caravan nightmare
“How do you reverse it?” I shouted out of the window to Ruth as I drove a large 4x4 and even larger caravan out of the headquarters of the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain, heading for points south.
“Just do things the opposite way round as you do in your car?” she shouted back as I sped off down the road, en route to North Devon. Perhaps sped was the wrong word - crawled more like.
The Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain, somewhat foolishly in retrospect, was lending me a towing caravan for the week so I could experience what half a million other families and couples do every summer. The number of touring caravans currently on the road surprised me but if you are driving down to Devon in a car this summer, you can guarantee that every single one of them will be in front of you. Now I was to join that growing fleet of what are undoubtedly the most detested vehicles on the road (if you’re not in one yourself).
I had asked Ruth about reversing as an
afterthought. Somewhere deep inside me, I knew I had heard that
there was some special technique for reversing a caravan. I almost
didn’t ask at all. Why would I need to reverse the caravan? I would
soon find out.
The Camping and Caravanning Club has its headquarters in a
surprisingly glitzy building on the outskirts of Coventry. Its
swankiness is less surprising when you consider the club has 400,000
members - and the number has increased by 10 per cent every year in
the past three, although whether they have been convinced of the
joys of caravanning by self-confessed caravan lover foreign
secretary Margaret Beckett I am unsure.
Multimap put the journey from Coventry to North Devon at around three and a quarter hours. However, given that the speed limit for cars towing caravans is 10mph lower than the national limit and I had two children under three in the back, I predicted something approaching double this.
As a result, we decided to break up the journey by stopping off to see friends at their new house in Weston super Mare. Never having visited them before, we rang on the mobile as we approached the town ands they said ‘Just head for the pink house on the hill. That’s us.’. Bizarrely, the word ‘hill’ didn’t set alarm bells ringing.
After much wiggling through the back streets of Weston, we finally arrived at the hill. It was only as I crested it that I realised I had already passed the end of our friends’ road. Suddenly, what had been a nice wide road halved in width as I went over the brow of the hill. At the bottom, I could see it was only just wider than the caravan. Worse, there was one of those red triangle road signs warning of twists and bends ahead. I slammed on the brakes.
Looking in the side mirror, I realise the only way out was to reverse back up over the crest of the hill and round the corner. My reversing round a corner skills have deteriorated considerably since I took my test 13 years ago and I don’t recall ever having to do it combined with a hill start and in vehicles with a combined weight of three and a half tons.
Now what was it Ruth had said. “Do things the opposite way round.” I gingerly stuck the 4x4 in reverse and started turning the wheel in the opposite direction to normal. The back end of the caravan moved to within two inches of a low brick wall. I shunted forwards again.
After several attempts, I was still getting nowhere and by now the Kia Sorrento’s clutch was giving signals that it didn’t like this challenge. By now, a huge traffic jam had built up and I was beginning to imagine local newspaper headlines along the lines of ‘Stupid tourist’s caravan airlifted out’.
Luckily, someone in the fast-growing queue of traffic had greater (i.e. some) experience of pulling a trailer and offered to reverse it for me. In a huge blow to my ego, he reversed it over the hill and round the corner in a single slick manoeuvre. I thanked him profusely and drove back to our turning, carefully avoiding eye contact with any of the irate drivers in the now beginning to move snake of traffic.
Meanwhile, our friend had noticed what was happening from his house and had come out with a beer to crack open as soon as we had parked up. Needless to say, he was bent double with laughter. At that moment, I could have happily abandoned the caravan where it was.
The next morning, things didn’t seem so bad and we set off early, the family waving cheerily goodbye to our kind hosts, who still couldn’t believe that we had joined the touring caravan set.
If you ignore the fact that the 4x4’s clutch gave out an hour later and we had to be rescued by an enormous pickup truck, eventually having to be towed into the caravan park, you could say the rest of the journey was uneventful.
Never has a patch of grass seemed more inviting. Damage Barton – the name perhaps a spooky portent of the problems with the clutch – has what has to be one of the best campsite locations in the country. It sits on a 500-acre farm above cliffs on the coastline between Ilfracombe and Woolacombe.
Arriving, with shredded nerves and a clutch to
match, gave us time to check out our caravan in more detail. The
club had loaned us an Avondale Coachcraft Argente 550/4.
Truth told, I was somewhat disappointed not to have a Abi Marauder.
I had always that this much maligned caravan was a figment of a
comedian’s imagination until I saw one pootling (rather than
marauding) along the M5.
It was cosy, despite being a larger than average four-berth tourer.
The aisle was just wide enough to fit a carry cot for our
four-month-old son while our two-year-old had her own curtained off
sleeping area. A separate shower room proved a useful holding zone
for our suitcases – which remained never fully unpacked.
Luckily, the site had one of the most amazing shower blocks I have ever come across – spotlessly clean, with a separate bathroom for the kids and loads of hot water no matter what the time of day. This meant we didn’t have to clamber over the suitcases when trying to get a shower in the caravan. It also meant that refilling the water barrel was a less frequent exercise. The tap was only a short walk away but filling the barrel in the wind and rain was one of the points when you ask yourself ‘Is this really worth it?’
It may sound like we didn’t enjoy the experience. The weather was certainly against us, despite being in July. But we are regular campers and campervanners and love the freedom it entails.
There’s something very appealing about being enclosed in a small warm space, like a caravan or tent, when outside the weather is doing its worst. We have four days with cloud, wind and rain but it was still pleasant to suit inside the caravan with a warm cup of tea, looking out of the window at the sea.
On the remaining, better days, we took advantage of Damage Barton’s great location. Just a few miles down the road is Woolacombe. I visited this area frequently as a child myself and have always had perhaps a romantic view of the beach. On the one very hot day, a trip to the beach reinforced my happy memories of the place. It’s one of those wide beaches where a trip to the water’s edge for a paddle can take a good 15 minutes, or more if you have a child who wants to dawdle in the pools of water left by the retreating tide.
Damage Barton farm also offers hour-long tractor tours, which gives you a chance to see the glorious clifftop scenery and meet some of the 800 sheep and breeding cattle who live there.
There are many good walks from the site too. We picked up a couple of good leaflets in the campsite reception. On one particularly enjoyable afternoon, we picked our way through farm buildings, fields dotted with cows and quiet woodland, down steep Warcombe Lane to Lee Bay. The beach is far starker than Woolacombe’s but the scenery is glorious.
Come the end of the week, we were all sad to say goodbye to Damage Barton and our touring caravan. I have to admit that the experience on the way down to Devon (for which read my incompetence) has probably scarred me for life. Swanky caravans don’t come cheap either. The Argente will set you back a good 14 grand (although I have just seen a secondhand Marauder on eBay for £300.
Overall, the experience of towing a caravan took some getting used to. You constantly worry that you are going to clip the back end or not stop in time because of the excess weight. Or, in my case, you are required to reverse. Having just checked back with the Club, I now see they offer courses in how to tow a caravan. I’d like to think they weren’t set up as a direct result of my reversing problems but who knows.
Need to know
A pitch at Damage Barton (www.damagebarton.co.uk, 01271 870502) costs £7.25 per adult and £2.25 for children or £18.50 for a family.
The Camping and Caravanning Club (www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk, 0845 130 7632) has nearly 100 of its own sites around the UK. Membership costs £33 and includes access to 1,200 associate sites, a free monthly magazine and free technical help and legal advice.
Avondale Caravans,
www.avondalecaravans.co.uk