Burning Rubber, Flying Crockery and Separate Beds?
In which the Grumpies discover that owning a caravan requires an engineering degree, a spirit level, a strong bladder and, apparently, a discussion about dogging.
There comes a time in life when you begin to question whether sleeping under canvas, clambering off an inflatable mattress in the middle of the night to perch on a bucket is really the best way to enjoy the great outdoors.
For the Grumpies, that time had arrived.
They’d enjoyed their camping adventures, mostly. They’d endured the occasional questionable campsite, navigating molehills whilst under the influence and a fair few uncomfortable nights and the inevitable indignity of trying to put their trousers on whilst bent almost double. But they were getting older, and the prospect of having their very own toilet, a proper bed and somewhere to make a cup of tea without first locating the camping stove was becoming increasingly appealing.
And so began the search for a caravan.
The Great Caravan Hunt
Having spent an unhealthy amount of time browsing advertisements for cheap two-berth caravans, the Grumpies eventually found one in Wokingham that looked promising. It was reasonably local, appeared to have all its bits attached and, most importantly, fell within Mr G’s preferred price bracket (next to nothing).
Mr G likes a bargain. In fact, Mrs G suspects he derives almost as much pleasure from not spending money as he does from spending it.
Off they went to inspect their prospective new home.
The poor sales staff had no idea what was coming.
Approximately 200 questions later, having examined every cupboard, catch, cushion and conceivable mechanical component, the Grumpies announced that they’d go away and think about it.
Mrs G imagined the conversation after they’d left.
“I thought we’d sold that one, but no. They’ve gone away to think about it.”
She suspected there was some language involved that wouldn’t be appropriate for this blog.
Unfortunately for the Wokingham sales team, another caravan of exactly the same model had appeared online. This one was newer, cheaper but located in Congleton which, for those unfamiliar with the geography, is a very long way from Hampshire when you’re only going to look at a second-hand caravan.
Naturally, they decided to go!
Mr G hastily booked a bargain Airbnb for the night. His accommodation choices can be something of a lottery, and this particular establishment was certainly memorable. One entire wall of the bathroom was glass, offering a degree of visibility that neither of them felt was necessary during their ablutions. It wasn’t particularly comfortable either, so they did what any sensible couple would do under the circumstances. They went to the pub.
Mr G enthusiastically investigated the local ales, which did at least make the journey seem slightly more worthwhile. He also found a ‘little fruit based drink for the lady’.
The following morning, they located the caravan dealer.
Mrs G felt that the term dealer was being used rather loosely. He appeared to be a man who owned a few caravans, one of which he lived in, and he didn’t immediately inspire confidence.
The caravan advertised as immaculate was, regrettably, anything but.
Mrs G asked to see another one he was displaying.
This turned out to have a sizeable pool of water inside it, which the vendor hurriedly explained away by pointing out that he hadn’t been expecting them to look at that particular caravan. A curious explanation, they thought. It also raised the rather uncomfortable question of whether the original caravan, that they’d driven 5 hours to see had contained a similar indoor water feature before their arrival.
They thanked him politely, climbed back into the car and drove all the way back, and straight back to Wokingham. They proceeded to start all over again inspecting the very first caravan they’d seen, and actually buy it on that occasion.
If the sales staff groaned when their car appeared in the forecourt again, they were discreet enough not to let them hear. They must have been mightily relieved to wave us away with a sale under their belts.
Bringing Gina Home
Three weeks later, the Grumpies returned to collect their purchase, now affectionately christened Gina, the Gin Tin.
The dealer’s staff patiently demonstrated how to hitch her to the car, explaining various catches, cables and safety devices while Mrs G desperately tried to commit everything to memory. Not because she didn’t trust Mr G, you understand.
Well, perhaps a little.
Eventually, they were ready. The staff escorted them out of their yard and waved cheerfully as they departed.
Mrs G was almost certain she heard party poppers going off behind them.
