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You may remember me from my earlier "help !!!" post (m. home swapping to a van and a Zafira tow car).

Anyway its been a long time coming but our swap is now finalised and we will be joining the world of tuggers this Friday or Saturday.

I tried to book on a Caravan Club towing course but the earliest available is Feb 2012, so I am just going to have to bite the bullet and just do it albeit for all of about 1.5 miles to the storage site.

Aside from that booked on a rally over the New Year.

Will share my first tow (except for a trailer tent) experience on here and give an honest opinion as to teh suitability of my tow car.

Good luck! When we collected our first van this year we drove around the week before and found an old industrial unit with a large car park. As it wasn't been used we collected the van on a Saturday and then went there for a few hours to practice hitching up and reversing, etc. It was really worth it and made me a lot happier with going to our first site. The first time I towed I was really worried but by the time we had done a drive to Dorset the following week I was much happier....as others have said just take your time and remember to give things a wider berth when turning. We have now been away for 3 seperate one week holidays and have really taken to the caravan as a step up from a tent......so much so that we are just in the process of changing the tow car to an X-trail so we can look at a bigger van in a year or so. Let us know how you get on!

Darren

Hi notsosure,  don’t know about the van you have, I have the Zafira 1.9 cdi turbo, have a 900kg max load van, most of journey car will be in 5^th gear, not 6^th. You will need to allow more time for stopping/ moving off from standing start/and over taking, I have found the Zafira has bad blind spots and visibility, due to the thick panelling around the windows, so be extra vigilante around junctions/roundabouts. To build up your confidence in towing a van, why not take van out for a short run down the motorway, maybe stop at services and have cupa in van, then put in storage, or as dazzer252 did take van to industrial estate car park at a quiet time and just haul van around and possibly do some reversing manoeuvres, should not take you long to get the feel of the van. Good luck