First time out in a new Bessacarr E480

We are brand new to the idea of touring in any form but recently plunged in at the deep end and bought a new motorhome with the intention of doing lots of travelling. Our first time out was to a small private site in East Yorkshire, near York, accompanied by our friends in their caravan so they could show us the ropes, so to speak. The journey there was fine and we arrived on site and drove straight onto our hard standing pitch (surrounded by very wet grass) and with help managed to climb onto the levelling blocks quite easily. Then I remembered I should have got water first so had to do it all again. Unfortunately the site was not 100% motorhome friendly and we had to straddle the barrier to get fresh water as my 5m hose would not reach from any other place.

We set up quite well I thought and was snug having had the gas heating on to travel from home, mainly for the benefit of our short haired indoors only cat. The weekend was so we could test all the equipment out so we did not skimp on using anything. I had only taken one botte of gas as everyone had told me 'You don't use much gas' The weekend saw us get hailstone, snow, cold strong winds and lots of rain. We kept the gas heating on throughout and at 0500 on the Sunday I was woken by the ignition ticking away trying to light the non-existent gas! A quick dash to the electric meter to check we had enough credit allowed us to put the electric heating on.

Our first meal on the Friday night went very well except for letting the microwave overheat and switch off just before our new potatoes in butter were really ready. The malfunction was baffling and we thought it was broken but after cooling down it was okay again. We had bought a plate cover that was too large and it had caused it to overheat.

We managed to get everything else working okay and even set up the TV first time. The downside to this site was getting rid of our grey water which was a bit difficult and I had to bucket it away but because of the levelling ramps being ate the front it left me with little room to get under our already very low tap. When I packed away to leave I found that the new levelling ramps had broken slightly, I guess due to the large stones used as the hard standing rather than smaller ones to spread the load.

A stop on our way home at a supplier resulted in buying all the bits we needed for the next time to make life easier for us and hopefully we will rectify our mistakes (this time).

All in all a very good trip and of great benefit for our knowledge, thanks in part to our friends being there to help and advise. Now we are looking forward to going away for 3 nights next week on our own to a different site to discover more. We loved it and even the cat was okay. The best bit was discovering we had a really comfortable bed and no crossed words so life was great!