first time on a caravan holiday - any tips please?

[mckenzie]

I am taking 5 year old DS and 17 month old DD to a Haven park for 5 days (with a friend and her two boys (9 and 13).

Any tips please regarding quirky things to take with me that i wont have thought of?

I'm really looking forward to it. I used to sleep under canvas as a child and have rather fond memories of the early morning dash to the communal toilets in wellies and pajamas!

Bin bags? (We always forgot)

T Towels, dish cloths, w/up liquid.

BBQ tools (if you have a BBQ on site - they provide the grill but no tongs etc)

They are very well equipped. Don't forget your fav foods/squash/sauces. On site supermarket will sell anything you forget.

We had ALL the Tiger club tapes! Have a great time.

Havan caravans are really well equiped. check what exactly is in your caravan here , floor plans too.
Click on your park,
Click on accomodation on the left hand menu,
Scroll down and click on the van you have booked.
Sadly no communal loos .

MATCHES for lighting gas hobs and BBQs.
I always forget towels.

Unless you have booked linen then you will need duvet covers, sheets, pillow cases. They provide the duvets and pillows.

Kitchen stuff like foil, kitchen roll etc can come in handy - and a sharp veg type knife 'cos that always seems to be missing!

Then the obvious like loo roll.

cooking oil, salt, pepper

The thing that stands out from my childhood holidays is that if my mum was telling one of us off the whole caravan park could hear (not saying you will need to have words with your ds and dd!). So practise fierce whispering!

thanks for the tips girls. Especially the toilet roll as I woulnd't have thought of that!

thanks Celia2 - that's another thing I hadn't thought of but will definitely need.

Be aware that the bathroom will be a tight squeeze. And you will probably have a bath not a shower. See the thread from yesterday about alternatives to showers. I linked to a universal plug on there.

Quite often static caravans have deep shower trays ideal for little ones to sit in. Great idea about the universal plug.

thanks scribble and bozza. thankfully both of mine quite like a shower so shouldn't be a problem if there isn't a bath.

Turn your heating on in the morning when you get there as caravans can get quite cold in the evening and you can normally put the heating on for maybe 12 hours at a time but it wont make it much warmer. This is the thing that bugs me about caravans but i do love them

Take pegs for wet towels / washing.

heating? cold? It's going to be 30 degrees again when i go the week after next

Still gets cold at nigh as we found out in spain last April. I ended up with all the damp beach towels over me to try to keep warm. I was expecting duvets for each bed but they provided travel rugs .

thanks for the warning. It does seem to be that since I booked this trip the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Fingers crossed that it brightens up otherwise it will be a wellies and pacamac holiday!!

We actually considered the whole family sleeping in the lounge in front of the gas heater, got a little bit warmer but kept the heater on all one night and emptied the bottle.

Depending on what kind of caravan you hire they may have central heating I know ours does. Typically the gold caravans do.

We normally take a cool box up with us and fill it with our usual day to day bits and bobs like milk, tea bags, kids drinks, marg, bread etc that way you're not darting out as soon as you arrive.

HTH
Miranda