To ask for your caravan holiday experiences

[ToCaravanOrNotToCaravan]

We are thinking of buying a caravan soon so we can go on more family breaks.

I've never been on one before as we have always just gone abroad.

What's your experiences? Would you recommend? Does it work out significantly cheaper than an abroad holiday would you say?

Thank you!

My parents have one (tourer) but they site it in one place with lots of their friends. It becomes a second home. You can make it as expensive or cheap as you like (once all the essentials are bought, and depending where you stay) for example, you will have facilities to cook so you could just take food along with you which you would have bought at home anyway. Or you can eat out more which would add up costs. A lot of my parents friends have small grandchildren and they all love it, always other kids around, they have a collection of toys and outside toys that come out. Definitely cheaper than going abroad in my opinion! And the freedom to do last minute trips.
It also means you can see more of the UK (assuming you are the UK!) And there are seriously some beautiful places and campsites!

We have one.....just me, DH and the dog. A tourer.

Absolutely LOVE it. My nieces and nephews sometimes stay with us as do my parents.
Ours is old so we don't actually go to far, but we live in Yorkshire, so have plenty of scope.

Sites vary in price, depending on location and facilities and if you are a member of the clubs. We are members of both, due to one site we love to visit being a member only place.

We were campers before so used a lot of camping stuff for the van, plates, cutlery, bedding etc.

Some trips we out more than others it all depends on the day and the weather.

Points to consider, does one of you have the correct licence to tow, is your car capable, will you have a secure storage facility to store it?

Static or tourer OP?

Sorry should have specified, it would be a tourer.

We have a tourer and know someone with a static.
Would highly recommend a tourer, we have fantastic holidays with a huge scope of flexibility on where we go. We go all over the UK.

It can be expensive, as expensive as abroad if you calculate all costs from total fuel, food, visiting places, parking, site fees etc.

We bought a cheep and cheerful at first, got used to towing and manoeuvring it then upgraded to a posher one 😁

Static also lovely and in a fantastic spot. We have had some brilliant holidays at Haven sites in statics over the years too.

Recommend both highly.

Thank you! We have taken the plunge and bought a tourer!! We're testing it out this weekend.

I'm actually really looking forward to it!

Jeremy Clarkson has some opinions about caravans.
talk.fantasticmedia.co.uk/editors-picks/top-10-caravan-scenes-top-gear/

Staying in my parents tourer this week. It's a 4-berth. They store it on a site in Devon so we can book to use it too. It's a fab little home from home but I have to say that now ds is 3 it's become harder (he wants more space and the weather has been dire) and with a baby on the way I think this will be our last caravan break until the kids are quite a bit older.

However I have great memories of caravan holidays when I was about 7 or 8. I think they're great .

We had a tourer when I was married, we kept it on a seasonal pitch an hours drive from home, we used it every weekend from Easter to bonfire night plus around 6 full weeks in the summer. During the winter we just went one weekend a month. Our tourer had built in bunk beds for ds, a separate bathroom with shower cubicle & toilet, we had a full 4 season awning to give us extra space during warm weather & somewhere for ds to play. We had a satellite dish so we could take our sky box away with us. We kept clothes & non perishable food in the caravan so we just needed to take odds & ends, plus fresh food. The site we were on was 5 minutes drive from town, had fishing lakes & lovely walks.

We camped for years with 3 children,eventually we bought a tourer,I loved it,all my own stuff around,big awning and the kids had pup tents when they were old enough.Sadly my husband passed away when the children were teenagers and I wasn’t brave enough to tow caravan,so it had to go,a sad day.

DO NOT do this if

You have an only child aged 12+, two dogs and two cats, no awning, no telly, and you want to stay in a remote site with minimal facilities for an ENTIRE month in a place with plentiful midges in the summer. Don’t get food poisoning either, no, not even if you have your very own chemical toilet in the caravan. Don’t do that, no

Otherwise, it’s a great idea.
Unless you’re me when I was 12.

We haven't bought one, have had quite a few caravan holidays.
As a kid we always went on holiday to yarmouth for the last few days in the season. October was cold, but the days in the caravan were definitely the best of my childhood.
We did a caravan at butlins sort of holiday a few years ago, and we will do it again- we loved it.
So much more carefree than the holidays abroad,often times the cost seems fairly expensive, but then again, we have a certain weekend we want to do something family wise next year and DD asked if we could go and stay in a caravan...we do love a caravan break

With touring you never know if you will like it until you actually do it..... we did and fell in love with it