So, the weather is depressing, and deleterious for caravans...

In the UK, it's been rain, rain and more rain. If your caravan isn't stored under cover you should spend half an hour preventing damp.

Firstly, it takes so little time to stick a few little interior dehumidifiers around your caravan and in the cupboards. Take the opportunity now to buy some, Ebay sell them so you have no excuses! Here's the cheapest I have found.

Right, an important little job is to spray the rubber window seals with silicone lubricant. The rubber seals around the doors and windows dry out over time and the dryer they are, the less effective they are at sealing which will begin to allow moisture in. The one we use is from Halfords, and is surprisingly the best price we've found! Be aware, though, that silicone corrodes aluminium, so keep it away from any of the aluminium rails!

Another tip, is to raise the front end of your caravan up so all the water runs down over the back of the caravan as there are less window areas to affect.

Happy Caravanning!

So, our little caravan needed a little bit of tarting up when we bought it...

Our caravan is 19 years old, and whilst it appears to have been looked after and stored well throughout it's life so far, it needed a bit of TLC and a spruce up.

One of the great little jobs we did to our caravan last summer, was to replace the aluminium awning rail infill strips. Our caravan still had the original ones and they appeared to be growing boils and warts and I feared they were mutating! We decided to take most of the vinyl stickers off our caravan because they were all cracked and were ageing her (if you choose to do this be prepared for vaxatious picking), but we liked the neat burgundy stripes down the side and though it would look great to match the infills in colour.

It cost us around £40 to do the whole caravan, with some left over, from Ebay.

Very easy to remove the original, just pick the end up with a swiss army knife and pull it out. We discovered quite a few insects who had been born, made a home and died underneath - the perfect opportunity to give our caravan a little bath!

Pretty easy to insert the new infills when you get the hang of it. My technique was to insert a few inches of infill under one side of the rail, then use a screwdriver to run along the other edge of the infill, pushing it under the rail as you go, then run over it with your thumb to make sure it's pushed down and you've not missed anywhere. The corners are the trickiest part but I managed them using the same technique.

The end result was great. Our caravan looked cleaner, neater and younger!

Happy Caravanning!

So, we went on our first voyage last June...

We'd never been to visit my younger brother, Sam, since he'd got his job in Oxford, so we decided to make our first trip down there and suss the van out. We hadn't realised just how long it takes to prepare the caravan for the trip. We'd spent a full working day the previous week cleaning the caravan. It was clear it hadn't been used for some time too. We had enjoyed, however, shopping for all the new things – the plastic plates and cutlery, shower curtain and bin (yes we even got excited about the little lime green bin we bought) and everything we bought was lime green – a happy colour!

We had our new caravan, our new cocker pup Duke and our old pal Al. We were very happy indeed.

We packed the cockers into the crate in the boot and filled the back seats with stuff (for one night!). Duke loves his crate but we never crate trained Alice so she did protest at first, not surprisingly as she likes to take the role of captain in the front seat and see where she is going. She dislikes me driving if Nick is with us in the car because he makes her sit in the footwell. Although, now Alice knows that if the crate goes into the boot she's going somewhere exciting, and when we go to Nanny and Pappy's to get the van, she does the cocker-cry the whole time we're hitching up.

Nick was nervous about towing all the way to Oxford, only his second ever time, so he picked a site that was straight off a dual carriageway on our journey. The site was called Godwins Ice Cream Farm and is a really lovely site. The pitches are literally “pick anywhere you like in the field” and you just trail your power cable to the nearest hook up point. There were about four other caravans and a couple of campers. We were the only ones with dogs and we worried that they would annoy the others but we've come to learn that everyone on camp sites are friendly and happy. Alice was really rude and ensured she had a sniff of every caravan on site but everyone greeted her and said hello. Duke is too true to the breed and won't go further than 12 feet from me, and is always happy when he has a ball.

There were some chickens and a couple of horses on site who we said hello to, too.

The best part about this site though, really is the ice cream. I had my all time favourite, mint choc chip, but had to try one of their crazy flavours too, so I went for Peanut Butter! Sounds gross but it was heavenly!

We spent the day walking to Oxford town centre with Sam and it turned out to be a beautifully sunny day. We found we'd taken on a bit too far of a walk for Duke so Sam offered to carry him. Duke loves to be cradled like a baby and Sam was only too happy to oblige, to find himself being THE centre attention of the town. Sam has found the locals to be true to the stereotype of the unfriendly Southerner who becomes suspicious of the Northern stranger who says Hello as he passes by. Well, this was not apparent that day. Sam pulled more women that day than I think he ever has his entire life. Honestly, you'd think there were no puppies in Oxford!

We were sad to leave the next day but the trip had been a great success. We'd had a lovely day with Sam, found that everything worked just fine in the caravan and we learned that we loved caravanning!

Happy Caravanning!

So, what is the towing law all about..?

The law can be quite confusing for first time towers. If you passed your driving test after 1997, there's some stuff you need to know, and there is a lot of misunderstanding., so read on...

The first thing you need to know, is that the total weight of your “train” (your car plus your trailer/caravan including the car passengers and luggage – and the dog) must never exceed 3.5 tonnes. Unless of course you have a 3.5 tonne licence. If you have a large caravan that takes the weight of your train over 3.5 tonnes, you can obtain a C1 licence (which takes your legal limit up to 7.5 tonnes) for about £700.

The next thing you need to know, is that the weight of the caravan/trailer must be less than the unladen weight of the car. It is strongly recommended to ensure your caravan/trailer remains less than 80% of the car. This is for stability reasons, especially in windy conditions and braking power. Our Fiat Croma weighs 1.52 tonnes, so we would limit the weight of our caravan/trailer to 1.2 tonnes, transporting heavy items in the car.

With our few bits and bobs on board, the caravan weighs in at 775kg (0.8 tonnes). The weight of the car now comes in at 1.72 tonnes, which includes 2 adults and our luggage, two dogs and their luggage and an 80% full fuel tank. With our train weighing in at 2.5 tonnes (1 whole tonne less than our legal limit), the caravan is just 48% of the weight of the car meaning lively performance 0-50mph of 12 seconds, excellent stability and the ability to tackle steep hills of up to 24% gradient. Now, all you need to do is take notice of the signs giving you the hills gradient that you've always ignored!

See how your car will perform with your caravan on TowCar.info

Happy Caravanning!

So, I love a bargain!

So, I finally remembered to buy some scatter cushions. Our little caravan has long-lasting but very uncomfortable seats, like the usual ones. Well I found the perfect little cushions during our recent trip to Ikea. £1.25! They're quite small so don't take up too much room and they're made from a polyester fabric so are really tough and seem quite wipe-able - great for dog owners! They're also machine washable at 30 degrees so you can wash them after every trip if you want to.

They also have a matching blanket. Great for us because we like to cover the seats with blankets so the dogs don't ruin them and get hairs threaded into them. £1.60 a blanket! I paid £3 for one the same size last time from Discount UK (although they did have dogs on them and anything with dogs on it and I buy it!).

Happy Caravanning!