Mr G appeared to forget almost immediately that he was towing a caravan. Every time they passed a parked vehicle, Mrs G found herself involuntarily holding her breath and drawing her shoulders in, as though making herself smaller would somehow reduce the combined width of car and caravan.
It doesn’t make any difference, incidentally.
They arrived home intact, although Mrs G’s slightly temperamental ticker had received rather more exercise than she’d anticipated and it necessitated a sit down and some deep breaths.
Thank heavens for the motor mover, which allowed them to manoeuvre Gina into their exceedingly narrow driveway.
There was just one small problem.
Once she was parked, they couldn’t open her door.
This rather limited their ability to load her, unload her or discover how anything worked. They had purchased a holiday home that they could look at lovingly through the windows but couldn’t actually enter.
For the next two weeks, Gina sat on the driveway, occupying valuable parking space and attracting regular complaints from Mrs G’s eldest son.
The Grumpies, meanwhile, waited impatiently for her maiden voyage.
The Open Road……and the Smell of Burning Rubber
They’d chosen Lytton Lawn Touring Park at Milford on Sea for their inaugural adventure, late October. An hour and a half from home seemed sufficiently distant to qualify as a holiday without being so far away that a catastrophic mechanical failure would require them to apply for emergency accommodation. And obviously because it was the cheapest site Mr G could find!
On the morning of departure, Mr G suddenly remembered that they might need levelling ramps.
This prompted an urgent expedition to Go Outdoors, while Mrs G remained at home preparing the comestibles.
She wasn’t there to supervise his purchase but felt it was safe to assume he’d bought the cheapest ramps available.
With everything packed, they successfully hitched Gina to the car entirely unaided.
A triumph.
They even managed to leave the driveway without demolishing the trees, removing a wing mirror or attracting the attention of the neighbours.
Things were going suspiciously well.
Then, shortly after joining the motorway, Mr G announced that he could smell burning rubber. He was convinced the weight of the caravan had pushed the rear of the car down so far that the tyres were rubbing against something they shouldn’t.
This was an alarming prospect.
They pulled into Winchester Services, where the designated caravan parking area was full, apart from one narrow space between two enormous lorries. The prospect of threading their little outfit into this gap was about as appealing as navigating the Suez Canal in a rowing boat, so they drove straight through the services.
By this point the mysterious smell had disappeared, but Mr G remained concerned, so they stopped at the next services where they were handily presented with a long lay-by!
He climbed out and sniffed the tyres.
Yes, really.
There he stood, a grown man of almost seventy, walking around a car in a motorway lay-by sniffing rubber. Bystanders may have wondered if he had some weird fetish.
Fortunately, all appeared well. The caravan was sitting perfectly level behind the car, which Mrs G liked to think was testament to her careful packing and a certain amount of hard-earned experience with the disastrous consequences of incorrect trailer weight distribution.
Mr G appeared reassured.
His tyres smelled entirely as tyres should.
Onwards to Milford.
Reversing Expectations
Arriving at Lytton Lawn, they were directed to their pitch, where the first serious challenge awaited.
Reversing.
This was Mr G’s first attempt at reversing a caravan, and Mrs G climbed out of the car fully expecting to spend the next twenty minutes shouting “THE OTHER WAY!” and “STOP!” at a volume likely to disturb neighbouring campers and possibly livestock in adjoining fields.
Instead, he reversed Gina almost perfectly into position on his first attempt.
Mrs G was astonished.
She even congratulated him.
He looked rather pleased with himself, and she had to concede that he’d earned it.
After a minor adjustment, they began the business of levelling.
The pitch looked perfectly flat. It wasn’t. They might have got a clue about this if they’d glanced at the neighbouring caravans and motorhomes all having large wedges under their nearside wheels.
Out came the newly purchased ramps, and Mr G slowly drove Gina onto one of them while Mrs G watched the spirit level.
