Four week tour
Hi all,
We have recently returned from a 4 week holiday using 6 different club sites. The places included Northumberland, Scotland and North Yorkshire.
The reason for this message is just to highlight our costs including site fees, food, drinks and fuel. In total we spent £1800, we thought this was good value, we don't travel abroad but looking online we couldn't find anything for that price. Lucky if you got a week for two.
Yes sites are getting expensive as are all costs, but in the grand scheme of things in our opinion still good value.
This is just our opinion and our choice.
Comments
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Sounds like you had a good time, can’t fault your choice of areas to visit 😁 The main thing is, you enjoyed yourselves and are pleased with how things went, and what you paid. That’s good.
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PJMEG
I think I illustrated in another thread that even at £84 a night (quoted by someone for a family of four at peak time) only equates to about £1200 and I think alternative holidays for two weeks could be a challenge to find? It seems you have enjoyed your holiday and take a sensible view towards the costs. There are always cheaper alternatives for those that want them but I suspect your decisions were based on where you wanted to be and what you wanted to see. We did the same.
David
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Glad it went well - but it’s not for everyone, is it. . My daughter (just50) says that if she could find £20,000 for a caravan and take a straight four weeks off work she might be interested.
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That's £450 per week or just over £62 per day which is very good considering it's everything, food and fuel and similar to what we pay, in fact sometimes the nightly meal out is a easily a night on site.
I've said before that club sites offer good value considering their quality (to us anyway) and something we're prepared to pay for. A premier Inn comes at anywhere from £150-200 per night and that's just accommodation, which cannot be used all day.
(The £84 per night I calculated was for the top of the range Seacroft, so should be much lower on a more traditional club site)
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- When you start also counting in the cost of buying and keeping a caravan……insurance, servicing, repairs…..it does mount up!
- When we took the caravan abroad, a while back now, we used to keep a note of the costs for ferry, insurance, fuel, food and sites, and divide it by the number of nights away, never counted the cost of having the van too. Depending on the destination, it came in at around £50- £60 per night as we did long trips.
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“Yes sites are getting expensive as are all costs, but in the grand scheme of things in our opinion still good value.”
I think it depends. If one takes into account the cost of a caravan (we paid £25,000 for ours 5 years ago), the cost of upkeep (we pay £640pa for storage, £240 pa for servicing plus parts and around £400pa for insurance) then maybe it isn’t as attractive when one adds in the cost of club sites. There are of course a number of factors, not least the way one likes to holiday, but from a purely financial viewpoint, caravanning ain’t cheap anymore.
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And how much would 4 weeks cost in a guest house or hotel? At least £100/night just for the accommodation assuming somewhere half decent. There seems to be a blinkered view from too many caravanners that it is only form of holidaying that has gone up in price. And, the caravan is there as an assett available to use all year round.
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“blinkered view”
I think it’s a blingered view to discount the initial cost of buying and keeping a caravan, and after all, we’re talking about occupying a strip of ground. Not everyone will tour all year round, not everyone will want to. Given the initial outlay and running costs, it’s debatable whether or not it makes financial sense to holiday in this way. £25,000 plus annual running costs (£1300+) buys a lot of ‘regular’ holidays.
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There is so much more to life than simply seeing the sights of this country. We also have a caravan and tour over here (and abroad) but are fortunate enough to be able to visit many other countries by plane. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
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A caravan doesn’t have to be new. £5000 buys a perfectly usable caravan and is still an asset to be sold if and when needed. And no where I have I said caravanning excludes other holidays. No one had yet answered MY point about other holiday type costs. £1300 buys very little holiday save for going to Costa del drunk in Spain. A like for like weeks holiday in Scottish highlands or Cornwall or a decent seaside resort will be more expensive than any caravan site.
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"…from a purely financial viewpoint, caravanning ain’t cheap anymore”
I don’t think it ever was but all things are relative. The costs sound huge now compared to 50 years ago but so do income levels. Younger folk often start with second hand vans and may do their own maintenance so it’s not necessary to spend large amounts of money.
Anyway, isn’t it more about holidaying in a way that we choose rather than looking for cost effectiveness?
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We have a Motorhome, but as we no longer run a large tow vehicle as a second car the outlay / running costs are comparable.
