Mega Savings
Don’t know if we are the only ones who do this, but we keep a caravan diary of all the sites we have visited. We jot down a short review and give the site an out of 5 rating. It’s nice to look back at all the places we have visited. Pre-touring, our weekends away and holidays were spent in hotels and there were some dodgy ones charging nearly a £100 a night. There would have been no chance we could have gone away as much in the last nine months if we had spent the equivalent times away in hotels it would have cost us well over four thousand pounds with less of an adventure.
Comments
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We bought a caravan in 1991 because we wanted to travel to the east of Austria for a 3 week holiday and the cost of arranging it (pre budget airlines etc) was the equivalent of buying a second hand caravan. We already had a car that could tow but just needed a towbar. We had a wonderful 3 years with that van and when we p/x it for a new one we got more for it than we paid.
Nothing much has changed in the intervening years regarding value, except we no longer get more for our trade-ins but still a very reasonable price.
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I don't go as far as rating or assessing the sites but I do keep the Site Guides & file them neatly ( for me ) in Regional Order so I can always check on changes to them & the facilities they offer. Probably need a new A4 file this year
, just to keep up to date. The only ones with any cash info are the ones when Club sites took deposits, needed to know who had the paper work .0 -
No, We're totally disorganised. We don't keep record of where or when we've been, what it cost or what the weather was like. We spend early / late holidays in hotels - generally as city breaks. Both in the camper and using hotels we try to visit somewhere new every year and re-visit places we've enjoyed every few years. We go with a good idea of prices, but things cost what they cost.
We don't do too much advance planning and we don't look back over what we've done. It suits us fine.
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I'm really sad - complete an A4 Word document for each camp site visited. It is interesting to look back over the years, which date back to 1980's.
Site No....Address.....Dates......Description of Site and cost......Any visits made in the area....General remarks.... and a photo.
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I used to buy a Boots Scribbling Diary every year and make a note of where we had been and how many miles. But since the easy availability of computers I switched to an Excel Database and around 2002 started my own website where I record details by writing blogs and adding photographs. I also write site reviews which I share with other online review sites.
David
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We are very similar in that our mantra is new countries/ new places/ new sites. We only visit areas we have been to before after a good number of years.
However we do keep a record of nights away in the van,
We are pondering whether we should go to Cuba for our next Caribbean adventure - I wonder who could give us a few tips?
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Our mega savings were made years ago when we did family house exchanges for our main holidays in the UK and France. Since then our holidays have got a lot more expensive, whichever way we have done it. The breaks I enjoyed most were very short breaks at lovely hotels when we were working. Nowadays I keep a little notebook about the sites and dates we've visited with our van, purely as a reminder. All being well we'll do some different travelling with or without the van in the future.
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Support your notes etc with photographs. They are a great help when conversing with people who have dementia.
Our annual motorhome costs, including depreciation, are the equivalent to staying in a four star hotel for the same length of time. If we used the van more frequently, or as the depreciation curve flattens, the motorhome becomes more of a bargain but perhaps becomes more like a three star hotel.
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