Up she went.
And up.
And up.
“STOP!”
At last, Mrs G’s moment had arrived.
Unfortunately, the ramp was too short to achieve the necessary height without Gina rolling straight off the other end.
Mrs G couldn’t help wondering whether a slightly more generous budget at Go Outdoors might have produced a higher ramp.
Then inspiration struck.
If they placed the second ramp immediately beyond the first, facing the opposite direction, perhaps they could gain that elusive extra inch without driving off the end.
A little manoeuvring later, the spirit level declared Gina perfectly horizontal.
Mrs G felt rather pleased with her engineering solution.
Mr G was pleased too, although she suspected he was even more pleased that the cheaper ramps had ultimately done the job.
They unhitched, with a brief interlude while Mr G attempted to remember the finer points of operating a jockey wheel.
Fortunately, between them, they possessed almost one complete functioning memory.
Water, Water Everywhere
Having settled Gina into position, it was time to explore the mysteries of caravan plumbing. Our first attempt, after trying to decipher the manual which had been downloaded and appeared irrelevant to the model in front of us.
The Aquaroll was filled with fresh water, connected to the caravan and the pump switched on. They activated the water heater, opened a tap and waited for the system to work its magic.
Initially, everything seemed fine.
Then Gina made a noise.
Not a gentle mechanical hum or reassuring gurgle. A dreadful, agonised, tortured noise that suggested they’d somehow inflicted a serious injury upon their new acquisition.
Mrs G frantically switched things off, partly because she feared they were about to destroy the boiler and partly because she didn’t particularly want the entire campsite gathering around to watch.
Mr G went outside to investigate.
The Aquaroll was empty. Completely empty.
It transpired that they’d overlooked the rather important matter of closing the drain valve, meaning that every drop of water they’d so carefully collected had been pumped straight through the caravan and out again.
They’d effectively invented a very expensive way of moving water from one part of a campsite to another.
Off Mr G went to refill the Aquaroll.
This time, with the appropriate valve closed, they achieved something bordering on a miracle. Hot water.
They celebrated by eating soup, as one does!
The toilet, however, presented another challenge.
One of the great difficulties of getting older is that you can read an instruction manual, understand it perfectly well, put it down and then discover ten minutes later that you have absolutely no recollection of what it said.
Mr G had read the caravan manual.
Possibly twice.
Now he was reading it again.
The flush system stubbornly refused to work, despite his best efforts, and Mrs G became increasingly convinced that the instructions he was reading and rereading were describing an entirely different toilet.
She turned to YouTube.
Within minutes, they’d identified the problem. They were missing a special funnel needed to fill the flushing reservoir at a greater height, and attempting to fill the canister without it was failing.
This, naturally, presented Mr G with an opportunity.
An engineering project.
He disappeared into his collection of useful bits and pieces and fashioned a suitable substitute.
Success!
The toilet flushed magnificently.
“You see, I am an engineer,” he announced proudly.
This was a phrase Mrs G heard quite regularly, usually after something had been repaired, modified or constructed from materials that would otherwise have been thrown away. She had to admit, he did have his uses.
Beware the Overhead Lockers
As reasonably frequent air travellers, the Grumpies were both familiar with the announcement advising passengers to take care when opening overhead lockers because items may have moved during the flight.
Mrs G had always considered this something of an unnecessary warning.
After all, in all their years of flying, neither of them had ever witnessed a suitcase launch itself out of a locker and attack an unsuspecting passenger.
Caravans, however, were apparently different.
When Mrs G opened the overhead kitchen cupboard, its contents immediately attempted to escape.
Plates and bowls came hurtling towards her in a spectacular avalanche of melamine, forcing her to duck for cover.
Fortunately, she survived the assault without injury.
Another lesson learned.
Apparently, packing crockery securely was not quite the same thing as simply putting it in a cupboard and closing the door.
Who knew?
