Not so new to caravaning, but new to social media
I have been a Caravan Club member for 42 years, i have to admit that for some that time i had not be an active caravaner. I brought my first van in 1976 the year of the heatwave, it was a pre owned Ace Rallyman, no fridge, no electric and a foot pump for water. It was great to be out there in your own van, Had got the bug from an early age when we used to holiday in hired static caravans. The Ace was followed by a new Ace Globetrotter, then an Abbey GT214, then came time to buy the first house and the caravan had to go sadly. I kept my membership in place and had my monthly fix of caravans in En Route, and the green eyed monster would appear every time is saw a caravan.
in the mid 90's time and funds permitted a return to the hobby, a Castleton, Cotswold Celeste and a Carlight 152, were the next three. In the time between my initial caravans electric had arrived gee what a difference that made. A career move and relocation to Cornwall meant the caravan had to go again. Three years ago brought a second hand motorhome, thought i would go to the other side. I thought i new what to look out for, but at the time of the first service, it was riddled with damp, so it had to go and be replaced by a new Autotrial at the time of semi retirement. But after 8 months it was back to caravanning again.
I think i like the vehicles as much as the caravanning, and will spend hours looking at brochures web sites and magazines - sad or what. I enjoy the caravan as a base for visiting historic places, walking and the occasional glass of wine, always after the sun is over the yard arm
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Hi, Tracker, fellow Cornwall dweller. Welcome to CT.
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Hi thanks for your response, interested to know what make is the caravan in your image, i think the older ones had much more character
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Tracker, it was a 1949 Bluebird Rambler. We owned it in the early 1970s. It was never quite the same after strong winds lifted the roof in Snowdonia one summer.
I see you had a Cotswold Celeste. We had one of its successors - a Shire Royalty 152 of 1992/3 vintage. That was some van.
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Hi Tinwheeler
I remember the Bluebirds, I guess losing the roof would have affected the whole structure of the van. I wonder how some of the modern stuff would have coped.
Yes the Cotswold was sadly one of the ones produced by Swift as they swallowed up the small guys, It was the Cotswold shape with Alde heating, 15/2 version, it was a nice van and towed well. Sold as the floor was going spongy, in the early days of lamited floors, and brought a year old carlight that had been hardly used. It was then one of the few vans with a solid floor. Have only ever seen one Royalty, and that was looking rather sad in a dealers earlier this year. I know talking to other Carlight owners it was considered a competitor to the Carlight
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We sold the Shire in 2003 but we did see it again on a dealer's forecourt in Cornwall a couple of years later. It was a bit sad by then.
I believe the Shires were built by the original Cotswold team after their company folded. Ours had Alde which was very unusual at that time. Those were the days.
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Hi Tracker.
Welcome to Club Together. Great to hear from you. By the way, it is really easy at the moment to duplicate posts by clicking on 'Reply' too quickly - we're waiting for a fix for this. I've Deleted User the duplicate posts so as to tidy things up a bit.
Cornwall is still quite a way for us to travel from the Midlands, but we do get down as often as we can as our daughter is at Falmouth Uni. We usually stop at Globe Vale, the Porthtowan side of Redruth - a site we know really well.
Great to hear from you and look forward to reading your posts.
David
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Welcome to Club Together Tracker.
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