Fifty years with the same caravan! (a love story? Well ... plenty of TLC!)

I have been caravanning since I was, well, very young (with the parents then), and although I had several years off while young (abroad for 6 years), then as a student and during my early working life, I came back into the caravanning fold during the early 1980's with a couple of hirings.

Then it happened. When contemplating a further caravan holiday (hiring once again) my father mentioned the old caravan that I had fond memories of as a child, and was now slowly rotting away in the corner of their back garden, and would I like to take it away and see what I could do with it? Well, to cut a long story very short, we took it to the in-laws (who had a farm and thus a large barn) where it got stripped down to the chassis and rebuilt between Easter weekend and August Bank holiday weekend of 1986, when we used it for a long weekend at a festival during hurricane Charlie!!

Since then it has been added to, awning track and a modern awning added, and with this configuration has seen our 3 children grow up and enjoy many holidays with it. It even had to have a new set of running gear when a wheel came off on the M5 (wheel studs sheared! - too old I guess - for the technically minded it has leaf springs, not torsion bar suspension).

I had to completely replace the kitchen and cooker arrangement and fit a fridge for family use, but I have tried where possible to be sympathetic to the interior 'look and feel' to keep some of the ambience of the 'old', while maintaining its use for our more modern needs these days! (such as TV and internet in a field etc etc!!!!!)

I am lucky that I have access to store it in a barn over winter thus keeping the frosts off it. However, I have still removed and resealed the roof panels 3 times since its rebuild, and once I get it onto our drive in the spring I usually find some tinkering jobs to do before we go away in it!

We are usually away in it at least 5 or 6 times each summer, and can be more if we attend more folk festivals!

So I like to think I am keeping a good old van going, and showing how, with a little 'tender loving care', how I can keep the old girl going (I am talking about the caravan here!) and keep it up to date for current requirements, while maintaining at least some of the older 'look and feel' from an earlier era.

So if you spot us anywhere please do come over to have a chat, and a look around, if you are interested!

(For info the photo was taken last June at Old Hartley site near Whitley Bay)