I have always wanted a river cruiser and used to do lots of camping and boating holidays, then got married at 40 and now have 2 small girls.
We had to rule out boating for safety reasons and just found we were gathering too much family paraphenalia for camping.
Then my sister bought an old Swift Conqueror and did not get on with towing it (with a Xantia!) so we borrowed it 3 years ago to see if we would get on with caravanning.
We bought it off her over the phone that same weekend!
We had a Shogun at that time and last January replaced that with a Seat Alhambra.
Last year we joined the local area of the CC and started rallying and the whole family gained lots of new friends and lots of new activities, we never expected to get much from green field rallying, but that has proved to be really fantastic.
The Conqueror was really well past its sell by date after the last season so we bought a new Mendip Magnum (Compass Corona) 636 at the NEC and took delivery for Easter this year.
By Xmas we will have completed 60 nights on 18 rallies and 2 nights in a CL this year in the new van.
(first CL, really nice - will do it again, trouble fitting it in with all the rallies)
From sharing our experiences the sister who had the Conqueror has now bought a trailer tent, my other sisters family are in the process of buying a Mazda Bongo based camper, my brother is thinking of buying a touer and the in laws are toying with getting a camper for their imminent retirements.
For anyone thinking of taking up caravanning I can not recommend it enough, find a cheap dry caravan run it for a year try as much as possible incl green field rallies and CLs.
If you do not like it you will not have lost much money if any at all when you sell it and you will have had cheap holidays for a year.
Somehow the urge for a boat has gone (for the next few years anway)
We had to rule out boating for safety reasons and just found we were gathering too much family paraphenalia for camping.
Then my sister bought an old Swift Conqueror and did not get on with towing it (with a Xantia!) so we borrowed it 3 years ago to see if we would get on with caravanning.
We bought it off her over the phone that same weekend!
We had a Shogun at that time and last January replaced that with a Seat Alhambra.
Last year we joined the local area of the CC and started rallying and the whole family gained lots of new friends and lots of new activities, we never expected to get much from green field rallying, but that has proved to be really fantastic.
The Conqueror was really well past its sell by date after the last season so we bought a new Mendip Magnum (Compass Corona) 636 at the NEC and took delivery for Easter this year.
By Xmas we will have completed 60 nights on 18 rallies and 2 nights in a CL this year in the new van.
(first CL, really nice - will do it again, trouble fitting it in with all the rallies)
From sharing our experiences the sister who had the Conqueror has now bought a trailer tent, my other sisters family are in the process of buying a Mazda Bongo based camper, my brother is thinking of buying a touer and the in laws are toying with getting a camper for their imminent retirements.
For anyone thinking of taking up caravanning I can not recommend it enough, find a cheap dry caravan run it for a year try as much as possible incl green field rallies and CLs.
If you do not like it you will not have lost much money if any at all when you sell it and you will have had cheap holidays for a year.
Somehow the urge for a boat has gone (for the next few years anway)
Facebook
Twitter