It really depends on how you like to holiday, yes that sort of money will buy a lot of holiday, but we enjoy the Motorhoming lifestyle. I found this information on the web.The Costs of Hiring a Motorhome Expect motorhome hire prices to be between £750 and £1500 for a week’s rental in summer, depending on the model and size of the vehicle. UK campervan rental costs will be towards the lower end of that scale unless you choose a sought-after vintage model.
Even based on the lowest figure, our annual tours would cost around £11,000 in hire fees alone. Therefore for us, as it’s the type of holiday we enjoy, it makes sound financial sense.
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She has only got two weeks off work so has booked a flight to the Algarve from Stansted at £46 return. She sees no future in buying a caravan and hauling it around.
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Great. She’s made the right choice for her.
I have neighbours with an apartment in Tenerife. Now, I’d hate that and would feel very restricted with the thought of going back to the same place year after year. It all goes to show that it’s horses for courses, no right or wrong, and we’re all different. Long may we have the freedom of choice.
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I did say right at the start “it depends “ as there are a number of factors at play. Taking the example given and a subsequent post, 28 nights in a B&B would cost £2,800. 28 nights on a CC site would cost £60 a night less (I think £40 a night is a fair reflection of prices), so overall a saving of £1,680. That barely covers the cost of (my) caravan ownership (running costs). On top of that, there’s the added cost of extra wear and tear on the towing vehicle. A couple of years ago a new clutch cost me £1,400. Of course, these numbers are only a snapshot, much depends on usage, cost of sites and as I said before, how we like to holiday.
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We have a motorhome, and a caravan, and the money to rent a cottage, take a plane, train, even a ruddy rickshaw if we fancied it. But we can’t at the moment.
The price of something is almost irrelevant at times like this for us, so when our time comes back, assuming we are both healthy enough, price of what we value will be a minor thought for us. Go with your heart and your head wherever and however you fancy. Best not to let others pick the bones too clean though………….Having a day out today though. It will feel like a holiday……🥳
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If it’s a liability, why have one? You’re starting to sound as if you regret buying a caravan 🤷🏻♂️
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I regret buying the one I did, yes. I don’t however regret buying into the lifestyle, it’s how I like to holiday and with plenty of time on my hands, I get plenty of use out of it. For me, it makes sense. I don’t think there’s much doubt when it comes to it being a liability, things can and do go wrong, I’ve had (more than) my fair share.
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Hard luck on buying a duff one. It’ll get sorted one way or another.
You do seem to appreciate you have an asset in your caravan in that it allows you to go away as often and for as long as you choose. That's the incomparable lifestyle you’ve chosen which gives you the freedom other holiday choices don’t.
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There you go then. All's good 👍🏻🙂
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Well, not quite. I begrudge having to fork out £2,300 to replace the front cushions/seating. I also begrudge having to fork out £1,000 every 2 years to replace the brakes. None of these things were an issue with my previous van. This just highlights the extra costs that can be involved with ownership.
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Tbh, that’s small compared to a major mechanical repair to a motor vehicle. There are always unexpected costs with buying anything. That’s why we need to double our upkeep budget just in case.
Your van surely has a brake problem. What on earth do they replace that costs £1k? You could move it on.
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When we wanted to go on a special birdwatching and cultural holiday in 1990 to far flung South-East Austria the cost via BA flights, hotel and car hire etc. was about £1,000 more than buying a second hand caravan and driving there through Belgium, Germany and Austria. A few years later we part-exchanged the caravan for a new one and got more for it than we paid.
As far as we are concerned every penny that we have spent over the 34 intervening years caravanning has been worth it. It's given us a great life. We have had our own bed, cooked our own meals, visit places that are not on the usual tourist flying routes, indulge our hobbies, left early if we wanted to or booked longer, stopped at places on a whim and learnt more about the UK and Europe first hand than we thought possible.
In short, would we do it all over again knowing the full costs of it? Too ruddy right we would.
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“Your van surely has a brake problem. What on earth do they replace that costs £1k? You could move it on.”
Drums and shoes. Since this is clearly an Alko problem, I’m not convinced that moving it on will solve the issue. My understanding is that this problem isn’t uncommon, indeed there was a long waiting list to get the parts to have the first replacements fitted. I’ll just live with it.
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Then it becomes an acceptable cost which the manufacturers love.
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