20 day first trip in Mini Freestyle 290
Well, we are home after 20 days touring the UK in our Mini Freestyle. We thought people might be interested in how it went since this was our first trip, it is obviously a very small van and we used the shower and toilet exclusively for the whole time while also doing our own cooking.
We went to Norfolk, The Peak District, The Lake District, Yorkshire and Sherwood Forest. We stayed on a mixture of Certified Locations, Caravan Club sites and Caravan and Camping Club sites.
We brought food with us, including vegetables from our garden, which lasted the whole trip and we ate really well, only once buying an ice cream on a hot day. We made a packed lunch every day which we brought out with us on our daily walks in nature, which was our main holiday activity and what we have always liked doing when we travel. We did a bit of hand washing of clothes and towels which we dried outside.
It was great to spend that long away with only the need for water, drainage and electricity and no other services or facilities.
Although we had planned well, there were things we forgot and other thing we brought that we didn't need. So we are now refining our packing list!
Sleeping:
The bed was really comfy and the regular sized double was fine for us, even though we have to sleep across the van. But we are only 5'3 and 5'6. Anyone much taller might struggle. We had both a Putnam's memory foam 2.5cm mattress topper and a Devon Duvets wool mattress topper over that, which was covered in an IKEA single duvet cover that formed our bottom sheet. We got a silk summer duvet from Soak and Sleep which was really light and warm and also brought a couple of wool blankets which we used on top if it got colder at night. We used a tiny Kampa fan heater sometimes on colder evenings to warm up the van before sleeping but didn't need any heat at night and we didn't use the fitted gas heater at all. The blankets also served to cover the bed in the daytime for sitting on, since we pretty much abandoned the idea of changing the bed to table and back again. We brought a spare set of bedding with us to change midway through the trip. We found we had a 'daytime' side to sit with cushions from which we could see the little TV in the evening and then we turned around to the 'nighttime side' with our pillows for sleeping.
Eating:
The 85l fridge was fantastic and we were able to fit loads in. We were really pleased to find Cravendale 1l bottles of milk which have a 3 to 4 week shelf life and last a week after opening. We brought 4 with us which fitted into the fridge door and actually only used 3 for our morning fresh coffee we made with our Electric Moka pot. We also loved our Gouda slices, and Baker Street sourdough rye bread which has a long shelf life, for making a quick packed lunch. We had various little cereal/nut bars and oat cakes and bags of almonds to add to our packed lunch. We made flasks of coffee and filled our water bottles before we left. We brought 250ml cans of red wine with us and shared one each night along with cake or biscuits we had brought with us. Our little Kampa Griddle was amazing for making all sorts outside, including mini pizzas with flatbreads, passata, chorizo and grated cheese, homemade veggie burgers with mashed canned beans, breadcrumbs and spices, cooking sausages and griddling all sorts of vegetables. When it wasn't warm enough in the evening we made all kinds of meals on either our 2 ring fitted gas hob or our portable induction hob. We ate things like pasta with tomato sauce with veggies, adding lentils, ham or smoked salmon for variety and grated parmesan for flavour. We found apples and oranges lasted the whole trip in a cold bag which we opened at night when it was cool and closed again the daytime.
Washroom:
We used our Thetford toilet all the time and were really impressed. OK, the daily emptying wasn't that fun, but we made it a joint effort and got used to it. The Elsan organic toilet fluid seemed to work well enough for the job. I also found I could use the shower head in the toilet as a bidet! We had a 'tube with velcro' shower curtain we had made to my design by a company called 'Byretech' which worked brilliantly and contained all the water when showering. With only a 5l hot water tank we had to warm the water between showers, but it was enough to wash hair and suncream off and have a reasonable hot shower. The little sink worked well for toothbrushing and a morning wash and even the occasional shave with a portable mirror.
