Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i Caravan

As we strode out from Polzeath towards the mouth of the Camel Estuary the sky was jet black, an ominous rain cloud racing in off the Atlantic. By the time we reached this vast tidal inlet’s eastern entrance, Pentire Point on the headland, we were drenched. Wiping our rainsplattered glasses, we scrambled onto the point’s rocky extremity. The panorama was immense. Across the estuary’s broad mouth, a tower perched atop the Stepper Point headland marks the Camel’s western gateway. These two mighty promontories – Pentire and Stepper – shelter what is, actually, a ria (drowned river valley) from the Atlantic’s brutal rages. Upstream, the Camel narrows to the fishing port of Padstow. To our south the Trevose headland, with its lighthouse, was clearly distinguishable. To the north, tracing the manic…

Located on the far-flung northern extremities of East Anglia, the pretty county of Norfolk is famed for its expansive skies that seem to go on forever. In fact, it has Dark Sky Discovery status and is one of the only places in the UK where you can see the northern lights, so it’s perfect for a spot of summer stargazing, either inland among the umpteen sugarbeet fields (popular with metal detectorists, apparently!), or on the lovely coast. Being as flat as a pancake, it’s ideal for walking and cycling, too, and its network of ‘Quiet Lanes’, footpaths and cycle routes makes exploring the countryside easy and fun for all. The Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path is a popular National Trail, as is the North Norfolk Coast Cycleway. Wherever you…

Famous for amazing sunsets, birdwatching and miles of shore to walk along, the waters of Morecambe Bay lap the southern shores of Cumbria and northern Lancashire. This shoreline is also one of only a few places in the world where the tide enters the estuary in the form of a bore. It’s a phenomenon causing the leading edge of the tide to form a wave that varies in height between a few centimetres and a metre. The bore occurs about once a month, when the tide is highest. The best place to watch the bore is Arnside, an ancient village with a small stone pier, a couple of character pubs, cafés and a quaint row of shops. THE BEACHES The shoreline of this region is beautiful, with the backdrop of…

We headed for the Brecon Beacons Caravan and Motorhome Club site in south Wales for the weekend of the Platinum Jubilee – our idea of a celebration involved being away in our caravan. This site is large and easily accessible, literally a few yards off a roundabout and offers a range of pitches, including catering for tents. We had a serviced pitch for three of us and our dog, Jess, and the cost for five nights came to around £220. Our aim for this visit was to do some walking and complete the Four Waterfalls Walk (allow three to four hours), and to climb beautiful Pen y Fan again. The dog walk on the site is a small wooded area with steep paths which makes it interesting, though I’d not…

LAYOUTS FOR COUPLES Twenty years ago, couples bought two-berth caravans. They all largely had the same layouts: two settees that convert into single beds (or a large double), a rear kitchen and a combined toilet/shower compartment in the offside corner. It was a classic small-caravan arrangement that worked and sold well. Then two things changed. The advent of the separate shower saw a drop in the number of combined toilet/shower compartments and, with it, this signalled the end of nylon shower curtains and confined washing spaces. Caravan showering became rather luxurious. The second change was the arrival of the fixed double bed, which then shifted the whole dynamic of caravans for couples. An example of a compact caravan for two is the Compass Casita 454, which has an island bed…

Advances in technology have raised comfort levels inside the caravan, but what about the tech that we increasingly rely on when towing? This month I’ll be looking at sat-navs and dash cams, two products that have changed how we drive. It’s worth noting that I haven’t tested all of the products listed below here, and, without reviewing the units back to back, I can’t produce an exhaustive list covering every function. Instead, I’ve picked out several features for each model. On the plus side, my appalling sense of direction and sizeable annual towing mileage have allowed me to become incredibly familiar with sat-navs and dash cams, keeping me on the straight and narrow through 30+ countries while recording traffic conditions as they unfold in front of me. Here’s what I’ve…

Seaview Holiday Park in Gorran Haven, Cornwall – one of three sites in the family-run South West Holiday Parks group – has been given a Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice award for 2022. The award recognises sites that have received consistently great reviews on the Tripadvisor platform over the last 12 months. Seaview offers seasonal touring pitches, plus holiday lodges for rent and sale. Josh Donald, Managing Director of South West Holiday Parks, says, “We’re delighted with this award, it’s testament to our hard-working team who endeavour to provide a first-class holiday experience to all of our lodge owners and visitors. “We’re fortunate to be positioned in a beautiful location overlooking the stunning coastline of south Cornwall in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it’s an outdoor paradise for walkers and those…

Inspired by my surroundings, I consider bellowing Waltzing Matilda with all my might. Even as I’m thinking it, a trademark stare from my wife, Jane, curtails the freeing of my spirit. We are at Botany Bay, all golden sand and blue sea, with prerequisite sunshine to boot. The classic Antipodean song has been thrumming around my head since leaving Nottingham, but my wife’s intervention reminds me that we are in east Kent, not Australia. Thanks in part to Paul O’Grady’s Great British Escape, we are on the Isle of Thanet – and absolutely loving it. Kent, the Garden of England, is a county that throws up questions. ‘What is the difference between a Kentish Man and a Man of Kent?’, ‘Is the Isle of Thanet an island?’ and, indeed, ‘Which…

As soon as my body makes contact with the water, I'm gone. I can't tell you where but it’s somewhere that quietens my mind and stills my soul. I'm a water sign if that means anything to you. And so when I took my family to Wiltshire, I packed my swimming costume, too. I'm not sure anyone else would. That was certainly the impression I got when a puzzled man and his wolf-like dog found me not quite paddling but not quite swimming in the Avon just outside the village of Netheravon. As he walked over the bridge, his dog poked his nose under the railings as if contemplating a dip. As a county Wiltshire, is often bypassed by those choosing to head to Devon or Cornwall for summer holidays.…

