I've had enough too, selling up

[Garfield]

By the time everythings loaded for us & 3 kids, the wife's had enough, by the time I've driven to the site, Iv'e had enough (and theres still the awning to erect). After two weeks of indifferent weather in Brittany I can honestly say I would have enjoyed myself more and be far less stressed if I'd stayed at home working. The kids are at orchestra practice most weekends and it's far more hassle than it's worth for a weekend anyway so the caravan is for sale in this weeks paper and the websites and the money will go towards some all inclusive weeks in the canaries for the wife & kids and a few weeks skiing for me!!!.
bye bye and good luck to you all
Gary.

 

[ValA.]

Wait until you've had a few holidays like this:

A holiday without the caravan usually means paying over the odds for a horrible packed flight, with the tiniest suitcase you've ever seen (the luggage allowance), the flight is late, and when you arrive you're sardined into a bus along with the family from hell, dumped at a miles from anywhere hotel, where the food is awful and everyone comes down with the Delhi Belly. The pool is overcrowded, and the sunbeds reserved by others, the disco goes on until 3.00 in the morning, and then the drunks stumble home around the outside of your room and along the corridors, shouting and playing loud music until 6.00 - when the chambermaid wakes you up, to give you new towels.

Breakfast is awful, and so it goes on - you get sunburnt, the kids get stroppy, and it's a bus ride to the nearest bar. You pay over the odds (again) for a 'Cultural Night at the Local Authentic Pie Eating Competition' - listen to the Tour Guide Charleeen-Marie's interesting guide to the local carpet factory, jewellery store, and local produce merchant, and eventually arrive at the Cultural location in an old shed which looks like an ASDA warehouse, where recklessly Dad volunteers to enter the competition, only to be assaulted by the next contestant disputing how many pies have been eaten and by whom.

The belly dancer entertains all with her wobbly bits, you all get drunk on the cheap beer and wine, and go home to a hangover and the same noisy disco and returning revellers. You don’t sleep again and the following day have a quiet stroll, with a headache, through the ‘Englis Pubbs’ and ‘Irish Barrs’ of the authentic village street, where you get accosted by Time Share touts who manage to con you out of five grand as the deposit on the unbuilt ‘penthouse apartment’ at the far end of the street.

Eventually, at the end of a perfect fortnight you get back on the tour bus and the crowded plane, your return flight is delayed by 24 hours leaving you a bed on the airport floor along with the family from hell *(again), back into the no legroom seats on the plane (and the Ryanair £1 a go loo - fortunately your Delhi belly has cleared up) - and then you're home. However,your luggage isn’t returned until two weeks later so you have to make do with all your ‘second-best’ undies for the next fortnight.

Still you can console yourself that at least there's no awning to erect!

 

[Sproket]

Wait until you've had a few holidays like this:

A holiday without the caravan usually means paying over the odds for a horrible packed flight, with the tiniest suitcase you've ever seen (the luggage allowance), the flight is late, and when you arrive you're sardined into a bus along with the family from hell, dumped at a miles from anywhere hotel, where the food is awful and everyone comes down with the Delhi Belly. The pool is overcrowded, and the sunbeds reserved by others, the disco goes on until 3.00 in the morning, and then the drunks stumble home around the outside of your room and along the corridors, shouting and playing loud music until 6.00 - when the chambermaid wakes you up, to give you new towels.

Breakfast is awful, and so it goes on - you get sunburnt, the kids get stroppy, and it's a bus ride to the nearest bar. You pay over the odds (again) for a 'Cultural Night at the Local Authentic Pie Eating Competition' - listen to the Tour Guide Charleeen-Marie's interesting guide to the local carpet factory, jewellery store, and local produce merchant, and eventually arrive at the Cultural location in an old shed which looks like an ASDA warehouse, where recklessly Dad volunteers to enter the competition, only to be assaulted by the next contestant disputing how many pies have been eaten and by whom.

