The Joys of Caravanning

I Found this article here and I’ve copied it directly so you can read it in full…

PEOPLE keep saying to me “I never had you down as a caravanner”. By this I take them to mean “since when did you turn into such a boring so-and-so?”?

But personally I think they’re wrong. I see caravanning as living on the edge. Being wafted by HGVs on the motorway. Meeting a tractor on a country lane. Living in a sardine tin for five days with two hyperactive children and a wife who’s just spilt the contents of a chemical toilet down herself – it’s where it’s at. And even better, when did you ever hear of a caravan being grounded by volcanic ash?

This half-term has seen our first serious attempt at a caravan holiday.

We bought a second-hand beast two years ago, in which time we’ve had a single ‘test’ night away in a disused quarry in Ashbourne for a total outlay which would have adequately seen us frolicking on the beaches of Barbados for at least five years.

For the majority of the time, the caravan has been little more than a glorified shed on wheels – a wheelie-shed if you like. It’s used to store stuff intended for the charity shop. If anybody ever broke into it, they would, I’m sure, be disappointed to find several old potties, a hundredweight of teddy bears, and a mildly temperamental Clairol foot spa.

We clean it twice a year when it goes green.

The purchase was made on the back of my own happy memories of caravan holidays as a child. The key words there are ‘as a child’, because the adult caravanning experience is somewhat different. You are, after all, not the one enjoying endless days of unbridled freedom. Instead you’re wondering how you’re going to boil a pan of potatoes on a gas cooker delivering all the heat of a Carmen roller and leading an inquest into why it is we’re all awake at half past four.

In my head, as with many adults, every day was sunny on holidays. The reality, as this Bank Holiday weekend has shown, was probably somewhat different. How inclement days were passed back then I’m unsure but I believe modern children, stripped of 25 kids’ channels and umpteen computer games, are prone to spend them not hunting for bugs and paddling in rivers but arguing incessantly and drawing on the walls.

The Caravan Club is keen not to spread this information, but in wet weather, being in a caravan gives you a hint of what life would be like in a nuclear winter, stuck in a small metal shelter with your loved-ones waiting until it’s OK to go outside again. The nuclear winter, of course, has the benefit of a brief flash of, admittedly intense, heat at the start.

On our night in Ashbourne there was a terrific thunderstorm. The noise of rain on the roof gave an insight into what it was like at the Siege of Mafeking.

It’s at times like that that you do feel vulnerable in a caravan, not having realised that the ‘Frying Tonight’ sign in the campsite chippy was referring to you.

You are also mindful of images of flash floods in which caravans have been swept away, families with noses pressed to the window as they disappear over a cliff in Rhyl.

Certainly there are less perilous ways to spend the family holiday, but on the other hand this is what memories are made of. What would a child rather have? Being carried away in a torrent or a fortnight in a B&B in Mablethorpe?

I think we all know the answer.