When needs must
Just been reading another thread that made reference to wild camping and using lay byes.
It made me think about situations I have been in with the caravan and I thought it might make a for a good fun discussion. I'll start it off.
The first one was when the cars Sat Nav took me down a single track road that was getting narrower and narrower 
this ended up with me having to do a multi point turn with car and caravan making use of the entrance to a field 
The second one recently, after sitting in a stationary traffic jam for a long time on the M25, and being desperate for the loo, I got out the car and used the caravans facilitates 
What stories do you have 
Comments
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We’ve done the latter with the toilet several times and even let others use it on one occasion.
We have got in the van - this was in towing days - had our lunch and brewed tea while in a hold up.
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Not with the van but a camping trailer, many years ago.
In Italy, close to Genoa, following directions for the campsite, we took a wrong turn (although we did not know it) up a narrow increasingly steepening road. Looking ahead I saw the road increase to about 1 in 3 and bend to the right. I took a run at it just as someone came round the bend. We stopped before colliding and the other vehicle managed to get past. However, there was no way we could get going again, nowhere to turn and several vehicles behind.
Some very nice Italians in those cars, helped unhitched it, managing to hold it on the gradient and steer it into someone's driveway, stoping it by using a young tree. They remonstrated with the owner of the property who got most upset, whilst I did a 99 point turn. They then helped hitch it back on again, on the gradient, and one of them turned his car round and escorted us to the camp site.
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Thankfully, not had too many mishaps or unexpected encounters. Our pet hate is traffic hold ups. We were heading back up A30 one Summer after a scorching three weeks in Cornwall, when we hit standing traffic on the big hill where the Newquay road comes in. First opportunity we got, we headed off at first turn off......straight through the China Clay regions above St Austell... tiny roads, very up and down, but we made it across to A38 somewhere, and then meandered homewards into Somerset and Wiltshire. We found a fantastic very basic CL ( a field! With a tap!) but the owners took pity on us and asked if we would like a dip in their (rather fabulous) swimming pool! It was a blisteringly hot day, so hot we actually put the shower spray out of the window, and showered off outside, in our swimming stuff!
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Highgate Hill, if I'm not mistaken. That was a notorious bottle neck prior to the dualling of the A30 across Goss Moor.
Our biggest faux pas was, in our ignorance, towing up Sutton Bank. Caravans weren't banned in those days and we made it without any trouble thanks to the 3500cc tug.
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My most recent one was on the way to Moreton In Marsh with the caravan , near to Burford the Land Rover Sat Nav said to take the 5th exit on the Roundabout. It only had 4 exits so I ended up coming back down the same road. Then was told to take the next Right then first Left. Lucky it was a very big Garden Centre
it took us in to with a small roundabout in the car park.0 -
A couple of years ago when we had our motorhome we were heading over to North Berwick for a long weekend with the van. When we got the the Edinburgh City by pass it was at a standstill and then eventually started moving very slowly so we decided to take the first available exit. We ended up going through Edinburgh city centre in our 26 ft motorhome with tow car on the back and it took ages. When we arrived on site the couple across from us were sitting out in the sun with a cup of tea (awning up too) and asked if we had stopped for tea on the way. It turned out they had been directly behind us on the bypass but had stayed on and got to the site an hour before us. I wasn't best pleased
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Not us but someone else - We were visiting Heddons Mouth, Exmoor. If anyone has ever been there they will know that to get there the route is single track, the sort where grass grows in the middle of the track. It is very narrow, even driving there in my Micra. We were just making for the Hunters inn when a largish caravan appeared from the track, the woman passenger got out of the car and she was shaking. Seems they were trying to find a marque in a field for a wedding and had put the post code in the Sat nav and just followed it! Around here in Devon post codes can cover large areas, they were way off. She wasn't very happy when we explained that the only other road out wasn't much wider and very hilly. I often wonder how they got on. And like Francis we once ended up towing a very large caravan through the centre of Edinburgh!
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That's the one Tinny, duelling of highway all down the A30 has created some wonderful bottlenecks down the years! It was an entertaining ride through the China Clay country, thankfully, like you with an LR vehicle capable of doing it!