Designed for modern living, the electric E Braai is perfect for packing up for a spontaneous getaway in your caravan. Ideal for campsites with electric hook-up thanks to its lightweight portability, simply plug in and you’ll be ready to grill in less than five minutes. The cooking temperature can be pre-set using an innovative auto-temperature control function and the digital LED accurately displays the cooking temperature via a sensitive probe that sits directly underneath the grill surface. Offering multiple interchangeable cooking surfaces, the unit comes with a 38cm ceramic-coated barbecue grid and a removable pot stand for use with your own kettle and pans. A Pizza Stone Pro 40 is also included, with heat deflector tray, perfect for making home-made pizzas, breads and pastries. This 33cm-diameter stone is perfect for…

Imagine a tourer that has a kitchen stretching 1.68m, a U-shaped lounge that’s 2.7m by 1.4m, a double bed, and gigantic storage capacity that includes a wardrobe, plus a large, full, height, shelved cabinet beside it… An enormous caravan, you might assume. Yet the Knaus Sport 500 UF is only 5.28m in body length. And its weight is a modest 1,500kg MTPLM. On figures and dimensions alone, there is a lot to like about this German-made, single-axle tourer. It was when we came to examine the details, though, that we began to realise that the Knaus Sport 500 UF is incredible value for its price tag. This new model had just arrived at Barnsdale Leisure on the day of our visit. It’s in the showroom, where there is no natural…

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One aspect of my job that I really enjoy is being part of the review team for our Premier Parks – an annual shortlist of 100 top-notch campsites that are selected and reviewed by us. Essentially, it usually involves driving halfway across the country to stay somewhere new and interesting for a weekend, so what’s not to like? A few years ago, my husband, Steve, and I went to Tyddyn Llwyn Caravan Park near Porthmadog in Snowdonia, north Wales. This campsite is in an excellent location because it’s close to hiking routes up Snowdon as well as the stunning Llyn Peninsula, so it offers the best of mountains and sea. We only stayed for a weekend, but we did indeed hike up Snowdon on the Saturday and then go for…

1 HARROGATE CARAVAN PARK Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG2 8NZ T 01423 546145 W harrogatecaravanpark.co.uk OPEN 1 March – 31 October plus weekends in November Located on the south side of Harrogate, just two miles from the town centre and with a bus stop five minutes’ walk away, Harrogate Caravan Park is in an ideal location for exploring the pretty Yorkshire spa town, which has a shopping centre, scenic gardens and a theatre. A trip to Bettys Café Tea Rooms is also a must! For a day in the outdoors, the National Trust’s Brimham Rocks is 14 miles away. Here you’ll find giant rock formations and heather moorlands. Some of the formations can be seen only 10 minutes’ walk from the car park, and for those who wish…

Base yourself at this pretty site just outside Wrexham and you'll be within easy reach of Oswestry, Llangollen, Chirk and Shrewsbury. The site itself offers spotless facilities including a swimming pool, and The Poachers pub which is located just across the road, serving up a great selection of pub dishes. If you prefer to explore on foot, you can leave the car on the pitch and walk directly to the Shropshire Union Canal and Llangollen Canal and head to the Chirk viaduct or catch the bus into Oswestry for a day exploring the delightful shops and eateries of this pretty town. The campsite is relatively new but many visitors have already taken to Tripadvisor to recommend it to others and are already vowing to return. It’s the friendly service that…

What can you buy on the new caravan market for under £18,000? Answer: very little I'm afraid. There‘s a smattering of two-berths, among them the British-made Xplore 422 and the glass-fibre Freedom Sunseeker and Microlite models, made in Poland. Four berths? There’s the Xplore 304 at £16,444 – and that’s all, apart from a handful of models in the Germanmade Weinsberg range. Weinsberg, part of the giant Knaus Tabbert Group, makes the 400 LK in three layout variations, one with a dining area that converts to bunks, a five-berth with triple bunks – and this one, with two bunks. This diminutive caravan has an MTPLM of only 1,200kg. Only the Xplore 304 shares the four-berth, ultra-light spotlight, at 1,043kg. And that one doesn’t have fixed bunks; you create bunks from…

Trevornick Holiday Park, a Premier Parks site in Holywell Bay near Newquay, has unveiled its latest investment – The Splash Zone. Added to the Cornish site’s existing swimming pool complex, the new £180,000 Splash Zone, which was developed in response to customer feedback, contains two tipping buckets, fountains, water jets and a raised trickle stream, designed for toddlers, babies, non-swimmers and those who are unable to access the main pool. It also includes an extended sun terrace and dedicated area for street food vendors, so parents, carers and families can relax and enjoy a bite to eat. General manager, Adrian Tribe, said, “We are so thrilled to have opened The Splash Zone after weeks of hard work by all involved to bring it to completion. We had a good year…

sudoku Grab your pencil and get to work – this month’s sudoku challenge might take you a while! just for fun Find 18 horse and pony-related words crossword ACROSS 1 Be good enough; pass inspection (3,3,7) 8 Go-between; illicit affair (7) 9 Study times; conditions (5) 10 Closure of a series or sequence; the end (5) 11 Italian dessert of pastry tubes filled with a sweet creamy ricotta (7) 12 Aussie slang for food (6) 14 Monstrous; demonic (6) 17 Purge; atone for (7) 19 Personnel; rod (5) 21 Colourless fluid which flows through the veins of classical gods (5) 22 Poetic movement around WWI initiated mainly by Ezra Pound (7) 23 Test (the water); try something new (3,4,4,2) DOWN 1 'The -------------', adventure novel by Jack London (1903) (4,2,3,4)…