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Just spent our 1st night in our new (to us) van, stayed at silver birches for 1 night, bought the van from Barton-upon-Humber and for our first towing trip pulled it 1.5 miles!!!!!!. Loved it drinking our wine whilst watching a dvd with it lashing down outside, Tracey has already forgotten being in the tent!!!!

We bought a 97 ABI Marauder Gold 420ET with 2 owners from new, the van is only 1060kgs so a nice size/weight for our 1st experience at towing.

Only concern is that i missed that 1 of the awning rails is loose at the end(about1.5 foot long) anyway to late to worry, we are having the van serviced at West Riding Leisure in Huddersfield in 2 weeks time and the guy said he would carry out a damp check and then hopefully repair the rail.

Booked in at the 3 rivers site at Clitheroe this weekend coming, if anyone is there please give us a shout any advice would be much appreciated.

Jon&Tracey

sounds like the best way to start, I picked mine up and drove from cheltenham to Luxembourg on Sunday night. can't wait to use it now so off to nommerlayern locally. lovely site wth 2 huge pools.

Enjoy!

Hi Siobhan Coops,  How do you find the Citroen C4 "Grand" for towing?? Do you find the gearbox jerky?? as I am thinking of replacing my Citroen Xantia with it. Whats it like on the long run?? i.e. fuel and comfort wise??

Micky

We love the C4 Piccasso , we have the 2.0L diesel with the automatic and paddle gears. OH loves the automatic I find it a bit sluggish/jerky so I use the manual 'pre-selecter choice which is really smooth. I love the paddles once you get the hang of them. We have the 7 seater and the seats are amazingly simple to filp forward, down, etc.,

Fuel consumption seems fabulous for us though we have come from petrol. I had a 1/3 of a tank less fuel to our old mitsubishi I think I get 7 for a 100kms which is amazing for me as I;m a fast driver. I did notice I used a bit more towing but still far less petrol than the old car without towing.  I felt she was struggling on the steep hills (we came up a horrible on outside of cheltenham - forget the name but a really steep one and I had to go down to 3rd for a bit, but I only had to change down to 4th to maintain the same speed throughout the ardennes in Belgium-

Sorry if that's not much help, I don't know if that's bad or not. i'm not used to having to change down more than one gear for a hill as a towing virgin (it has 6 gears). We love the layout of the cabin with the huge storage lockers for passenger and driver and the central screen. It's lovely driving at night with the stars in sight (romantic that I am) with the huge front windscreen). Also when we had to put an antique oak table that weighed a ton and was 2 meters long - no problem, the back tail lowers down to ease loading.