Caravan or motorhome?

[MsMiaWallace]

We have a 6 berth caravan that we love for our family.
I'm interested to hear what others prefer?

I'm told that motor homes can be quite limiting but you don't need to tow.

Not a fan of caravans, the only major plus I see is that you can use your car separately once they have been set up. I have rented several motorhomes and toured around europe, they are easier to drive and are welcome at more campsites. Hate to say it there is a certain 'type' of person who uses caravans, usually the type of person you don't want to be next to on campsite.

So rude! @DanseAvecLesLoups did u miss the bit were the op says she has a caravan?

Nice!

Oooh. The eternal question! I'm going to watch as that will be our dilemma in a few years.

PIL have had both. Caravan when DH was young for family camping holidays then a motor home on retirement to travel around Europe (wild camping, often illegally I don't doubt).

They preferred the motor home later on because they parked up for the night wherever they fancied, which is harder in a caravan. But it was a 2 berth so not enormous. I've looked at some 4 berths and they can be enormous.

The compromise is to tow a Smart Car but you're back to towing again!!

In answer, for 6 people, caravan.

Camper vans are v expensive to maintain and yes you have to pack up every time you want to go somewhere. But I prefer the cameprvan as they are much easier to drive and you can stop places without fretting there will be no space for a Caravan. They are more spontaneous . We used our bike loads instead of relying on the car which was fun but depends one how much you like bikes I suppose.

we also had a wee caravan which I loved as you had more space and one you pitched up u could just leave everything. I wasn’t as happy driving it and definitely couldn’t pitch it myself.

there are pros and cons to both

I’m having this quandary but on a smaller scale - can’t decide between an adventure caravan (Swift base camp 2 or 4) or a campervan.

We have had 3 motorhomes, and love the freedom of touring. You do have to plan your sites more, can you walk, cycle or bus to a town, beach etc.
we tend to spend 2-4 nights on 1 site and move on. Have been all over the UK and France this way, and if we don’t like somewhere we just move on. We take electric bikes to widen the range.

I can totally see the joy of a van for a family though, with your car to explore and staying on 1 site for a longer time. They are also cheaper, but i don’t fancy towing and you can’t use the French Aires etc.

different sorts of holiday, but if we couldn’t keep our Motorhome I would have a caravan.

The answer is both.
Caravan great but in our motor home you can just decide on the day and go we have stayed in lay-bys very cheaply and had some great times but they are stupidly expensive and not cheap to keep / store.
If we have an option I would have a small motor home and a caravan

As kids we caravanned and it was great. Summer holidays were 3-weeks and Easter 2-weeks in one location (usually Dorset, Devon or Cornwall) and the rest of the year we were at caravan rallies practically every weekend.

Now we are grown up and doing it for ourselves we are Motorcaravan people as we don't set up for long periods and enjoy the freedom. When us kids stopped going ,my parents changed to motorcaravans as they suited their new type of getaways.

Would never want a camper, I can see the attraction of size when it comes to driving & parking day to day but the lack of internal space would be a deal-breaker for us.
Granted a decent sized Motorcaravan (7.5M+ L) is awkward to park in your average carpark but when you are away it is great to have enough space to spread out.

They're different things for different types of trip. A motorhome has limitations, but so does a caravan.

Caravans suits people that want to base themselves on pitch on a site. Having a car that can be detached from the accommodation gives local mobility.

Motorhomes/campers suit people that want to keep moving. A caravan can't be used on aires/stellplatz/etc. when touring Europe.

I much prefer a motorhome. We considered both and a motorhome suits what we want to do. YMMV.

We have a Motorhome. We're on our second. Owned Motorhomes since 2010. We got the current van in early 2017. We worked out we've had 2 years worth of trips in it. We go to Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany.

As a child I used to go caravanning. We'd stay UK (mix of tiny CLs to big commercial sites) and France, Italy, Germany and Netherlands. We'd be away every Bank Hol and school holidays excluding Xmas.

So with my experience I think I'm well qualified to speak about both types of hol - they are totally different!

A caravan is about going to a site. Obviously you can 'tour' to get there. A Motorhome is about the journey not the destination.

In the MH we never spend more than a few nights in one spot. We NEVER stay on campsites (a MH kitted out correctly eg solar panel means you are self sufficient). We wild camp - there are apps, but a certain amount of common sense is also required to find spots. Scotland and abroad (France etc) are fab for MH'ing. You'll find a network of free to use aires/ stelplatz/ sosta (depending on the country). These are specifically set aside for MHs to park overnight and sleep in van. Often there'll be a toilet disposal point, grey waste dump and fresh water to top the tanks. Generally these are all free. They'll often have restrictions on not being able to stay more than 48hours.

Our MH is just over 3m heigh and just over 7m long. It's big. Not huge. DP used to drive commercial vans (7.5 tonne) as a delivery driver. He's an absolute wiz driving it. We've stopped in big cities, narrow streets, mountain passes, country lanes etc. It's got a stonking big engine (2.3 turbo) so no issues handling steep gradients. It has a hill start button for wet/ steep roads. Having spent large amounts of time travelling in it in France etc. I've noticed they are meccas for MH's which is hardly surprising given the facilities!

The 'packing' stuff up ready to move on isn't an issue (like it was with the caravan). Everything is designed so you put item back and batten it down. The only thing that does require putting away is the over cab bed. We have a large double fixed bed at the back. Much more comfortable!

We are a very outdoorsy family. We cycle, walk and kayak as well as enjoying site seeing. So the MH is perfect for us. We have a large garage it contains all the bikes, a kayak and goodness knows how many toys and outdoor games, deckchairs etc.