The belly dancer entertains all with her wobbly bits, you all get drunk on the cheap beer and wine, and go home to a hangover and the same noisy disco and returning revellers. You don’t sleep again and the following day have a quiet stroll, with a headache, through the ‘Englis Pubbs’ and ‘Irish Barrs’ of the authentic village street, where you get accosted by Time Share touts who manage to con you out of five grand as the deposit on the unbuilt ‘penthouse apartment’ at the far end of the street.

Eventually, at the end of a perfect fortnight you get back on the tour bus and the crowded plane, your return flight is delayed by 24 hours leaving you a bed on the airport floor along with the family from hell *(again), back into the no legroom seats on the plane (and the Ryanair £1 a go loo - fortunately your Delhi belly has cleared up) - and then you're home. However,your luggage isn’t returned until two weeks later so you have to make do with all your ‘second-best’ undies for the next fortnight.

Still you can console yourself that at least there's no awning to erect!

 

[Soozeeg]

Sorry to hear that, Gary, but you must of course do whatever you feel you want to. You don't have to leave us though, all your experience and knowledge doesn't just disappear when/if you sell your caravan. Stay and join in still. Val, you should offer your services to one of the comedians, I can just imagine Michael McIntyre coming out with all that!!

 

[JonnyG]

Val, we have not taken our caravan away on our major holidays ever. And that does not mean we do package holidays, instead we still drive to a caravan site abroad and use their caravans or apartments, sometimes use hotels enroute and on the retrurn to do a little siteseeing. We save alot of hassle and time and moneywise,there is not that much in it these days as we don not need to pay extra for the ferry, extra fuel because of the poorer MPG ect ect. But we still get that good value good sites type of holiday.
Of late that means lake garda, and as long as you stay out of the mid july to mid august high season, which only effects the campsites own statics or apartments, the difference in price between having your own van on site or using theirs is roughtly 20 Euros a night.like i said you can save that amount by not towing, and indeed Having a longer holiday because you dont take anywhere as long to get there or back without the van on the back.but then i cannot go away for 3 weeks or so at a time nor do i want to go away out of season either, when your caravan could indeed come into it own

we use our van for shorter gettaways

 

[Gagakev]

Sprokets reply--- Priceless.

Gary, sorry to hear you intend to give up, I actually returned to the vanning world about 3 years ago because of Vals first line about the airport.
Home to airport 15 mins--- Not bad
Arrive 2 hours early----Why?
Flight to Isle of wight---approx 50 mins
Hang on a minute, sorry about the delay------2 hours 15 mins.
And to cap it off the same for the return flight but with a 2 hour 45 min delay
ALL IN ALL 9 HOURS IN AN AIRPORT.
Enjoy whatever you decide to do
Kev

 

[ValA.]

We only use our van for our major holidays - we can do all the weekends away cheaper by Ryanair - sadly. We've had long weekends (4 to 6 days) in Perpignan, Girona, Toulon, Nimes (and Avignon, Ardeche and Camargue) Rodez, and others, for less than the price of 7 nights on a Caravan Club site (only two of us though).

BUT - three weeks away on a selection of fabulous French campsites - fees £227.00, ferry £58.00 return, fuel (less than in Britain), food (less than in Britain and much better quality). Total cost less than £800 - and bank statements to prove it!
PRICELESS!

 

[Garfield]

Good one Val, but I think you've been watching too much "Benidorm" while the rain keeps you in your caravan. Our allinc' trip to Turkey last year in late August was a little worrying at the airport with the beer swilling union jack shorts crew present but fortunately they got on a different bus at the other end and our hotel complex was inhabited by well behaved, respectful families from various european countries. The buffet style meals were excellent, always something that our kids would eat (though Anna 11, is no problem, she'll eat anything that stands still long enough!) the rooms were air con'd, no drunken yobbishness despite free beer, I could go waterskiing and sailing without needing a wetsuit, not a cloud in the sky all week, no meals to cook or pots to wash, we were packed in hours rather than days, were were the other side of europe in the time it takes us to get to dover, shading, suncream and an existing tan stopped any sunburn, etc etc
The Irony is that, when a family comes along, Caravans provide good value holidays but the extra effort involved means that it's less of a holiday, but I suppose that could be said of any holiday. "Family holiday is a contradiction in terms" whoever coined this phrase was too near the truth!.
As we live on the North Yorkshire coast between Staithes and Runswick bay, the plan is to have a "Staycation" for the summer and take holidays away at easter/ half term.
We could always keep our caravan and rent it out as a static if anyone is interested????.

