979 miles, 5 campsites, 11 days… In a 60-Year Old Outfit
As people quite enjoyed my last touring blog when we had an epic adventure with our classic Rover P5b and Cheltenham caravan (which can be seen HERE), I thought I’d detail another slightly bonkers trip I embarked on last month.
I found myself with a job in London and a job at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, so decided to tie them together and give my “new” towcar a thorough try out. It’s a 1966 Triumph 2000 Mk1 estate, which I decided to replace my lovely Rover P5b with. The Rover has been brilliant, but for the sort of miles I do, 12-15mpg has been a tough pill to swallow! The fuel bill for our Dutch trip was around £700, which was absolutely ludicrous.
The Triumph 2000/2500/2.5 series was very much a towcar of choice back in the day. Reading various reports in old caravan magazines from the 1960s seemed to suggest that the Triumph was very much the staple of the caravanning scene. In fact, Geoffrey King, the CAMC’s first caravan reviewer, swore by them and labelled his 2000 estate “THE towcar of the 1970s”.
Triumph estates are pretty rare, Mk1 ones even more so. The estate was marketed and sold by Triumph, but the estate conversion was actually carried out by a company called Carbodies in Coventry. So almost-finished saloons would leave the Triumph factory and have the estate bit grafted on. Giovanni Michelotti who designed the Triumph 2000 personally styled the estate too - and what a magnificent looking car it is! Then again, he knew a thing or two about car design, his resume before Triumph included Ferrari, Maserati, Lancia and Alfa Romeo!
The example I bought happened to be packing a bit of heat in the form of a full 2.5Pi system, complete with a manual four-speed gearbox with mechanical overdrive, effectively giving it six gears. The petrol injected Triumph 2.5 was the first production saloon car in the world to get a petrol injection system. They were so quick, that the Police used them - until it became apparent that the system was woefully unreliable! I assumed that the petrol injection quirks had been ironed out over the last half a century, but as I was about to find out, possibly not!
I decided to give the Triumph an easy ride by electing to take my tiny 10ft 1966 Sprite 400. At only 572kgs fully laden, Sprite originally demonstrated the towing characteristics of the 400 with a publicity stunt towing one around Central London with two push bikes.
With the car and caravan loaded up, I made the two-hour drive to Clumber Park. It was very much a baptism of fire, as the rain fell so hard that the A1 was flooding in places. Not the best time to discover that the wiper blades on the Triumph could do with replacing! But on the plus side, I discovered that the heater and the de-mist fan work brilliantly.
I got a very friendly welcome from the site managers at Clumber Park. It’s been a few years since I’ve stayed here, so it was good to see the recent renovations that included re-landscaping, a new play area and new toilet/shower blocks. I have to say, the hard standing pitches on this site are huge! The little Sprite looked a little lost on such a big pitch.
I had an ulterior motive for staying here, as my sister and her partner have just bought their first caravan and they wanted a bit of support for their first trip out. Clumber Park is an easy ride from home, and it was on my route, so it was ideal. With all the wet weather and Saturday afternoon traffic, our plans for dinner soon were quashed when we saw a food truck on site serving up fresh stone baked pizzas. What a godsend these on site food trucks are sometimes!
Thankfully, my sister and her partner enjoyed their first trip away in their caravan. We all got a great night’s sleep, as Clumber Park is very isolated from any road noise or light pollution. In fact, there’s not an ounce of phone signal here at all! We all had to use the CAMC WiFi network to be able to assure our parents that we’d all made it to site in one piece!
I set off on Sunday morning in the direction of Warwick Racecourse CAMC Site. It was almost 100 miles away exactly, and thankfully a much easier drive. But as I approached Warwick, the rain picked up again, and I had to dodge the showers whilst setting up the caravan. Thankfully, being a very basic caravan, it takes about ten minutes from unhitching to having the kettle whistling away.
