Caravan marketing: Stuck in the 1950s?

It is late in the day, and I've had a long and challenging day in the day job. I've enjoyed a Jack Daniels or two, so I am tired and maybe a little too emotional.

But I am starting to get really angry at narrow-mindedness and being discriminated against.

'For what?' I hear you ask.

I'll tell you...  I am sick and tired of being discriminated against for having the audacity and the balls to get out there and live a full and happy life on my own, without a partner.

I completely understand that couples and families make up the overwhelming majority of the UK's caravanning community, as I have already mentioned in an article written for the progressive and forward-thinking company Cover4Caravans insurance.


About 12 years ago I bought my first ever brand new caravan, an ABI Adventurer from Glossop Caravans. I was made up.

My elation was somewhat deflated on the day I collected it, when I saw the pre-printed 'Sold' sign in the window..

Twelve years on, a friend has excitedly posted the picture of the 'Sold' sign in their caravan. It is the SAME pre-printed sign as so upset me all those years ago. And it still makes me angry.  Intensely.

Here it is, with the hand written names obliterated of course:

Can you spot what riles me off so intensely?

Imagine you were recently bereaved or divorced. Setting up on your own in your dream caravan is one of the first steps you are taking in your Brave New Life. Can you see in this sign what might put the recovery process back by three months?

Spotted it yet? Yup, it is the pre-printed 'and' along the line upon which the salesperson writes the name of the purchaser. Sorry, purchaserS.

Who says that it will always be a couple?

Here we are in the 21st Century, yet the industry is still using signs that belong in the 1950s. Life has moved on.

Single, couple, family... each status has its pros and cons.

But here is a bit of shocking news for the caravan industry: Not every purchaser these days is going to a be a white middle-class heterosexual middle-aged couple. Caravanning, the joy and the freedom that it brings, and the egalitarianism of enjoying ones own standards wherever one goes, is not governed by ridiculous rules of status or social background.

Caravanning is for everyone, ESPECIALLY pragmatists who can actually think for themselves. Part of that pragmatism is not always conforming to the social stereotypes of a bygone age.

It's time for the dealers and marketeers to wake up to that.

Rant over.

Baptism of Snow - February 2012

Once Dougal had finished delighting the staff of the Ibis Gloucester, we went to collect the Airstream from its service at Airstream and Co's Southern Depot.

First port of call at one of my favourite cities in the UK, was Cambridge Cherry Hinton Caravan Club Site.  Why Cambridge? Simply because I really like it. My good friend Mr Perks lives there, so the plan was to spend an evening relaxing in a welcoming hostelry and possibly spend a day or two out and about getting some snaps. Which is exactly what we did!

Ah yes, the snow. It got cold. REALLY cold. But thankfully the Airstream remained toasty warm throughout.

Next stop, a regular haunt of mine, was Commons Wood Caravan Club Site at Welwyn Garden City. Still the snow fell.

This stay was supposed to dovetail into the Caravan Show at Excel in London. But the on-site campsite was cancelled. causing me my first 'doggy responsibility' reality check. Could I have camped on site at the show, I could have left Dougal in the Airstream for a couple of hours at a time and gone back frequently and seen him. But now I had to camp off-site, it meant that I had to stay near someone I could trust to take care of the dog while I spent all day at the show. Therefore we went down to Rye, East Sussex, where my very dear friend T could have Dougal while I went gallivanting off up to London. An added bonus was that Airstreamers D & J were on the same CL.

It's at this point I want to go off a little on a tangent about CLs and CSs. For the uninitiated, they are Certificated Locations (Caravan Club) or Certificated Sites (Camping & Caravan Club), basically the same thing but different acronyms for different clubs. They are informal, part-licenced sites for up to five caravans apiece.

Every other caravanner seems to be able to find the 'Perfect CL.' You know, where they are parked up in a delightful spot with a stunning view and the cheery rosy-cheeked farmer's wife lays on gifts of fresh eggs and home made jam, all for something ridiculous like 25 pence a night.

Me? I am the world's worst CL finder. If there is a rubbish CL in an area, it's pretty much guaranteed that I will find it. So, if you want to be up to your wheel arches in slurry next to an industrial estate on the land of the grumpiest grumpster in the county, come with me.

Or, as was the case this time, wedged in a yard between a tractor and a skip for the princely sum of £15 per night:

Not the best pitch I've ever had. Especially when Commons Wood was a tenner a night the previous week. Hey-ho, such is the price of dog ownership. But I did get to spend time with some lovely people, which of course is priceless.