 

[Garfield]

PS
The food we saw in Brittany was eye wateringly expensive and quality was, at best indifferent, at one restaurant, admittedly on Mont st Michael the main courses were about 24 euros and would have been turned away in a uk transport cafe, we walked out before ordering.

 

[Zafiral]

PS
The food we saw in Brittany was eye wateringly expensive and quality was, at best indifferent, at one restaurant, admittedly on Mont st Michael the main courses were about 24 euros and would have been turned away in a uk transport cafe, we walked out before ordering.

I agree food at a tourist haunt in the middle of nowhere will be indifferent & expensive, but we have found that France in general to have good quality good value (not necessarily cheap) food.

 

[Philspadders]

"towards some all inclusive weeks in the canaries for the wife & kids and a few weeks skiing for me!!!"

Perhaps therein lies the problem. You are not used to spending time with the kids or wife.

 

[DerektheSecond]

PS
The food we saw in Brittany was eye wateringly expensive and quality was, at best indifferent, at one restaurant, admittedly on Mont st Michael the main courses were about 24 euros and would have been turned away in a uk transport cafe, we walked out before ordering.

I agree food at a tourist haunt in the middle of nowhere will be indifferent & expensive, but we have found that France in general to have good quality good value (not necessarily cheap) food.

24 euros that equates to about £20 I stay in a west coast tourist town in Scotland that is on par with our prices in our restaurants

 

[Lord Braykewynde]

ETTO but queuing at airports after a few hours travelling to get there and again travelling from the destination airport to your digs isn't for us. Spain this week has been brought to a halt with no transport and British air carriers cancelling thousands of flights. BA are still threatening more strikes. The French strike at the drop of a hat as I found out at Narbonne. Luckily that was our destination but the poor people alighting from their sleeping compartments onto Narbonne station at 7am weren't too happy especially as they now had to make arrangements for the completion of their journeys to Spain.
Fighting for a square foot of beach space so that I can sit with my knotted hankie on my head whilst haggling with Africans over their cheap tatty wares or as already mentioned, pestered by timeshare hawkers, leaves a lot to be desired.
To be honest if I need to experience a night in the hotspots of Ibiza, Ayia Napa etc. I need travel no further than our town centre on a weekend evening. It's all there, the slappers, vomit, fighting, screaming, offensive language, fish and chip shops, English pubs and clubs, drunks lying in the gutters. The only thing lacking is the warm weather.
I don't even have to travel over a thousand miles adding carbon to the atmostphere or travel hours to the airport, queue, queue at the other end and then travel for hours home

It's nice that some are prepared to suffer it though because it would be awful if everyone took up caravanning. There would be an even madder scramble for pitches.

 

[NickinFrance]

The food we saw in Brittany was eye wateringly expensive and quality was, at best indifferent, at one restaurant, admittedly on Mont st Michael the main courses were about 24 euros and would have been turned away in a uk transport cafe, we walked out before ordering.

Food at any tourist trap is expensive anywhere in the world.
We are just going out for a 5 course lunch with all the wine I can drink for 10.50 € a head, & I can choose from at least 10 places within 10 miles of us in Brittany who do the same sort of lunch for the same sort of price.

 

[Dustydog]

Every cloud has a silver lining. The NEC show starts soon. Go along. SWMBO may like the look of a new caravan and I bet you don't hold yourself back!

