UK - CORNWALL

A CHANGE OF PLAN

JULY 2015

I joined my son and his family for a week in July during their 2015 camping holiday at Newquay.

This experience reinforced my view that unloading the car, erecting the tent, taking it down again and packing up was a lot of work for just a few days camp.

Furthermore it rained on several days and there was a small leak in the tent.      Whilst bearable in summer I concluded it would not be much fun to live like this for very long, particularly in the colder months.      

But the earlier expeditions had confirmed my general idea that travelling to new places on land, discovering something about them, and getting some open-air exercise by going on local bike rides was a way of life I would enjoy.

Accordingly, in August, I decided to abandon the tent and replace it with something drier and more comfortable that would still permit a wandering sort of life without having to make too many detailed plans in advance - rather like my many years at sea but on land instead of ocean.

I thought the pros and cons of a motor-home versus a towed van were very finely balanced.     

A motor-home offered greater convenience when arriving at and leaving a camp and would be less cumbersome when travelling from one place to another - and a bike could be easily carried on a support attached to the rear.

But it would cost a great deal more to buy, maintain and store.     It would also have less accommodation and be much less convenient for shopping and visiting attractions when staying for a couple of weeks at a camp site.

In the end I plumped for a 4-berth towed van with a fixed double bed, a reasonably sized living and food preparation area and its own loo and shower cubicle.

I selected a Lunar 544 with these characteristics having the following layout -

At just over 23 feet long this van is less manoeuvrable than some, but is light for its size, has a motor-mover to make slow-manoeuvring a piece of cake instead of a heart-attack inducing struggle (I fitted a 120 Ah Heavy Duty Marine AGM battery), and has more living room than I had on my yacht.

It also has equipment and conveniences to make life easier and more enjoyable - solar-panel, space and water heating, fridge and freezer, full size oven, grill and hob, microwave, terrestrial TV receiver and digital TV set, radio and disc player etc.

Altogether more comfortable and less spartan than a tent!

I have since used the van for several expeditions described later in this blog and initially towed it with my 1994 Mercedes E 280.     

I found the car had ample power but its gearing was not ideal for towing up the long mountain passes in Spain.        Under those conditions I had the choice of letting the engine RPM drop until I felt it was beginning to struggle in top gear, or to change down to third and either keep up a reasonable road speed at high and noisy rpm or reduce road speed to a tediously low level - with high fuel consumption in both cases.

Having reached an age at which I thought I might live long enough to enjoy a new car I bought a replacement for the Mercedes in early 2016.    I chose a smaller engined but higher powered Subaru Forester with all wheel drive, continuously variable transmission and cruise control.     At time of writing (February 2017) that has coped admirably with both towing and fun driving when solo and has done so with better fuel economy than the Mercedes.