Fulltiming - A slow start

With the door finally shut on my bricks-and-mortar existence, the move to becoming a full-timing Airstreamer was a slow, staggered one. In fact, it is still very much a work in progress.

I recently met up with a couple of dear fulltiming friends, J&C, who decided 15 years ago to sell-up and live out their retirement on the road. It's always a pleasure to spend time in the company of such lovely and like-minded folk.

More than once at the previous UKAirstreamers' Gathering had I heard the comment 'So you're settled into fulltiming now.' Funnily enough, that comment was repeated only by people who weren't actually doing it themselves. Those who were living in their Airstreams made no such well-intentioned comment.

There are some people who seem to be able to just be able to do things straight away. You know the kind, they make a plan then just go off and do it, while everything seems to fall magically into place. If they go off on a trip, they can pack their bags in five minutes and be out of the door.

I, I'm afraid, am not one of those people. Even a simple day trip seems to take hours of planning and preparation. 'Have I got my camera? Are the batteries charged? Oh no, it looks like I need to charge the battery. What about my phone? Oh yes, that needs plugging in too. Dog stuff? Ah yes, the poo bags, the kitchen roll and antiseptic wipes in case of accidents in inappropriate places, the water bowl, the travel towel, the lead… I must remember my train pass. And my wallet. And a water bottle. And a flask. And a bag of treats for the dog. Will we be out long enough I need to take the dog's dinner too? And some snacks for me in case there's no cafe on the way. Not forgetting of course the laptop or iPad. And the internet dongle. And the charger lead. Phone charger! Have I fed the rats…?' And so on, and so on.

Such activity can be surmised as the art of faffing. And my goodness, I can faff. I can faff for England. Some people are slick, but I faff.

When slick people start their full-timing lives, I envisage that they lock the doors of their homes, drop the keys at the estate agents, hitch up their Airstream. and off they drive into their new lives with barely a passing thought to their previous existence. How I wish I could be like that. But I'm not.

It turns out that J&C had two years (two years!) living in a static caravan getting themselves prepared and set-up for their life on the road. I didn't feel so bad about the fact that, three months into my new life, I still felt in a complete state of turmoil.

Not emotional turmoil I hasten to add. Almost four months down the line since giving up my house I'm still 100% content and confident that this is the right thing for me to do. But there is still quite a lot of STUFF to sort out. Stuff...that tedious, heavy, dragging anchor of material possessions that is slowly dwindling, but doesn't magically evaporate when you hit the road. Granted, I could just take three months out and deal with it. But what a waste of springtime. And a man needs to work of course. I still need food on my plate and diesel in the truck.

It was early February that I moved out of my house and into the Airstream. In just over three months I'd say that I'm well over half way there. But I reckon it will be February next year at the earliest that I'll be settled into it with something approaching the kind of slick minimalism for which I ache and yearn.

It's a slow process if you have a life to lead while you're doing it. It took 25 years to build up the amount of stuff that I need to deal with. To have it sorted in a little over 12 months is actually pretty good going when you look at it that way.

Fulltiming Preparation

First of all, what is 'fulltiming'?

It's a term applied to spending an extended period of time living in a mobile leisure vehicle, be it a touring caravan or a motorhome. It's not to be confused with being a 'traveller' or living in a semi-permanent trailer like a park home or on a 'trailer park'.

Although some folks end up full-timing by default (the classic example is as a result of marriage breakdown), for the overwhelming majority it's a conscious lifestyle choice. It is sticking up two fingers to not only thinking inside the box, but at being trapped inside the box too. Fulltimers are truly free.

Me, I've been fulltiming on and off for about 10 years in a variety of caravans in a variety of ways. The past few years saw me fulltiming (or, as some called it, 'part-timing') for seven months of the year during the warmer months, then retreating to bricks and mortar for the winter.

Now that the house was to be sold, it was time to once again consider fulltiming.

But this time it was to be different. Very different.

All outward appearances look the same… living in the Airstream most of the year, and renting a cottage or two in pretty places for a couple of extended periods in the winter.

So why should this time be any different?

This time, I was setting up life to be free. Truly free. And that meant free of the burden of extraneous possessions.

