that there's no such thing as bad weather, merely the wrong choice of clothing, but when the right choice of clothing is all damp, such pearls of wisdom seem ill-placed.
How much easier would it be to stay at home where everything is exactly were its supposed be, the toilet empties itself, comfy chairs are in exactly the right place for watching television, water comes out of the tap without having to put it in first and there's no need for half a tent hung on the side of your house.
Other than that, it's just grand.
.
Another pearl of wisdom from Monsieur Le Pew Thanks Pete for cheering me up
Does your van have "a little plastic suitcase ON WHEELS?" Now that is posh. I have to carry ours by a flimsy handle located at each end. To look "hard" and not look as though I'm cradling a plastic baby I have to carry it by one handle only and pray all the way to the disposal point that the trap door doesn't fall off and spread the last 3 days collection of used wine all over the campsite.
Randa
ERIBAFOLK POP UP EVERYWHERE 1999 Eriba Troll 530 pushing a VW Touran 2L TDi Match
Ours is on wheels too but at the slightest deviation from dead flat ground it turns itself over and you have to fight to get it back on its wheels whilst remaining nonchalant about the fact that you are taking your “waste” for a walk.
It’s when you add up how much your “home away from home” has cost complete with all the gubbins that clutters it up that my sisters comments about how many decent hotel rooms you could buy for that money rings true.
BUT I’d still rather be in my Eriba, just wish it could be in Europe but hey ho!
Julie & Neil. 2008 530GT pushing Honda CR-V 1.6 iDTEC SE+
After these wonderful descriptions of toilet emptying ( blue turds made me shudder, but with laughter) I'm so glad we removed ours.
We must be. mad because despite all the trials and tribulations you describe ( plus officious customs men who want to search everything including Bunny's handbag in Bulgaria ) we still love every minute away in it.
Dave
Skoda Kodiaq 2.0 150 Tdi DSG Troll 552 - 2005
Don't worry about the destination, enjoy the journey.
I agree with everything, but whilst sitting back with a suitable beverage of my choice I then also think at the fun I have whilst looking on at the poor sod who has just arrived who is now going through exactly what I have had to put up with, Watching somebody else [try to] put up an awning with there other half can be one of the greatest sources of amusement known to mankind.
Colin
aka Oscar - Audi A3 1.5 petrol _ ex 430, 552, camplet trailer tent, 310, now a nice white 2017 430.
I'm sure there are days when we all recognise and agree with some of Peps comments................................the blue stains that always get on your hands from the toilet fluid are always an early marker of fun to come................he hasn't even mentioned the joy of your electrics mysteriously refusing to work on a dark & dismally wet night at Derwentwater
However having spent our first four nights away since Summer 2020 we would have to say that it is all worth it. There are things you get from being in your Eriba on a good site that are almost beyond measure, .......................despite me almost flooding the inside of the van with washing up water.
More "the Good Life" than "One Foot in the Grave" surely....................................
MikeT
A couple of hours ago we arrived at Coniston Park Coppice CMC site, but with neither a C or an M, but a booking for a 'Glamping Pod'. One of ten such little boxes clustered around a dead end clearing in the wood, that is the site. Built by Swift in Cottingham, with product placement logos scattered liberally about they are, I have to admit, the height of convenience. The verandah with four chairs, table and umbrella has a similar floorspace to the pod, about 8ft by 16ft. Double glazed doors lead inside to a one room space with upholstered chairs for four, a pull down double bed and a single plus bunk above.there's a tuned in TV with fridge below and a small kitchen on the rear wall on the way to the washroom with running hot and cold, permanent drainage and a proper toilet and shower cubicle. The pod comes with toaster, all cutlery, crockery, initial supplies of tea/erzats coffee and milk and because we booked a chien friendly pod we even have a water bowl and a bag of dog treats. Sadly no awning to struggle with, though the umbrella was a mini challenge.
Downsides - it's plastic city. Plastic railings, plastic decking, plastic outdoor furniture, even the outer walls of the pods are timber coloured plastic sheets made to look like shiplap. All done for cheapness and low maintenance but hardly good for the planet, though when you consider the displacement from other forms of break, maybe not as bad as it could be. Then there's the landscaping, the background is superb large mature trees all round, only the other pods visible, not a C or M to be seen from the south facing verandah but, but there is a central concrete road and the whole of the rest of the area is wall to wall grey slate clippings, with no planting of shrubs, no grass, no nothing. It just looks as if the budget ran out on landscaping. What could look amazing and help blend the plastic boxes into their forest location has been totally overlooked. Still at least I don't have to wheel the ill behaved Thetty to the bog hole.
I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon
But to settle down and write you a line
Skoda Karoq 1.5 Petrol DSG
I can see those camping pods becoming more common when we all have to use an electric milk float to drive about in...
When I go on holiday I like to pop my top!
Yes, caravaning is all about sleeping wherever the mood takes you. Does it really matter if it's your caravan or a pod. After all in this country you have to book before you travel anyway.
Puck 120 GT - Nissan Pulsar 1.5DCi
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