 

[Surfer]

Nothing equates to be stuck on a motorway for 5 hours and then arriving on site only to find you have to squeeze in between tents and caravans and every one arousd you seems to like noise. Then to add to your misery you realise you have forked out over £300 a week for this stay never mind the cost and frustration of getting there with a caravan. All told your little one week holiday has probbaly cost you something in the region of £1000!
We prefer CLs but although the cost of the CL may onoy be £20 for the weekend, when you take other costs into consideration like getting there, cost of caravan, awning and associated equipemnt in reality th weekend has probably cost youy close to £100!
Big difference is that you either fly out twice a year or go away every second weekend.

 

[seth1]

Thats a real shame Gary,but as said its your choice.One of our friends done the same thing,sold his van and started having package holidays,he then realised how expensive this was with a family of four after 18months.They,ve now invested in another van.I do sympathise with you,i dont mind the packing or the drive or even the awning,but its the weather that gets me down.When it rains i dont feel im on holiday,stuck in the van,the awnings all muddy.When all said and done,still an expensive hobby/holiday.
Good luck seth

 

[bribes]

Perhaps you should adopt the Arnie Swatsiniger aproach {ILL BE BACK} Airports and children are like putting a awning up in a snow storm ..Good luck to you in whatever you do..sorry to see you go....

 

[Mel]

Well until we have money like Peter Jones and can afford the private jet to the private villa with the private chef, we all have to make compromises on holiday. Different folks prefer different compromises. Half the world is starving, we are very lucky to have holidays at all.
mel

(PS I think PJ has earned every penny of his money and I don't begrudge it him.)

 

[Rioja]

There is an old saying that no matter how hard you try to blow out the oppositions candle, yours will shine no brighter but I'm not surprised that whenever someone defends their enthusiasm for caravanning they do so by knocking the alternatives. Lets set the record straight from the offset... I mean no offence to anyone who defends their hobby !
Package holidays are not necessarily to places with packed pools and drunks, strikes can effect seaports as well as airports. You can que for several hours waiting for your ferry as well as a plane.You can choose to fly on airlines other than budget ones.
We have taken the 'van down to the south of France once but it took us the best part of three days to get there and, had we come directly home , the same on the way back.That's a lot of effort compared to hanging around an airport for a few hours.
We have just returned from a caravanning holiday in this country. I have still to wash the mud of the awning and ground sheet. It took at least an hour to empty the van and put everything away. The last site we visited was Moreton in the Marsh CC site which is immaculately kept but to me it was like Caravan City with wall to wall white to look at whilst leaving me feeling that I had little privacy.
Don't misunderstand me, I love caravanning too but it's not the only way to have a holiday and to be quite honest I'm not sure if I could cope with having a young family sharing very limited space with me either so I understand it's not for everybody.
When it comes to economics, caravanning isn't as inexpensive as we are led to believe. Unless you are in a position to use the van regularly the cost per night is probably no cheaper than staying in an hotel. We have used the van for three trips and a total of 21 nights this year and a quick tally reads something like £350 service and parts and the likes, £150 insurance, £500 depreciation ( and that's not on a new van by any means) so that's £50 per night before adding 30% extra fuel consumption and the extra time in travel, wear and tear on the tow car,time and effort packing and unpacking car and van, bits and bobs like toilet chemicals and gas and of course....site fees which can be pretty expensive too.
I'm not sure at what point the caravan could be considered a low budget holiday. Judging by the outfits I saw last week, our 9 year old car and caravan are down the bottom of the scale nowadays so others are paying out considerably more in depreciation, insurance and, looking at the tow cars around us, fuel economy.In our own case we need to take at least twice as many nights away per year to get anywhere near what I would call a reasonable cost per night figure but as we like to take a lot of time in places with guaranteed winter sunshine, we feel we need to spend more time at home when the weather is half decent here.
I guess the message I'm trying to put across is that there are lots of people who enter this hobby not realising the true cost and maybe for lots of folk it's simpler to rent a holiday cottage a couple of times a year or go on package tours which are not all bound for San Antonio or Aya whatever you call it !

 

[Soozeeg]

That's a very good post Rioja, well said. It perfectly illustrates the fact that we're all different and all like different things. And even having a caravan doesn't mean that you have to stick only to caravanning holidays, although it does make sense to use it as much as possible to get your money's worth, so to speak.