A Gin-Fuelled Moment of Contentment
By evening, the Grumpies had successfully navigated the motorway, reversed onto their pitch, achieved a level caravan, mastered the plumbing, flushed the toilet and survived an attack by airborne tableware.
Gina was looking lovely.
Really lovely.
Her little lamps were glowing, the cushions were arranged, everything had found a home and there was a wonderful sense of cosiness that they’d never quite achieved in a tent.
And for once, there was nothing to complain about.
They both agreed that they’d been extraordinarily lucky with their purchase. Gina was comfortable, practical, surprisingly spacious and, despite her advancing years, in remarkably good condition. Tomorrow’s forecast for heavy rain would reveal whether she was watertight.
She really was a bargain.
Mrs G suspected Mr G enjoyed saying that almost as much as he enjoyed his gin.
The Trouble with a King-Size Bed
Bedtime brought another exciting discovery.
By rearranging the seating area, Gina could be transformed into a magnificent king-size bed.
Compared with their camping arrangements, which had involved inflatable mattresses with the bounce characteristics of trampolines, this felt like unimaginable luxury.
Mrs G took a photograph and sent it to some friends, proudly announcing their elevation into the world of civilised sleeping.
One particularly practical friend immediately pointed out that, with the bed stretching across the width of the caravan, whoever slept on the inside would have to climb over the other person to reach the toilet.
Nonsense, thought Mrs G sending a dismissive message straight back!
Mr G’s bladder wasn’t what it used to be, and his nocturnal excursions were sufficiently frequent that he was the obvious candidate for the outside position.
She would sleep on the inside.
Problem solved.
Except, of course, that her own bladder chose that particular night to develop a sudden enthusiasm for midnight adventures.
Several times she found herself attempting to scale Mr G’s sleeping body in the darkness, after first praying for what seemed like an eternity that his own bladder would force him to waken. Trying desperately not to wake him, she opted to escape and negotiate a route to the toilet.
And that wasn’t the only problem.
Despite having waved goodbye to the menopause some years ago, Mrs G still experienced frequent tropical moments in the middle of the night.
Her usual solution was to fling a leg out from beneath the duvet until the cold air had restored her internal thermostat to something approaching normal.
Unfortunately, Gina’s furniture arrangement placed a chest of drawers directly beside her leg.
Every time she performed her customary nocturnal cooling manoeuvre, she whacked her knee against it.
By morning, she’d made several expeditions across Mr G, developed a collection of bruises and concluded that the king-size bed wasn’t quite the triumph they’d imagined.
The Beginning of the End?
Over their morning tea, with rain hammering against Gina’s roof, the Grumpies discussed their sleeping arrangements.
Perhaps, they agreed, it would be more sensible to use the seating as two single beds.
No climbing over one another. No midnight mountaineering. No knees colliding with furniture.
It was an entirely practical solution.
“Actually,” he announced, “I’m rather looking forward to having my own bed.”
Mrs G smiled.
But inside, something withered.
There it was.
The moment she realised they’d officially become old people.
They’d gone from romantic nights under canvas to separate beds in a caravan, and the man she adored was positively delighted about it.
Mrs G decided this state of affairs couldn’t be allowed to develop without at least a token protest.
So she edged over and gave him a cuddle.
Partly because she wanted to and partly to remind him of what he might be missing from the other side of the caravan.
Which was when an entirely unexpected question occurred to her.
Does dogging happen on caravan sites, or is it strictly confined to car parks and lay-bys?
She had absolutely no idea where the thought came from and rather wished it hadn’t.
But she found herself glancing towards the window.
And then, just to be on the safe side, she pulled down the blinds.
After all, the Grumpies were still learning the rules of caravanning.
And Mrs G had no intention of accidentally joining a club they hadn’t meant to sign up for.
Part two coming soon – the slippery slope, hairdryers, a deluge and decisions on the future of caravanning for The Grumpies.
