Doing it the old fashioned way
Just had a lovely weekend break at the Wharfedale site. This story starts on the Sunday morning that we are leaving. The sun is shining, birds are singing. The caravan is packed up and the next job is to hitch up for the tow home. I pull out the motor mover remote, power up and.... nothing. No life, the remote turns on, but does not connect. Zip, Ziltch nada. I check everything that I know about, it's powered on - I think (No visible light) the remote is powered up. But it doesn't seem to want to control the caravan. So after 20 mins of messing about, I give up and decide to do it the old fashioned way.
I had a guest with me, who'd never been caravaning before. So I gave her instructions, stand here, watch the towball, and point, left or right for which way I need to move. Use thumb and index finger of other hand to show me the distance. I ask if it's understood, and get into the car. Next thing I know she's waving her hands all over the place. I get out and explain that I can't hear her through the glass, and I can't understand big sweeping arm movements that are outside the rear window of the car. I get her to explain to me what I needed her to do, she did. I got into the car, look back and guess what.
Nothing had sunk in, so I decide to ignore her completely and do it all I pull forward, line up the tow ball with the rear window wiper, and slowly reverse until the parking sensors go crazy. I stop, get out and look, only a few inches out, I pull back and we're able to hitch.
I finishing hooking up the Caravan, we leave the site and drive back to the storage yard. When I get there. Oh boy, this is more of a challange. I double check, nope, still no life in the mover, and I gotta get this caravan away. Reversed up a hill and at a 45 degree angle between two other caravans. There's also another caravan opposite so I can't simply reverse in straight.
This time, I have my friend stand so that she can see the gap between the caravan on the passenger side, I can see the rest so no problem there. I'm really nervous about hitting someone else's caravan, and I don't want to damage (cue lord of the rings) my precious Cristall. I pull forward, so that I come at the gap from the drivers side, I slowly reverse up the hill, then wiggle as I think I'm getting close and start to turn the van in on the parking spot. Keep moving back slowly and my caravan slips around the an imagined bend right into the spot, and the wheels roll over the plastic tyre savers that I pegged out before winter. I pull forward, bringing the wheels onto the tyre savers, and stop with a huge smile.
Lock off the handbrake, unhitch, and lock the caravan up, so that I can take my friend home. Really really chuffed that I was able to not only reverse the van, but squeeze into the space with about 2ft clearance either side, not enough front clearance for a straight run, and uphill too.
Next I put the locks on, locked up the caravan and got into the car. At this point, there was another couple trying to do something similar.
They didn't have a motor mover on their caravan. The spot that they were trying to get into was very very much like the one I'd just filled up. I said to my friend. "This is going to be entertaining". The couple were bickering, they pulled the caravan back and forward about 5 times. After about 10 mins. We started to feel sorry for them, so I offered to give them a hand. We ended up pushing their van up the same hill into it's spot (took three of us to do it, theirs was a 2 berth van). The driver was a HGV driver, he was annoyed that he wasn't able to do it. He was also saying that the caravan was applying the brakes as he reversed. His partner, was complaining that he wasn't listening to her. He was complaining that she wasn't listening to him.
I said my good byes and walked back to my car. As I walked I bit my lip to stop myself from breaking out into laughter. We drove out of the yard (past them now that the way was clear) They were still bickering. And once on the road, I let the laughter out.
My friend asked me why I was laughing at them. So I explained how the caravan breaks worked. That if the brakes were coming on there was no way that we'd have been able to push their van back up on the hill. That it does lock until you push the van back, then the breaks drop out of the way. That's why I finished with a forward movement, to turn the breaks back on.
Once I got home, unpacked and got the bedding in the wash, I went back to the caravan and took a close look at the motor mover. I'm not sure exactly what was wrong, I suspect that I had powered it up in the wrong order, so the remote lost the connection with the caravan. After furtling with the batteries and running through some trouble shooting settings, it's working again, so all is good. Mover is working once more and now, I'm a little wiser too.
I'd also like to say a big thank you to the Gents from the caravan club driving course. It was fantastic to know that I had the driving knowledge to be able to handle the caravan manually, even though I've got the mover. It made the difference to me being confident enough to give it a go, versus possible making a huge expensive mess by panicking.
Wish I had photo's or a YouTube video of this story. Oh well.