Edinburgh.......that's another one I had forgotten about. I less than wisely asked my OH if we could go through city one time heading back South from North of Edinburgh. We were towing of course.......all down Princes Street, at the time it was dug up for trams or some such. To cap it off, tensions outside were running high as an Orange Parade and counter demo were happening around us! There was a large period of silence inside the car, as my OH gritted his teeth.......broken eventually by one of our Airedale puppies in the back gnawing on the Range Rover door handles as a bit of boredom relief.............
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Whilst heading north from the Dordogne region, towing the caravan, we pulled up behind a transit type van stopped at some traffic lights. I’d always found that signposting was pretty good in France, and since we weren’t directed to go left or right, we followed the van straight on through the lights, bearing in mind we couldn’t see what was ahead (width of the van). After a few yards, the van pulled in and I was horrified to discover that we found ourselves proceeding through a shopping precinct. We got some very odd looks from the shoppers, I could have died! Thankfully, it wasn’t a block-end so I was able to escape. Still makes me cringe 😬
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After a very long drive we were approaching the area where our campsite was supposed to be in the South of Spain.Mrs WN directed me through a small village and told me to turn left. It was a one way street, no problems as we were going the right way. Biggest problem was the width of the road diminished the further along we got. The locals had never seen a caravan coming down their little street before as they all came out (or so it seemed) to watch with amusement as I mounted both kerbs with the caravan and with about 1" to spare on either side managed to crawl through he space.
I thanked Mrs WN for making the journey more interesting and she replied she only did it as she thought I was nodding off.
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Our second ever trip with the caravan was to Austria, the other side of Vienna to be precise, near the Hungarian border and preAustria joining the EU so the roads were not the best.
However, we were excited and looking forward to our 2 week holiday (must have been mad) when we missed our turning and ended up going through the centre of Vienna at rush hour. My, how that was fun.
. Made sure we got it right on the return.We have also, due to a diversion, ended up on the Champs D'Elysees, turning around at the Arc de Triomphe. The French drivers obviously all gave way to the mad Englishman with his caravan (like heck they did).
It hasn't put us off though and I'm equally sure it will happen again sometime soon. As long as no-one is injured, no damage suffered and everyone treats the person making the mistake with a bit of sympathy then it's no big deal.
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Many years ago in our caravanning days we were on holiday with our 3 very young children early in May and, because of poor weather, decided to move south from our site in Royan on the west coast. We kept on driving until we saw the sun and reached the Mediterranean late in the day and thankfully pulled into a campsite that my wife had found in one of the books we carried. As we pulled up the car gave up the ghost in clouds of steam from under the bonnet. The campsite owner told us the site wasn't open for the season for another 10 days and they were just doing preparation work. Our car (a Renault) was not for moving so the campsite owner graciously accepted their first guests of the year and moved our van into a prime spot and arranged for the local garage to come out and collect the car for repair. For the next week we had exclusive use of the campsite and it suddenly felt a bit strange to see other customers arriving when the finally opened the site.
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nice one AOK....the French can be mightily accommodating sometimes
we were travelling nr Bordeaux and our trip took us through Libourne..
i didn't take the bypass (mistake....) and found the town attractive until we reached a large sign with much red writing.....
it looked like it was a width limit of 2.1m and we were 2.35 in the Bolero but I couldn't immediately see an easy way to turn off as all the side streets looked a bit narrow, too....
anyway, before we got to the actual obstruction (a narrow railway crossing I think....we never got there....) there was a 'tester' of two converging metal rails in the road....
i said to OH...we won't be going through there, but there were many cars behind us and a busy converging junction which I couldn't take as it was one way.....
so, I stopped.....
i got out of the van with a stream of French drivers now held up, spoke (in my best bumbling Francais) to the driver of the first car, told him I was an English idiot who didn't understand this (blindingly obvious) road sign and could he help....
amazingly, instead of the expected torrent of abuse, he got out of the car, started organising the other drivers, made them reverse to give us more room and guided us through a 5 point turn and pointed us in the correct direction.....
we now have a big ring around Libourne on the map with the word AVOID on it.....however, we did brave it a couple of years ago, ensuring we were away from the hazard and all was fine...
that French guy was great, probably still,laughing with his mates over the dumb MHer who got stuck in the town centre.....
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