Here’s where the trip suffered its first derailment: After dropping off the caravan at Warwick Racecourse, I set off in the Triumph to get petrol and straight away it started running on five cylinders. I’d had an issue with one of the injectors the week before, and a lovely guy in the Triumph 2000/2500 Owners Club fixed it for me, though he warned me to replace it as the repair might not last long. It’s now Sunday evening, so there’s little chance of finding somewhere to fix it, but after some tense Googling, it turned out that a Triumph specialist was located just less than 20 miles away and they had new injectors in stock.
On Monday morning, I coaxed the car into life and made the trip to Canley Classics along the back roads, with the car intermittently running on five and six cylinders. Amazingly, one of the guys in the workshop actually recognised the car, as he’d done part of the engine rebuild on it just a couple of years ago. With the new injector fitted, I had a very quick dash across Warwickshire to attempt to get off the site by 12pm!
Regretfully, I never got the chance to check out Warwick with the injector fiasco. It’s a shame, because Warwick Racecourse site is all of 400 yards from the town centre. It’s a perfect site for exploring the area. I’ve already put it on my list of sites to return to!
Just as one problem is solved, another is presented. This has to be one of the windiest days of the year! Studying the forecast, I was setting off at the peak of the bad weather, so I elected to pay a visit to the British Motor Museum at Gaydon to pass a couple of hours whilst the wind died down.
The British Motor Museum is a bit of a Mecca for classic car buffs like myself. It’s home of the British Leyland/Rover/BMC/Triumph/Jaguar/Land Rover archives, and here you’ll see everything from unique prototypes to HM Queen Elizabeth’s personal Rover P5b and even Lady Penelope’s FAB 1 from the live-action remake of Thunderbirds. And it’s not without its caravanning connection too…
It was quite surreal to spend a few hours absorbing all the museum exhibits, to then go out to the car park and get in my own travelling musuem exhibit! Thankfully, the wind had died down and I was able to breeze the trip down to Winchester Morn Hill CAMC site - no pun intended!
Winchester Morn Hill is such a lovely site, massively benefitting from a recent £3million redevelopment that’s seen significant groundworks take place, in addition to new ecologically friendly toilet blocks. I got another lovely warm welcome from the site managers, and it appeared that the sun was finally coming out! Morn Hill is well located for those who are passing to get the ferry, but there’s also a lot to do in the area itself. After a long drive, I was grateful to find Winchester only 2.5 miles away.
The next day, I made it to Beaulieu and it was nice to let the Triumph stretch its legs without the caravan on the back. I always find it a surreal experience driving through the New Forest with its vast wilderness and abundance of wild horses. The Beaulieu Motor Museum I’m pretty sure is the oldest motor museum in the UK, worth a visit not just for the collection of cars, but also to explore the sprawling Beaulieu Estate and ride the famous monorail.
For 2026, they have the new ‘We Had One Of Those’ exhibition, with a selection of popular classic cars that you can actually get inside! It was strange to be in a museum exhibit that actually encouraged you to touch things. But what a fabulous nostalgic thing to see. The other new exhibit is the CAMC’s ‘Pitch Up And Carry On’ gallery, showing how caravanning evolved during WW2.
With my first work commitment completed, I could enjoy a day or so of relaxing and enjoying the area. Although Winchester is a city, it’s actually quite small and you can easily get around it in an hour or so. There’s a good selection of shops, cafes/bars and very interesting architecture. I actually wandered past an artist painting some of the architecture with a huge easel set up in the middle of the high street!
I also thought I should share this amazing outfit that was on site from Switzerland:
Next on the tour was Abbey Wood CAMC site in London. It’s actually an easy run from Winchester to Abbey Wood, though the M25 was as arduous as ever. The Triumph happily blasted along the M3 and flew around the M25. I was beginning to think that it was running in nicely now - oh how wrong I was!
About two miles from Abbey Wood, the fuel pump overheated. A common fault with these cars, that I’d assumed was rectified by now. The solution apparently is to put a bag of frozen peas over the fuel pump! With no frozen peas to work with, I had to improvise…
Thankfully, it did the trick and within about 15 minutes, I was on my way again. Though sadly had no cold tonic for a refreshing gin when I arrived on site - which I sorely needed!
