Your first caravan/motorhome trip: Lessons learned

The first thing to learn is to remember you're towing something up to 8 metres long, and to forget your normal style of driving.

When we bought our first caravan, I was working in sales and was quite used to nipping in and out of traffic, especially in London.

We collected the caravan, and decided to take a very long route home in order to get used to towing, including going onto the Business Park where my Wife worked to practice reversing (It was a Saturday, and we had permission)

I quickly became confident, which led to being over confident.

As we left, I approached a roundabout, slipped into 'London mode' and went for the gap. The approaching car, who had right of way, slammed the brakes on and took about 2mm off his front tyres in the process, accompanied by a range of mouthed words and hand gestures that can't be repeated here.

Thankfully, he took a different exit and I learned a very important lesson..take your time.

Gosh it's so long since I started towing a caravan 1970 I think!  I only recall one embarrassing incident from those days.  My mind was full of info about reversing and the caravan needing a little more space to go around corners etc; but what I had failed to take in was that the caravan was over 2 mtrs high.  I remember carefully going around a very tight corner in an old village, luckily very slowly, when I heard this scraping noise! Stopped got out to see that the awning rail had rubbed against an overhanging building!!  Luckily no damage to building and I was able to 're open. the awing rail.  Lesson learned.  

My lesson wasn't  really towing which fortunately I found to be adapted to but my real lesson was ensuring the caravan was safe as a towed unit. First long trip away I forgot to disengage the handbrake and my OH alerted me to when she smelt rubber burning after 4 miles or so. Luckily no harm was suffered. Same trip later on the jockey wheel came down after about 100 miles.

So I double check everything now.

Ive had that with the jockey wheel...awful.

One thing that I was never told with the first caravan was that the jockey wheel is in two parts. We arrived on site one time and as I wound it down it came apart and I dropped the caravan on its nose.

I was on site last year, and saw someone do exactly the same thing. He was so embarrassed when I went to help, but I assured him that he wasn't the first!

Maybe 15 years ago, we took the caravan to France. We were first to disembark at Cherbourg so I didn’t want to hang about. When going over the ramp, I heard a loud crack. Once we were able to pull in, I discovered that the jockey wheel was completely wrecked. This caused a few problems, but was able to overcome (mostly) with the help of other friendly campers, by borrowing a jockey wheel. Luckily, the jockey wheel clamp was on the side of the A frame. 

During the journey heading north to a campsite, I was behind a transit type van. At a set of traffic lights, there were no signs to suggest I should turn left or right towards our destination. “Ok, just go straight on” I thought to myself. I followed the van over the junction, whereupon after a few yards, he pulled over to the side. It then became apparent that we had entered a shopping precinct, I could have died. I could see that there was a way through, so decided I didn’t have a lot of choice. You can imagine the ‘looks’ from the locals. We still laugh about it now…

Sorry, I just noticed that the thread was meant exclusively for our “first experience”. Well, it was our first experience of France 🙂Still, feel free to delete my post.

I wouldn't worry about it..most threads head off at a tangent!

It’s "first experiences" in the plural so I think you’re safe.

I can’t remember our very first trip towing our caravan. Well, it was over 50 years ago! What I do remember from those early days is that towing our tiny but heavy van with a 1950s Ford Zephyr Mkll with a 2.5 litre (I think) but low BHP engine meant replacing its big ends every time we travelled up Haldon Hill past Exeter Racecourse. The solution was to replace the car with a much more modern 1967 Series 2A Land Rover. 

Our first "experience" was leaving the dealership with our newly purchased first caravan and no-one, us or the dealer had noticed the big main roof light was wide open in the vertical position. We joined the M5 and then went into panic mode when we spotted it. Totally new to caravanning we had to manoeuvre off the M5, find a safe spot, sort the van then find our way back onto the motorway, it sounds easy now but we were clueless! The lesson learned was to check everything is battened down before proceeding. 

It was all such an adventure the first few times out with our caravan, a Crown Sceptre, Crown was made by Eldis and it was a very basic caravan by today's standards yet high end by Mrs C's earlier caravan days as a child. It had no blinds just curtains, no blown air heating only a heater in the centre by gas only , and only one electric socket in the kitchen area but everything else was there and we loved it. No mover so it was reverse and then push pulled into place.

We were very careful in the first few years so nothing too untoward happened but as complacency crept in...

Leaving the handbrake on, leaving the mover on, leaving the drain valve open till someone shouted that we had, leaving the handbrake off while we unhitched.

I suppose the worse one was not following the club's instructions for Warwick and used our then brand new satnav then took us into the adjacent Sainbury's car park which wasn't really all that big. Still it gave the shoppers something to look at for half an hour.