Outside space:
We were glad we didn't have a full awning. We really liked our Cinch Hub, which was quick to put up and take down, often only needing 4 pegs in the corners if it wasn't windy. It was useful for keeping the table and chairs in after we had assembled them and could be used ad a sun canopy too. We also used it for drying towels, washing and the shower curtain, all of which could be hung up from a little travel washing line we hung up from the hooks in the top. We only put it up for stays of 3 nights or more and found we could put the shower curtain out of a window for drying for shorter stays. We also used the travel washing line hung inside between the 2 pop top handles for drying towels. We had also brought an Isabella Shadow but didn't really feel it was that useful and could find some shade one one side of the can to sit outside if we didn't have the tent up. As we tended to go out walking in the day and sit out later, we weren't that bothered about having a sun shade most of the time and if it was raining we could sit inside on the bed.
We did find that for us, using all of our own facilities with a 45l fixed water tank that is easiest to fill directly with a hose, it was really worth paying the extra £5 for a Serviced Pitch as it made the whole experience much easier and we really liked having our own water tap and drainage for other things too. For a 1 night stay, we were able to fill that at the Motorhome service point, but for longer we will seek out locations with Serviced Pitches. Towing was fine, it all felt really stable and we can't wait for our next outing in it.
We found people very friendly and helpful at all of the sites. We only saw one other Trigano on our whole trip, an older solid pop top model owned by a Swiss couple who had been touring around the UK for a month, have been very happy with their little caravan and were excited to meet some other Trigano owners for the first time on their trip.
All in all, it was a really successful first trip and we love the simplicity and compactness of our micro pop top caravan, which seems to provide all we need in a tiny package.
Comments
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Congrats to you both. Nothing better than realising that you haven't made a huge mistake in buying the outfit.
Just a couple of points - Did you really need to take so much of your food with you? I do understand the need for certain essentials ( I have allergic reactions nowadays to certain flour types) but have found that UK supermarkets tend to stock everything I want and am never far away from one. Bit different abroad as many "Over there" travellers will confirm. We stock up with indespensibles like Tea.
The Cinch Hub is a good idea. Also good for anyone with a PVC.
As you enjoyed service pitches I would suggest you check out the thread in CL section. There is an up to date list compiled by a very dedicated member, DJBut, giving details of CLs which have "Enhanced" pitches, this usually means dedicated water and EHU points and maybe direct drainage as well. It will open up even more possible places to stay for you.
Thanks for coming back and reporting. Someone might suggest copy and pasting your post and posting it in "Stories". Up to you.
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Thanks for your reply and particularly the information about the CLs with Serviced Pitches. We realised we didn't need to take all of our food with us, it was more of a choice we made. We were pleased to know that we could bring what we needed, it meant we didn't have to go shopping at all while we were away and had more time for other things. We never go food shopping anyway, I have had Ocado and Riverford deliveries for about 20 years and prefer to shop that way, I have always felt going food shopping to be a chore rather than a pleasure. We appreciate that for a much longer trip and we would have had to get some fresh fruit and veg, but other than that we were quite happy using what we brought with us.
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Fair enough!
Can't say I enjoy food shopping either, particularly in the last 2 years or so. We did resort to Deliveries but still like to choose our own fresh food. I think you can organise supermarket deliveries to some sites and even CLs with owners permission of course. Maybe consider it for longer trips.
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netcam
Thanks for sharing. I would normally suggest this might have been good to put in the Story Section?
I agree with you about filtered milk with its longer use by dates, we use it almost exclusively now at home and away. We are not really keen on UHT milk but do keep a pack just in case. You did well if you managed to last 20 days without major shopping. With our motorhome we tend to shop en route between sites.
Glad you enjoyed your trip.
David
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Thanks, will remember next time I have a story to tell. Agree, UHT milk is not nice, we brought the one home we'd got just in case, the filtered milk was a great find. We were surprised we didn't need to buy anything, we thought we might end up going to some farm shops for fruit and veg but didn't need to as we had enough. I've now made an Ocado shopping list of what we want for our next long trip based on what we used and I should be able to adjust it for a shorter trip. In fact we brought too much food and came home with some, but it should be easier to plan better next time with experience.
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Sounds like you organised yourselves really well. We're all different in the way we do things. It's useful to have the tent storage, is there room to sit in there as an extra outdoor room?
Anyway well done, you did a lot of travelling, hope you saw some interesting places.
