To tow or not
Hi everyone,
Having just bought a newer secondhand caravan for my parents (2010 Coachman Wanderer Lux) I am now pondering the question of whether to tow or not!
At the moment I do not have a car capable of towing the Coachman so it would mean upgrading, another significant expense, but we are lucky enough to have the 'van stored at a site we enjoy using, and they tow it onto pitch so we just have to turn up and plug in.
On the one hand I enjoy the ease of having the caravan stay on one site, but on the other I do wonder if I am missing out by not towing. The actual towing doesn't bother me, I am used to towing a larger trailer with my car and used to regularly drive large tractors and trailers at work.
I guess my question is two fold, how many of you tow and how many of you stick to one site? and if you do tow would you say it adds enough enjoyment to warrant the extra expense of changing cars just to be able to tow?
Obviously it does come down to personal preference but any observations/ personal insights would be gratefully received!
Comments
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I guess the big clue is in the term 'touring caravan' and that’s what the vast majority of club members do - tour.
Over the years we have toured with caravans, and more latterly MHs, literally the length and breadth of the country, including the Northern & Western Isles of Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight. We would have missed so much by sticking to one site but, if that's what we wanted, we would have bought a static caravan rather than a tourer.
Don't forget, too, that Europe can also open up to you with a tourer.
Only you can decide if the attraction of a variety of locations is strong enough to warrant changing your car.
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I agree with Tinwheeler, a caravan is for touring
We had a caravan from 1972 till 1984 and went all over UK and also twice to Scandinavia. We were then without a van till 1998, but since then have toured extensively in UK and also in Europe, from the south of Italy to North Cape in Norway.
Only a few sites have we visited more than once, generally ones we stop at on the way to our holiday area, or ones we use to visit friends and relatives, and the longest we have ever stayed on a site in one go is 8 nights. More often our stay would be a maximum of 5 nights.
Now we are getting older, we have a few times considered a seasonal pitch, but then wonder what we would do there once we had seen the area. For us, the site is not a destination, it is a place to park the van while we explore the area for a few days.
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For me it has been 5 night stays and move on and only one longer stay in any year and the only site that I have regularly returned to for 15 nights from mid to late December.
I did use one site for a couple of years as a seasonal for 7 months of the year when living on my own. The owner was kind enough to let me store free and would site it read and put it back into storage I would visit almost every other weekend leaving work at midday on a Thursday and driving from site on a Monday morning to work. interest in fishing The coast was 30 mins away, the canal about 15, River Wyre ran through the site, also 3 lakes on the site.
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In 11 years of touring caravan ownership there is only one site I've visited more than once.
Touring with a caravan has given me the opportunity to visit so many different locations I would never have been able to go to otherwise.
Your choise obviously but my recommendation would be to at least give it a try.
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We do tend to use one or two sites more than others but this is due to the area they are in and what we like doing there - like the Lakes. We did even have a part seasonal a few times in the past as we would have been staying there each weekend anyway. Longer trips are usually for longer times away.
I've always liked the idea of the flexibility of touring.
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Thanks for all of the replies so far! It certainly seems to be that towing is the way to go.
It's certainly easier now that the government have got rid of, in my opinion, the silly rule of limiting peoples towing capacity according to when they passed their test! I never understood that, someone could have passed their test in 1980 but only ever driven a Fiat 500 but would be allowed to tow almost any caravan with any car, yet because I passed mine in 2001 I would be limited, even though I regularly drove large tractors and trailers for my job, on public roads, having to reverse through gateways etc but there you go!
Back to topic, seems like I may have to start saving up for a different car, my Meriva definitely won't be up to the job of towing our new (to us) caravan!
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It’s quite a large van GG😁 Need something with a bit of oomph to tow it easily.
There’s a halfway house to what you might need. You could simply look around and find a different seasonal Site for each year, so you get a bit of variety, but don’t have to tow each holiday.
However, you can’t beat the variety of different places. This little island of ours has some wonderful places to visit, and then of course there is Europe if you fancy it. Hope things go well for you👍1 -
It's always difficult to put yourself in other peoples shoes and I am sure most replies will reflect how people have used their own vans. Staying put on one site is fine if it meets all of your demands for a change of environment. The vast majority of people on this forum I would guess are tourers and a few who have been but have now decided have a more static holiday as they get older. Touring does open the horizons a massive amount. Whether the actual towing in enjoyable is questionable and many will see it as a necessary evil!!! We changed to a motorhome when we felt that touring with a caravan was becoming a bit much but that is very much a personal thing. I think if you have the ability to tow the van to different locations it would at least give you the option of staying with touring or at a latter stage leaving the van on a site. The truth is you won't get and answer to your question without trying both?
David
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I don’t give advice on this one, but all over Italy I have seen touring caravans firmly in place on sites and never moving.
The owners bring in pallets and lay decking, put out potted plants and then start a little garden, build an awning out of 4”x2” timber and roof it with corrugated Perspex sheeting, plant some clematis, - and move in for the summer with a domestic cooker and fridge from their apartment block.
It’s just a different lifestyle from touring around the UK Club network from one site to another. I’m not critical. They seemed perfectly happy - and when we arrived an Italian lady brought some cakes she had made.
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As David has said, perhaps you need to try both. For us, in our 70’s, we like the freedom, and experiences we can have by going many different places and, at the same time, enjoy our own home comforts. We have been to large parts of the UK and abroad. No hotel restrictions or, in this particular time, Covid worries. We have a large caravan and a large car to pull it so towing doesn’t bother us, even in the gale force gusts near Whitby today!! I even rather enjoy towing - there is so much more to think about than when just driving a car, strangely it makes the journey more interesting. A static ‘van doesn’t appeal to us, but everyone will have a different viewpoint.
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We actually had the best of both Worlds for around seven years. We found ourselves up and down between Cornwall and Yorkshire at least four/five times per year, but didn’t particularly enjoy towing back and forth. So we kept our small little tourer for touring, and bought something a little bit larger and kept it with permission on a lovely little Site near Marazion. I have to add that both outfits were/ are second hand, and we never stressed about leaving the one in Cornwall. It really worked for us. We got to stay in our favourite place every time we fancied, with a quick easy drive down. But still got to tour other places as well. Only ended when I had to care for my parents.
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Perhaps it could be said that if you do not tow then you will miss out!
Think of all those thousands of sites (Club and Cls.) up and down the country that you will never see.
I have just returned home from two sites that coincidentally both had Alpacas. One farmed for their wool the other roaming around the site along with chickens, dog and other animals.
Others provide geese, ducks and fishing if that is what you need.
Tour whilst you can and then do not regret the onset of old age and impaired abilities.
Good luck.
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We tow... and find it great to be able to visit different places. Out of season, we tend to do 3 or 4 nights every so often. During the summer months we tend to go away for around 6 weeks - this year we stayed on 5 different sites in the summer - one site we stayed on for 2 weeks (in Cornwall), with shorter stays on 2 sites on the way down, and 2 sitesxon the way back up... We haven't taken the caravan across to Europe for 5 years now, but hope we will get back there soon...
David
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I wonder what sort of replies you might get posing the same question on the forum of "The Static Caravan Club"?
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