Hi
I am a camper but would like to switch to a touring van I have never towed before.
I am being told 2 different things by friends and family so thought I would put it up on here and go with the majority.
Do I purchase a cheap van say £2k and under or go around the £10k mark,
Cheers
Paul
I can only talk from my experience, i have just moved from camping to touring. We used to tow a trailer with all of our camping gear in, so i had a little towing experience and was confident i would be ok with a tourer.
We looked extensively into what to buy, firstly looking at the 2nd hand market. We decided we wanted a twin axle, i thought that would be more stable to tow, and i believe i was right on that one. We decided on the layout we wanted then we started looking on line. We went to Raymond James in Nuneaton who had several examples of what we wanted to look at. We ended up buying a brand new, last years model which was heavily discounted instead of buying 2nd hand. The saving was so good it just made sense to us.
So we have had our van for over 6 months now, we have holidayed in it 7 times already, from a few days over a weekend to a full week in cornwall. We are going to Cornwall again in a couple of weeks, we absolutely love it. The kids love it too.
I think it really is down to you, how confident are you about towing? If you are quite confident then i am pretty sure, you will love it. You are campers at heart and this is the next step. If you do go ahead and buy a £2,000.00 unit, i would say, in no time at all you will be back at the dealers upgrading your caravan to one which you had wished you had bought from the start.
Good luck anyway, this is only my opinion, i am sure other people on here might disagree, but there you go we are all different.
We went from camping to caravanning. Paul had never towed before and had no idea about caravans. We went to look at second hand vans and we were going to spend around 7k, they were all awful and smelled of mothballs with old fashioned upholstery. Whilst we were there we decided to just have a look at new ones, well, bad move, or should I now say, great idea. we ended up buying a new van in Aug 2009. a 2009 Swift Charisma which was over 14k new but at end of season we got a reduction of 2k, its a lovely van and condition as new, we have been away 45 times since we got it, he says its the best thing he ever did. Its now worth about 10k. its worth looking at private ads,or ads on here and taking a damp meter with you. good luck In your search. I would definitely go for speding 10k. J x
Haha, I think the advice you are getting is dangerous......... And I'm going to add to it! We bought our first van from a friend last October for £700. It was wonderful, dry, with a full awning.... Everything we could have wished for, apart from the fact it wasn't quite big enough only being a 4 berth for 5 of us. We decided we would budget 9k ish. We looked around and were quite disappointed at what was about for the money. We looked at a 6 berth Adria for 13k brand new and decided on one of those. We did end up paying an extra 1K for a dealer special though as it included carpets, satellite system, spare wheel, upgraded ALKO hitch and a motor mover. Best thing we ever did!!! We picked it up on last day of may and by the end of August we will have done 24 nights in it. I'd have a really good look round and see what there is in both your budgets. I had no towing experience whatsoever, had to take the trailer test with a little trailer towed by an Audi a1, I'm now towing a 24ft van and actually enjoy it, it's part of the holiday :0) sorry if all the advice you receive ends up costing you more ;0) we still tell our friend off for selling us our first van......... He's cost us a lot of money getting us hooked!! :0)
Ps, we sold our little £700 van to friends who are now completely hooked and curse us for costing them money ;0) now a mutual friend to us both is looking to buy a caravan and is cursing us both! By golly, us caravaners do curse each other don't we?? :-O haha
Remember that twin axles cost to more insure ,are virtually impossible to move by hand unless in a straight line and require large heavy cars/4X4s to tow safely .
A single axle is perfectly stable IF loaded correctly and the noseweight of the towcar is high enough assuming the tow car is a good match.
As someone who tow's to Portugal and Spain every winter as well as the UK covering on average 9,000 per annum with the van I have never had any stability issue's with a single axle van although I'm very careful how I distribute the weight .
So don't be put of with stories of single axle's being unstable as there not if loaded correctly
5 years ago, we bought a second hand caravan through a private salesman in Dunsfold (where they film Top Gear. I'm sure if we hadn't bought it then Jeremy Clarkson would have had his hands in it by now). We thought carefully about the layout we wanted and decided on a six berth but single axle. We spent £3000 on the caravan plus an additional £500 on a second hand awning from Ebay and a wastemaster, aquaroll etc. My husband replaced the caravan carpet and I washed all the curtains and upholstery (which was quite neutral, no flowers).
We then towed the caravan to France, had a wonderful holiday and left it there in storage. We have had 5 fab holidays in it and are always relieved to find it clean and dry when we turn up each year. I think you can find perfectly good second hand caravans, it may just take a bit longer to track them down.
I paid £1000 for a 4 berth Elddis with 2 awnings just under a ton. It is fab. Bone dry, dead stable with our 2l Auris. Just check them thoroughly and you do not need to go mad. Price is not always a guide to quality.
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Topic: Touring caravan help
