Two go off in a Caravan (with apologies to Enid Blyton)

Another long gap since the last post in this random collection of loosely non-connected thoughts.

Many years ago when Ann and I were first married, we bought ourselves a tent for holidays and had a couple of enjoyable holidays; one to Carcassonne in France and another touring Portugal and Spain. In a tent. With everything crammed into a Volvo 340, just creeping into view in the picture.

Our tent photographed while camping in a park on the edge of Lisbon in the summer of 1982

After Lisa was born, we thought that camping in a tent with a very young child would be too much like hard work, so managed to scrape together enough to buy ourselves a caravan that was delivered early in 1984 and immediately was pressed into service with a trip to the Brecon Beacons at Easter of that year. It was simple and basic, even by the standards of the time, but served us well for three years travelling around England for holidays and weekends and for a three week holiday in Brittany 

1984 model Sprite Alpine caravan with our VW Passat (the second of many) in the background. You'll notice that there's a nasty dent in the rear of the car. I found this on returning to the car in a public car park, but was pleased to see a note had been left under the wipers which I thought might contain contact details for whoever had caused the damage. It didn't...  It read "I have just hit your car. The people watching think I am leaving my details. I'm not. Hard luck"

The holiday in France was enhanced with an awning to give us more space and we spent the three weeks at Carnac on a very comfortable site surrounded by other English and Welsh families.

Car, caravan and awning at Carnac. Notice the must have 1980s car accessory - the pop out sunroof. I wonder what happened to A738 VMR? It's one of a very few cars for which I can can recall the registration

Storage was reasonably simple - we just parked  on the driveway. Actually getting the caravan onto the driveway was the stuff of which divorces are made! Our driveway, as you will see was loose gravel and sloped uphill. It was just about wide enough to get one car alongside if I could get the 'van tucked in tight and behind the roses. I'd widened the drive a little, but had not increased the width of the drop kerb. To make life even more fun, we needed to turn into a road almost opposite, but slightly offset from our drive and then reverse back making a gentle S bend in the process. Now, with a motor mover and remote control, it would be so much easier.

Eventually we managed to get the caravan onto the driveway. This is at our house at Great Linford in Milton Keynes. We seem to have driven the neighbours away, though. Just around the corner is Ann's Ford Escort Popular finished in NHS hearing aid beige

I swapped jobs and lost the company car; the Escort was not up towing, so we bought ourselves an MG Maestro, which was probably less able to tow than the Escort would have been. The less said about that car, the better; it was quickly replaced with another Passat! I swapped jobs again and had another company car, so the sale of the car paid for an upgraded caravan. A Bailey Maestro! This one had a heater, but was before the introduction of cassette toilets and fitting of showers - and hot water, but it was 14ft 6in long and so much more comfortable than the Sprite.

The Bailey with very large Isabella awning on holiday in France in 1987. Ann was very pregnant with David at the time and the holiday was timed so that we got home on the last day that we could get holiday insurance. Another dreadful car - Sierra 2.0iS; the poor man's XR4, rapidly replaced with yet another Passat following another job move.

Everything fell apart in around 1989 or 1990 when we were struggling to find the money for the mortgage. The long and the short was that we moved house twice in a very short period for my job and did the second move on a "Gentleman's Agreement" that the bridging loan costs would be met. While I may be a Gentleman, my boss was not and the agreement was reneged. Something had to give and the caravan was sold. A sad day 😢😢😢.

We move forward many years and a trip to the TR Register International weekend, where at too much of an advanced age, we again went camping.

I don't know why we ever thought that little tent would be suitable for two middle aged adults! The Triumph 2000 and TR6 you will recognise as the cars we used to own

And then if that little tent wasn't daft enough, I went to Classic Le Mans with my good friend Nigel and for this event bought a single berth tent from Tesco.It was smaller than the bivouacs that we used when I was in the Army, but it did the job. Actually, not entirely true as it ended up in a skip on the second visit to Le Mans to remind me not to even think about using it again.

The world's smallest tent. Luckily, it didn't rain at Le Mans that year, but it did the following time

For other events that both Ann and I went to, we did buy ourselves a comfortable camping tent, but I really struggle to say that I enjoy camping in a tent.

The Komfy Kamping tent on a site in the Dordogne region of France

Along the way, we've had a couple of enjoyable holidays in a rented motorhome and of course, six weeks in 2017 travelling around the US in a giant RV. We have an investment in a motorhome rental business that allows us a few free weeks each year.

In France (again) with one of the rental motorhomes in 2011

The RV rented for our holiday in 2017

We rather like motorhomes, but found a couple of problems. First they are very expensive and ones that are large enough to be comfortable are too big to go out for the day, so you need to tow a car along with you. We found this in the USA where we ended up renting a car for a few days.

And then a few weeks ago, I just casually suggested to Ann "shall we get a caravan again?" It may have taken Ann a nanosecond or so to consider her reply, but the upshot was that we found ourselves searching on the Internet and spending a day at the NEC a couple of weeks back.

We knew exactly what we wanted and how much we were prepared to pay. Last week, we were lucky enough to find exactly what we were looking for, having been told by several dealers that we would never find what we were looking for and should instead purchase what they had to offer. Perhaps I should attend exhibitions with a badge that says "I used to sell things for a living and know all the tricks". A deal was quickly negotiated and we will soon be the proud owners of a very lightly used huge nearly new caravan.

Pictures of our purchase (images originally formed part of a review on the web by "Practical Caravan" Magazine (I hope they don't mind - it was a good magazine 30 years ago and still is...)

The only slight problem being that neither car was suitable for towing a caravan that weighs around 1.5 tons laden. So if you've seen Ann's Facebook post saying goodbye to "Hans" and "Carmen" - our cars have always had names - and saying hello to "Katy", now you know why.

Yes... it is another Mercedes