Every time I've moved out of a house and into a caravan, I've always done so with the full intention of moving back into a house within the foreseeable future. But a couple of things have happened along the way…

In 2002, the intention was to spend six months in Tarifa in Spain. Yet I was back in the UK after three months. Why? Because the friend who had kindly offered to store a lot of my stuff unexpectedly decided to move house. While she COULD have moved all my rubbish as well, it would have been unfair of me to expect her to do so. So it was a 2,000 mile trip back…

Meanwhile, I had other stuff in various people's lofts and garages. So I was dependent on those people allowing me access to it. And I had to remember what was where. After three years, as I moved back into my house, I realised that I was moving stuff - again - that I had never even used. And probably never would.

Fast forward to 2009. My new next door neighbours had a story. They had got together five years previously, and decided to move in together. They sold one of the properties - a gorgeous warehouse conversion in London - and moved into a rented flat 'for a few months'. So all the expensive furniture and fittings from the warehouse flat went into storage.

'A few months' turned into five years. The bill for storage came to… wait for it… £7,000. And, funnily enough, when they finally moved into the beach house next door to mine, they found that none of the furniture from a trendy city warehouse conversion suited the house. Most of it was then disposed of. £7k down the swanny. 

The message here is abundantly clear, isn't it? Possessions can be an absolute pain in the jacksy. We covert them and then we are owned by them, not the other way around.

I'm not talking about the things that bring value into our lives, be it the gorgeous vase that sits in proud view on the mantelpiece, or the funny fridge magnet that makes us smile every time we see it. I'm talking about the stuff that once had value, or possibly might have value in the future, so it's hidden away in a box somewhere.

I'm talking about the old stereo that we still have after 10 years in the loft. The pile of photography magazines that we 'really will' look at again some day. The blunt tools in the shed that might come in handy one day.


As I looked around my 'personal' room in the house at all these boxes of STUFF, I felt quite heavy of heart. The urge to rent storage was overwhelming. But to rent a 7ft x 5ft room in a proper storage facility was going to cost the best part of £70 per month by the time you add insurance and stuff. That's getting on for £1000 per year. The irony was, there wasn't £1000 worth of stuff to store anyway!

Having these figures in my head made decluttering and getting rid of stuff far easier. But I still needed some strength and inspiration from an external source as well as from within.

Fortunately I found it in the book 'The Joy of Less' by Francine Jay.




http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003UNJX4S/ref=docs-os-doi_0

Naturally, it's downloaded to Kindle on my iPad to reduce the clutter.

I really like this book and recommend it to anyone who acknowledges the need to cut down on stuff, but doesn't quite know how to go about it.

The hardest part? I threw away my old teddy bears, and I threw away the jumper that my beloved Nan knitted for me as a teenager. It still makes me feel a bit wretched to think of that even now, three months later. But, I have to admit, I also feel just that little bit less bogged down. It also helps that my Nan was a minimalist, and I could hear her voice in my head saying 'What do you want to keep that thing for? Get rid of it!'. She'd be very disappointed to think that something she gave me was weighing me down. And you know what? I don't need a jumper I'll never wear to remember what a wonderful person my Nan was, and the lovely times we had together.

Time ran out before I was ready, and the completion date loomed. My possessions filled the car four times. That's still pretty good, but still not good enough. There's still some way to go.

The rats and their stuff take up a lot of space, and I've decided now that Dougal Dog is in my life, I'll not get any more rats when my current two shuffle off. But that will hopefully be a while away yet. I have boxes and boxes of magazines in my parent's loft, all of which I have an article in. I need to keep them for the taxman and also for my own enjoyment. But what I really need to do is digitise them… but can you imagine just how long that will take? Ditto the photo albums.

A typical scene from two nights away... although only the rucksack and wheely bag is my stuff, the rest is pet related!



Full-timing epitomises going against the 'norm'. So it makes sense that decluttering and living an anti-consumption life goes hand-in-hand with it. We live in a world where we are bombarded with messages telling us that the more we possess, the happier we are. Deep down, we all know that that's not the case. The sad thing is, it means that you ALWAYS have to be on the defensive, which is time and energy consuming. I have already entered arguments and disappointed people who are trying to give me something for 'free' that I don't want.

I can't promise that decluttering will make you happy, and it's not for everybody. Some people aren't happier than when surrounded by lots of knick-knacks and their bits and bobs. 

But for me, so far I am feeling far lighter and freer. Still a long way to go, and it can be uncomfortable at times, but it's an exciting journey.