Caravan Virgin's First Question

I broke my mug but replaced in a local £ store - breakages for me at least seem generally less than dropping stuff at home on my stone floor! 

Totally agree about tea/coffee tasting better out of ceramic pots. Similarly, got to be glass to drink wine/beer out of. We buy from Ikea where it is ludicrously cheap, keep it all in one of their cardboard boxes and replace if it gets broken which is very rare.

Nothing at all (apologies - except wheel clamp) is stored on our floor area while in transit. All in the cupboards/under seats/lockers etc. All got its place but there again there is only 2 of us in a spacious 4 berth.

All good tips here.  We have been caravanning for many years and our only breakage has been one glass.  You will be tempted to take too much! We do not have  dedicated tumbler storage so we put the mugs in a plastic box and then put the glasses in them wrapped in kitchen paper. The wine and other bottles go in those cardboard wine boxes you can get in supermarkets. Saucepans go in the space under the oven.  Tea, coffee, cereal in a high cupboard.  Food (tins etc) in a low cupboard.  TIP: if you hang clothes in a wardrobe on hangars hang them up with the hangars facing alternate ways, this will stop them falling off.  We also have one 'dirty' and one 'clean' under bed storage.  The 'dirty' one already has the water heater in so tools, spares etc go there and in the other 'clean' one the  bedding, towels etc. Just remember; heavy stuff as low and near the axle as possible, light stuff high and heavy stuff low. We put the awning, Aquaroll and grey waste in the car as these are probably the heaviest or bulkiest things you take  thus saving precious loading capacity in the caravan.   When loaded check the nose weight to get it as near as possible to the max allowed either by the car or hook whichever is the lower (probably 100kgs but check)  I try to get 90kgs+ nose weight.   The CC handbook has good advice on loading and with experience it will become second nature.  All that goes on our floor when travelling are the steps and handles for the steadies and mover.

If putting heavy items like the awning in the car boot do watch that you are not overloading the back axle. It is possibly better to put these between the front and back seats if you can.

Good advice Wildwood, but we are just a couple and in a Tiguan.  A third passenger on the back seat would almost certainly weigh more than an awing which we put as far forward, with the seats down, as possible as I don't want to dirty my rear seats and it will not fit on the floor space, it is a Kampa; a 'conventional' awning would probably fit on the floor.

As a caravan novice myself I would just like to point out that one thing you might want to do is first is to weigh your van, we did and had a shock. With just a “few odds and ends” in the van we were well over weight so we then had to rethink what we could carry in the van. We are now down in Spain and with the load in the van just right towing down here was a pleasure.

Good luck and good towing.