Club Together helped me buy my 1st Caravan!
After 8 happy years of motor-homing we knew it was time to sell and move onto our first caravan, but what we found hard was making the right caravan purchase, as we had so little knowledge.
So I joined Club Together and started asking questions. Joining Club Together and asking these questions proved to be the absolutely best thing I could have done. Members were generous with their time and their answers, giving me the benefit of their years of experience. Too many people to name individually, but if you look through my previous posts, asking about Classified, asking about how to make sure I didn't buy damp and asking about if there were any good dealers out there - you'll find yourself if you were one of the people who helped me on my journey.
So this is our story and what we learned along the way.........maybe it will now help you!
We loved our old motorhome but after 8 years with us it was 18 years old and had started to become a never ending money-pit. We had a straight choice, spend thousands getting the problems sorted or sell up and move on. We knew we wouldn't get enough from a sale to buy another motorhome, so decided to bite the bullet and move to the dark side (no offence to caravans, especially as we're now well and truly one of you)! Selling the motorhome gave us a budget of £13,000 to spend on a caravan. Not a fortune and we needed to get this first purchase right. Cue stress and anxiety!
I've always believed that knowledge helps you make better decisions, so I started reading (Practical Caravanning Magazine and their website with it's own forum were very useful) and asking my questions on Club Together. We knew we could only afford a "new to us" caravan, so lack of damp ingress and build quality was everything. We set our heart on a German made caravan, but couldn't afford what we wanted. We were worried about buying private (worried about being scammed) but also worried about buying from a dealer in case we paid over the odds for something that wasn't worth it.
After a couple of months we hired a caravan from a local company for a week. This was a great idea and from this week we came away knowing what we needed/what we didn't, what mattered to us most/what didn't. We hired a 4 berth Elddis as that was all they had. At the end of the week we knew we wanted an Elddis if possible, but not a double bed (too much clambering over each other in the night), we wanted twin beds. We also changed our mind about getting a 2 berth and decided we could manage to tow a 4 berth.
We started looking.......and looking, and looking. For months. Then one of the Club Together moderators, David Klyne asked if we'd joined any of the caravan Facebook groups - I didn't even know these existed! So I joined several and within 3 weeks the holy grail of pre-used caravans came up. Owned from new by a really lovely older couple who were regretfully having to sell due to ill health. We were the first to message them, the first to go and see it (armed with our trusty damp meter - thank you Club Together) and we offered the full asking price on the spot! They had taken such good care of it I can hardly put it into words, it was truly immaculate and dry as a bone. It was a twin bed, Elddis 2014 and exactly on budget.
We have now had two trips away in it and absolutely love it. We are looking forward to making many more trips away this year and for years to come.
And all of this has been made possible because of the lovely folk here on Club Together. Thank you all SO MUCH.
If anyone else is thinking of buying a caravan, or buying a motorhome, and feels they would benefit from advice I would definitely recommend joining this forum and asking all and any questions you have. Maybe this time around it will be ME giving you the answer!
Comments
-
Thanks for updating us, Reedit. It's good to get feedback and to know that we helped.
I hope your caravan gives you many years of happy trips.
2 -
Hi there @tinwheeler - yes, you are definitely one of the people who helped us on our journey and I thank you very much for all the good, sage advice you gave me.
2 -
Wow, thankyou for that 😊
1 -
Reedit
Glad you found the Facebook Groups handy. Most Social Media seems to get a bad press these days but I have learnt a lot from the various groups I belong to. Lets just hope that 2022 will return to some sort of normality and we can enjoy our hobby unhindered by lock downs and the like. Enjoy.
David
1 -
Hi David - hope you didn't mind me mentioning you by name in my piece, but your advice turned out to be how we found our dream caravan, so definitely worth a mention. I've found some weirdness on some of the Facebook pages (just the normal amount you'd expect really) but also lots of great people, great advice etc. I've also been bigging up the Caravan and Motorhome Club and many of the CLs we've stayed at.
0 -
Thanks David - yes I will. So far we've just had two little getaways and both to full club sites which aren't very far from where we live. This meant we didn't have far to tow and we had everything we needed when we got there, including advice from the staff.
Looking forward to lots and lots of getaways in 2022 and I'll be writing about them too!
0 -
Just one small point. You are moving 'from' the dark side, not "to" it.
0 -
Glad you've managed to get out and about. Not a bad idea to keep the first few outings close to home - if you forget something at least you can go back for it. Traditionally, we always go away with friends for the MayDay weekend.... but we only go less than 30 minutes away from home.... up to Conkers C&CC site - one of just a handful of larger sites near to home... It's still great to get away....
David
0