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Yes, we could sit in the tent alongside the stuff if we didn't empty everything from the the car into it, which we did at the first site. We found a compromise was better, emptying some of the heavy items from the car but leaving some things in there for ease of packing up and moving on. The tent also opens up and has flyscreens on all 4 sides so we could choose which to open depending on the weather and where the sun was. When it was really hot we opened them all and it worked as a sun canopy.
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Nice review of how you managed your first trip, it’s good to hear from someone who uses a smaller outfit👍
Like others, we wouldn't carry as much food, mainly because we like to a) buy local, and support good local food shops, farm shops, roadside fresh produce sellers, and b) while we do some meal planning, we like a bit of spontaneity as well.
We see a few set ups like yours on the CL network, and indeed it’s not that far removed from how we tour. Experience has taught us to carry only the bare essentials for comfort, warmth and entertainment, and we do like the easy set up, easy departure this gives us.
A lovely set up though, and that’s a great first tour. Pleased you are enjoying yourselves😁👍
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We're like you TDA we have a minimal load and food to get us through the first few days. We used to travel with things we didn't really need and it's taken many years to ditch things! Our van has a very good payload but we didn't need to test it to the limits.
I think the tent is great Netcam, more people are using them, nice to have extra space.
It's good to see how others travel.
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Only time we take all our food away, it might be for a shortish trip in a remote (ish) area. Our fridge is only small, with a simple ice box, but we manage fine, and if we go without a hook up, that little fridge doesn’t eat gas thankfully. The danger point is when we spot something delicious while out and about, and the carefully planned menu goes out the window🤣 We like to buy from roadside, especially fresh veg, jams, honey, sometimes baked goods. We forage as well, blackberries, apples etc…. And then there are the micro breweries, ice cream parlours😋😋
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Impressive. The catering descriptions had me salivating a bit. However, as OH is mildly claustrophobic I'm not sure we'd cope so I'm out.
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We always try and take enough food for 3/5 days depending on where we are. This consists of some fresh/frozen and we have a stash of tins and packets under the bunk which can usually produce a half decent meal with microwave rice. I really miss the large fridge/freezer we had in our previous motorhome, the current one is just an under the counter one about the same size as the one we had in all our caravans. Maybe where I deviate from netcam is the daily ration of 250 ml of wine, mine comes in a box rather than a tin
David
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Thanks for the comments. We would have bought some fresh fruit and veg from roadside suppliers or farm shops but found we didn't need anything. We didn't meal plan, I just got a load of food that looked like it would last a while and made it up as I went along.
Regarding bare essentials, we didn't really bring enough towels. We managed, but only had one light shower towel each that we washed half way through and only 3 tea towels and 3 light hand towels we washed a few times. Really I would have preferred double that and avoided so much washing as we didn't bring many clothes and washed those too. And ideally I'd like to keep them in the van ready. What do people do about towels? And if you are only going away for a few days, would you remove things like extra towels?
We are used to travelling really light. Our summer holidays in the past have been middle aged hotel backpacking 3 week trips around Asia and Europe, usually limiting ourselves to a backpack each with a 5kg limit so we only ever brought hand luggage on internal flights and could walk reasonable distances with our bags, sometimes to remote locations.
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The wine rations were deliberate, for me at least! I thought, if I'm going to drink every day for 20 days, it needs to be minimal, especially if we are doing either long walks or towing every day. Usually we just share a bottle over a couple of days at the weekend and don't drink in the week, or maybe share one of the 250ml cans mid week.
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Thanks, yes. The only money we spent while away was on lots of National Trust Parking, a bottle of Elsan toilet fluid, some Alko stabiliser O rings, brake fluid, emery paper and cloths, 2 Magnum ice creams and of course we paid for the sites and petrol. It also meant we never had to bother about going shopping. Thankfully we found a caravan dealer in Bridlington who had the O rings. We'd had some grinding noises from the hitch and then realised we should clean the towball and friction pads and with brake fluid, which we did. But we removed the friction pads and the O rings fell out and were broken, so we couldn't put them back in. Thanks to Google and some friendly people on the sites we managed. Someone said a grinding noise can happen driving slowly when it's hot. Actually it happened a bit the last couple of days when it was very hot, even with new O rings and cleaning with brake fluid. Any ideas?
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