A Tale of 8 Caravans - Part 5 – The Bailey Ranger 380/2
The part-exchange of the old Swift Rapide (see part 4) took place in June 1996, and the new van was a brand new 2 berth Bailey Ranger. It was tiny but, as Baileys new super-entry-level van, seemed to have all mod cons.
Our first holiday started on Saturday July 20th that year. As we were getting ready to go, the post arrived with an Al-ko recall on the van due to a problem with the brake cables. A phone call to Goodalls established that they could do the required work that morning, so I had to set off on the 40 mile round trip before we departed (late) for Broadlands. We had a fabulous week, our first child-free holiday for 19 years! Later that year we went to Low Moor (now North York Moors), to Bowness (no longer a Club site) and to Blackshaw Moor.
At Easter 1997 we set off on what has become a regular family visit to Brighton. We started after work, and went to Lutterworth. On arrival we opened the caravan door and met ... the cat, who had stowed away! We pitched the van and took him home, starting again the next day. I don’t think that was our first visit to Sheepcote Valley (it was probably Easter 1995), but we have been there every year since. 1997 also contained visits to Grassington (twice, during one of which we found that our son and the girl next door, who was also home alone, had organised a party and a guest had overdosed on paracetamol), Malvern, Low Moor and Low Manesty.
Diary information gets a bit thin after that, but Sheepcote at Easter and Manesty at October half terms were fixtures, and our main holiday in 1998 was to the New Forest. We took a seasonal pitch at Crag Vale for 1999, and it was while we were there that we began to realise the 380 was a bit small, so began looking for something slightly bigger ... see Part 6.