Road Gradients

You say that you have finally gotten your head around what you can legally tow. Is your MAM for car plus the caravan MPTLM below the Maximum permitted train weight for the car ? I presume so but thought that it might be close?

In case you are coming to North Devon,  Daisy. 

If you look at a good road map Daisy you will see some roads marked with a single arrow. This shows roads up to a gradient of 1 in 7 (14.3%).

Where a road is marked with two arrows this means that the road is steeper than 1:7.A The arrows point downhill.

 Apologies if you knew this already, There are some junctions however where there can be gradients steeper than the general road - not too many though. 

A 10% hill in old money is a 1 in 10 ie it rises 1 unit for every 10 units along. Far easier to visualise 1 in 10 than 10% ..... IMHO

I see your 1 in 4 & raise you 1 in 3.5 😉

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnats_Pass

I didn't read the destruction book for Castleton  CC site before I towed down it 🤔

Indeed, for me too (even as a retired highway design engineer). When I see a gradient signed on a road - such as 14% - I always divide the number into 100 automatically in my head. 14% is about 1 in 7. 

The MTPLM for the Caravan is 1030kg, with an unladen weight of 900kg.  We will probably end up travelling at around 1015 - 1020 kg (still fine tuning the loading).  Clearly a small payload and the gas/battery/motormover take up most of that.  The car has a max permitted braked towing weight of 1050kg.  According to the V5 document the car's "Mass in service" is 1471kg and the "Max permissible mass (exc. m/c)" is 1930kg.  Max gross train weight is 3055kg. 

So I think that means even if we travel with car fully loaded and caravan fully loaded we'd be under the gross train weight by 95kg?  We are well within the 85% kerbweight guidelines too.  I very much doubt the car is fully loaded as its just 1 adult, 1 child and a cat in a crate.  All our 'luggage', food bits, awning accessories, toys, wheel clamp/hitchlock, mallet and pegs travel in the car too but I doubt that takes us to fully loaded.  However now we've done a trip I need to tweak the caravan loading but I will try packing everything (as much as possible) as if going away and take it to the weighbridge to be sure.

Thanks also EasyT for the Map tips.  As I said my map reading skills are zero so all tips gratefully received!  Looks like maybe we will be ok as long as I check the satnav's preferred route against a map beforehand (and pay for the map update on the satnav).  Car certainly didn't feel like it was struggling at any point on our last journey. 

Gratefully, Daisy

Thanks also EasyT for the Map tips.  As I said my map reading skills are zero so all tips gratefully received!  Looks like maybe we will be ok as long as I check the satnav's preferred route against a map beforehand (and pay for the map update on the satnav).  Car certainly didn't feel like it was struggling at any point on our last journey. 

Well worth checking those arrows Daisy. Years gone by I had less power to weight ratio available and can remember looking at a map and seeing that I had two options (both trunk roads). Did I want to avoid steeper than 1 in 7 and do an extra 30 miles or choose a less steep road? I chose the steep route 

Going up the steep climb on a long straight I could see that there were traffic control lights at the top of the climb that had just turned red - whoops. Down through the gearbox and flashing headlights to attract the chap controlling the lights who changed the lights to give me green as I approached in first gear. He gave me a big grin and a thumbs up. Would I make the same choice again? Probably not!

I know that I can pull away on a 1:5 in present outfit but still there is an odd junction that I do not like. 

It's not so much the incline at Porlock as the tight hairpins that pose the challenge.

Yes, that's definitely one to avoid.  We were out and about one day, having pitched our caravan at the site in Dulverton.  We used the Porlock Hill road and, even in our solo Ford Kuga, had a problem when the car in front suddenly ground to a halt going up the hill.  No idea why he (or she) did that, unless they were concentrating so hard on going up hill that they forgot they had to steer around the sharp left bend as well.