Abbey Wood is a fantastic site for its location. The new Elizabeth Line runs from a station about 5-10 minutes away on foot. As always, the site was full and it was lovely to see a lot of travellers from the continent staying there too. The leafy surroundings and abundance of wildlife is a strange juxtaposition from the gritty London suburb that surrounds the site. You could almost be anywhere!
The next day, the site’s proximity to the Capital was put to the test and I found myself in Central London within half an hour. It really is so easy to explore London from the comfort of your caravan/motorhome, not to mention significantly cheaper than a hotel! Though I did get a few odd looks as I walked through the campsite in my suit…
Following a couple of days in London, it was time for the big hop up North again - nearly 200 miles to cover in one day. Would the Triumph make it? Short answer… no! The fuel pump overheated AGAIN on the A1 and left me stranded until I performed my gin bodge again. With a suitable stop for lunch and letting the fuel pump cool down properly, I eventually made it to Carsington Water CAMC near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
This site is absolutely stunning! This for me is what caravanning is all about - a really natural setting in absolute peace and quiet that feels like a complete escape from the usual hustle and bustle of life. I’ve never stayed here before, and I think it may be one of my new favourite sites. Besides, who doesn’t love a view like this from their pitch:
I got to explore nearby Ashbourne, the picturesque Matlock Bath and Matlock itself. There is SO much to see and do in this area, and it is a fabulous part of the world to take your classic car for a run too. I regret that I didn’t have time to visit Carsington Water itself, but I shall be returning to this site for sure! I also enjoyed the various antique shops and charity shops in Matlock, finding some good gems to stock up the cupboards in my Sprite with.
The trip almost turned very expensive as I spotted a rotting 1973 Lynton Javelin Executive tucked up on a farm in the Derbyshire Dales. This is one of my “bucketlist” caravans, as it was actually designed by the same guy who designed my Sprite 400’s interior. Lyntons were highly innovative and unusual in their day, with features like a full-width skylight above the rear lounge, a purpose-made crockery cabinet above the kitchen sink and a textured plastic waistband to allow owners to easily paint the band to match their towcar. Sadly, they were also known for water ingress, and I think this one would have fallen apart if I attempted to move it. Sadly, I left it as it was, returning to the earth. But if you can’t tell, this is the sort of thing that I struggle to say “no” to and end up saving lots of these old caravans!
With my time in Derbyshire drawing to a close, it was time to make the final drive home to North Yorkshire and put the Sprite 400 to bed for the winter. I’ve since been in touch with the Triumph Owners Club and found a fix for the fuel pump overheating issue (adding a supplementary pump, in case you were wondering) so that will be on my list of jobs to do over winter.
But overall, I don’t think it did badly for an old bus that’s going to turn 60 years old next year. The car and caravan faced driving rain, severe gales, bright sunshine and frosty mornings. The Triumph, apart from a few mishaps, towed perfectly and cruised happily at 55-60mph. It’s so stable, comfortable and the estate space is a real bonus for all the “vintage tat” I invariably end up carrying with me! The Sprite was absolutely perfect, remaining warm, dry and cosy throughout the trip. I couldn’t ask more of it, it really is a super little caravan, still performing exactly as it did some 60 years ago. The outfit turned heads everywhere, with lots of fellow CAMC members coming to reminisce about their earlier touring days. It’s nice to put a smile on people’s faces.
For me, this trip highlighted the benefit of the CAMC: You always know that the sites on the network will be clean, tidy, have great facilities and you’re always guaranteed a warm welcome from the site managers. Everywhere I’ve visited in this short space of time has been maintained to the same meticulous standard and the familiar club site format has made checking in and pitching up much easier.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about my crazy road trip!
Comments
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Another great touring report @CameronBurns very interesting. My OH is drooling over your Triumph Estate. We have a Jeep like the one in the photo, great caravan with it.
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