Our First Caravan

Back in the early ‘eighties’, Chas was posted to RAF Brüggen in West Germany as S Eng O, 31 Squadron. So off we went, the whole family (Chas, Cath, Fiona (8) and Fraser (5)) to live in married quarters on the base.

It was a fun time for the family, but at the height of ‘The Cold War’ Chas’s job was pretty demanding. Like other families, we liked to get off-base and away from the barbed wire environment of an airbase preparing for war. And so it came to pass that Chas arrived home one day to find that Cath had not only had a towbar fitted to our brand new, tax-free Audi 80 GLS ( 6,000 DM @ 4DM=£1), she had bought a caravan!

Our Sprite 400 was a bit elderly but the previous owner, a Royal Signals Staff-Sergeant, had added electric light and sockets with full RCD protection. The main lighting was, of course, by gas mantle! Still, we managed to sleep, cook and eat in a very small space augmented by a faded but functional awning.

We had a lot of fun with ‘Annabelle’, for that was her name, and we got out and about quite a bit during our ‘Tour’. Our car was fully insured for European travel and breakdown (with ADAC), so we only had to decide at the camp gates whether to turn left for Holland, Belgium and France, or turn right for Germany (BRD only) , Austria and Switzerland.

On one of our ‘holidays’ we set off with no particular destination in mind. First night stop was Limburg.

Another stop was the village of Münster (not the big city)

Where we joined  in with the local festivities.

We also stopped at Rothenburg ober Taube.

Before, somehow, we arrived  at Lindau on the Bodensee.

The campsite.

Lindau prove to be a bit rainy.

So we set off around the corner to St Gallen in Switzerland where we had our very-first-ever ‘Burger King’!

We ended up at Konstanz where we caught the ferry back across the ‘See’.

Back to our little home-on-wheels...