Camping Holiday

To our great surprise, we've just returned from our first ever holiday in a camper van (or motor home, motorised caravan, or RV -- not sure of the right word in English). I like camping, I have done since childhood, but Mary hates it, and the whole thing started when I began to ponder over the things she dislikes: uncomfortable beds, claustrophobic tent, communal showers, and not least, needing to put on one's clothes and tramp through wet grass just to go for a pee in the night. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a caravan might be the answer, even if the thought of towing one is distinctly unappealing.

So: a few weeks ago we visited a caravan dealer, and were positively impressed! The best of the modern ones are quite luxurious, even if the ten-year-old ones can be dire. And as well as the caravans, we saw a number of camper vans, although we didn't appreciate their advantages at first.

So having decided it could be worth trying holidaying in a new form, I set to to try to hire a caravan for the following week. Alas and alack, you just can't hire one like that! Most dealers (a) don't hire, only sell, since there's no money in rental, (b) had already rented their caravans if they had any, (c) only rented ten year old ones anyway. The idea finally foundered on the question of a tow bar: our car doesn't have one, and our Peugeot dealer has a three week waiting list just to look at you thanks to summer staff shortages. As for camper vans, they were even harder to rent than caravans. So sadly, we gave up the whole idea.

And then, just a couple of days before we planned to set out, an ad in the paper caught my eye: `camper van to rent´. It turned out to be somebody's own, over ten years old, and ludicrously expensive, but we thought `what the hell´ and rented it anyway. So last Saturday I picked the thing up, and we set off for a tour of south-central Sweden.

So what is a camper van, anyway? It's basically a converted lorry, with a caravan stuck on the back. This one, like most, was built on a Fiat chassis and felt huge to drive! Now imagine what a ten year old Fiat lorry engine with 70,000 miles on the clock sounds like straining to get up a hill. No, louder than that! You get used to `projecting your voice´ to converse with the passenger, believe me! Now let me tell you that the engine only has 75bhp, and the van weighs over 3 tons. Come to a slight incline, and you're crawling at 35mph before you know it. The funny thing is, it actually isn't that bad to drive, despite all that. One reason is that you sit so high, with so much glass around you, that you get a wonderful view of the countryside as you pass through it. That is a definite plus: on a holiday trip, when the point is enjoyment not speed, we both felt it was quite a significant advantage. And where speed is concerned, one can cruise at 65mph much of the time, so in fact the total journey time isn't so much longer than in a car. And we did overtake a lot of caravans...

Behind the front seats is the living area. Just behind us we had a kitchen with gas stove, sink and draining board, and fridge-freezer, and on the other side a table for four with a sofa on either side. The forward facing sofa had seat belts (can you imagine a sofa with seat belts??), where Liam sat on our trip. (John Desmond was in relief care this week). Liam really had to shout to be heard from back there! But he had a table in front of him while we drove, so he could draw pictures, look at books, play with toys and so forth, which is another real plus.

At the back of the van we had another seating area, convertible into two bunk beds, with a flushing toilet and a shower. Mary and I slept in an `alcove´, a very comfortable double bed above the driving seats. We were three in a van which can sleep up to six, which meant that we didn't need to convert seats and tables into beds every night, we could leave the beds made up all day.

The net effect is just incredible convenience. When the time comes, you drive to a camp site, park, plug in the power cable, and you're ready to go. No tent to put up, no sleeping bags to unroll, not even cooking gear to unpack: you just take the saucepans and plates from the cupboard and start cooking. The wine has of course been chilling in the fridge during the day. After washing up and some play, you just turn in. In the morning you eat breakfast and jump in the shower, unplug, and you're ready to go! Nothing could be easier. And actually, you don't even need to find a camp site if you don't want to, since the power supply is really superfluous: everything in the van will run off either a second 12V battery, or the gas cylinder. It's just that the fridge is a bit more effective on 220V than on gas.

If you're on a touring holiday, I don't think this can be beat for hassle-freedom. None of the hassles of a tent, none of the hassles even of a caravan (which have low speed limits and need more setting up on arrival), and compared to hotels or B&Bs you don't need to spend time and energy on finding a nice place to stay: you're driving it! It was superb.

We drove about 800 miles around central Sweden, staying in a different place most nights, so we made good use of the van. We took Liam to Astrid Lindgren's world to make up for missing Legoland (she's the author of Pippi Longstocking, among many other children's books, and this place is very well done, not at all just a theme park with rides). We went to Västervik on the east coast, and toured the archipelago by boat. We visited Gunnar Ståhlmarck (friend and colleague of Mary's) at his summer cottage close to Stockholm, and he took us lake fishing for the day in his motor boat, confounding all my expectations (there was no disgusting bait since we were using drags, we did not spend ages doing apparently nothing, we did catch fish (even I), gutting was acceptably gusting, and they tasted great!) We even used the van at Gunnar's: his cottage is very nice, but a trifle compact in the sleeping arrangements, but no problem: we drove up in our own bedroom! On the way back we checked out a turn-of-the-century author's villa (Ellen Key, if you've heard of her), Sweden's most carved runestone with a staggering 800 runes, and a striking geological formation whose origin is still somewhat mysterious: a valley up to 100' deep, whose sides are vertical walls of rock in places no more than 20' apart.

So we had a great time, and the whole experience was very moreish. On the other hand, there's the awful matter of cost. We paid £450 for a week's rental. We could have stayed in hotels for that (but then we would have had to spend time finding them each day, and perhaps even book in advance to be sure of a room). New, a camper van can go for £40K or even more, and the damn things depreciate slowly! You can buy a summer house for rather less than that (but then you can't drive a summer house). But you can tell what a great time we had from the fact that we haven't dismissed the idea out of hand: we're trying to figure out how much we do earn really, and where all the money does go, and if it really needs to, and how much we spend on accomodation per year, not forgetting money saved by self catering more on holiday, and could we use it in the winter, etc etc etc. Watch this space!