If you like to be settled, I wouldn't bother with the huge expense of a MH. If you like a driving holiday and life on the road (and won't be shit scared of driving one) a MH is the way forward. It's worth chatting with other owners with similar circumstances to you. There are so many different configurations available! As with a caravan. You want one that suits the needs of your family. For us a garage was a must have, as was a fixed bed.

Caravan for me. We're a family of 6, so to get a motor home that can seat 6 for driving means it's very very big. Then there's the need to put away everything loose when you want to drive out of the campsite, and the fact you're then driving an enormous motor home that you can't park anywhere.

On the face of it, motorhomes look like an improvement on a caravan. But practically, with a family, they are no where near as flexible as a caravan.

The only way we could make a motor home work for our family would be for one adult to drive the motor home and one to drive the family car. Then park the motor home as if it's a caravan and use the car to travel while on holiday. That seems a bit bonkers!

If it was just me and DH and we were moving around a lot, a small motor home might be a good solution. It annoys me that the fridge/cupboards become inaccessible once you put the bed together in a camper can though - I'd have to get one big though that you could still access the fridge once you'd gone to bed!

Easier to drive , nice for days out too. BUT you have difficulty parking, lots of carparks have height barriers or small spaces . You also have to pack up everything before you move , you also lose a nice spot when you need to use it as a vehicle.

We’ve had both at different times in our lives. Both suited us for different reasons. It’s much more down to personal circumstances, rather than either motorhome or caravan IMHO.

For example, when we had children we preferred a caravan, with awning. It meant we could set everything up on a site, with all the extras you take with kids, and then have the car for the beach etc.

A motorhome is brilliant without kids. You don’t carry loads of stuff with you, when you arrive somewhere you park and put the kettle on. We use it like a car, so on days out you have toilet, hand washing, fridge, hob, you can even put your feet up for a granny nap.

They are chalk and cheese really, we haven’t owned a caravan, but we have owned a motor home, which we had from new, if really wasn’t for us tbh, for a number of reasons. I know some people love it.

We are Caravanners and love it but if I had lots of money I’d have a small motor home too as I like the idea of going out for the day and if we don’t want to come home we can stay overnight in the mo-ho.

Would love either but can't afford it, just placemarking to pretend to myself that I could get one 😀

We have a caravan now as it suits us with DS8 and using the car to explore the wider area once set up We tend to mostly do breaks in UK and then stop a few sites at a time in Europe on long summer holidays. We’re planning northern Germany, Denmark and Netherlands this year. We would definitely switch to a motor home when DS has flown the coup so we can explore more of Europe.

Having said that my parents spent two years travelling around Europe with their caravan, overwintering for 3 month stretches in southern Spain, where the caravan came into its own (not that they can do that now - thanks Brexit!)

I’m interested in what Danse meant about the certain type of people,who have a caravan? 🤔🙄

We have a tiny micro pop top caravan and are most definitely not any 'certain type of person'. It took a long time to make the decision to get ours as DH felt that there was the same kind of prejudice around.

We got our caravan last year and it is tiny and quite unconventional. We had so many people coming up to us in campsites and asking us about it, mainly very friendly people who we were happy to chat to. Some had reasonably sized motorhomes and felt they had about the same amount of interior space as us. In the end DH and I agreed that although a small campervan would make us look cooler, in our early 50s do we really care?

The practicalities of our Trigano Mini Freestyle 290 caravan mean we can store it in our small garage, it cost less than a motorhome, even with a new car and we don't have to take it with us everywhere we go.

We looked around a lot and saw a few small campervans we liked, the Wildax Pulsar was our favourite and if budget and storage space were not an issue we might have gone for it. But at the end of the day we are the same people with our Trigano Mini Freestyle 290.

Before this we used to do a 3 week middle aged backpacking adventure every summer while my kids were with their ex, travelling on the train with a small 5kg backpack. Over the past 11 years we've been together we've been to China twice including hiking up Yellow Mountain and around Zhangjiagie National park, been to Vietnam and Cambodia, travelled around Norway and more.

So I'm not sure you can fit everybody into categories.

Motorcaravan every time.

The packing up aspect when you move is no big deal as unlike a caravan there is less to unpack in the first place.
As for loosing a nice spot while you are out in the van, never had a problem with this as A. On many sites (CAMC for instance) the pitches are allocated and B. You leave a marker showing the space is occupied.

We like having day trips in the van and use it as a mobile base to go for walks.
Park up somewhere nice, go for a walk, pop back for lunch then go for another walk, drive home in the evening.
Almost as good as a mini break. 😁

We used to have a 5 berth caravan but now have a vw camper. For a big family then a caravan is best I think. Motorhome that sleep 6 are a pain in the arse to drive and rattle like hell! For 2-3 a vw camper is perfect and you can go anywhere.

Every camp site I've ever stayed on had allocated pitches so this can't happen. We have a camper van with small bathroom but don't drive it around once we've arrived. We go everywhere by public transport and walking. Walking with our dog is the main purpose of the trip for us.

For those that use campervans for day trips, do you have issues with car parks that have overhead barrier things that are designed to keep such vehicles out? Is there an app or such that tells you such things?

A caravan is about going to a site. Obviously you can 'tour' to get there. A Motorhome is about the journey not the destination.

I agree. We've taken our van to France a few times and those holidays were all about the travelling around - one night here, a couple of nights there. We didn't move far at a time, it took us 2.5 weeks to go from Calais to Omaha Beach for instance, but we saw a lot of different places.

If there are 6 of you and you mainly want, for example, a beach holiday somewhere, then a caravan would be better I think. We've rented static caravans in the past when we want this type of holiday.