Camping or caravanning | Forum

Ya know Leezy, I missed all of these other posts yesterday because all I did was click on the link for the "last reply" in the main forum. I failed to go to the topic again to check for new messages ( other than the "last reply") in the rest of this forum. My apologies about that.

What is caravanning?? a simple search reveals what seems to be tow behind vehicle campers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=caravanning&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
We also call them RV's here in the US. An RV can be pulled by a vehicle, or self driven and as big as 40+ feet ( 11 or 12 meters). Is caravanning specific to only pull behinds, or is it a generic term similar to our RV'ing??

jeeze... my other post in this forum kinda sounds the same. a long time ago i loved camping. Last time I did it I had recently purchased a small truck and found that the air mattress I had would fit in the back ( the truck does have a cap on it). I decided to take a portable propane stove, as well as the tent, sleeping bags, etc...


that trip really spoiled me. I think more than anything I loved being on the air mattress instead of the ground. But I have to admit the gas grill also made for much better eating than running into town for a restaurant, or charcoal grilling and all the worries with fires associated with it.

So now I have to wonder, why did both of these posts start with "long ago......"  I don't want to admit getting older than I used to be... so it can't be that

Thanks for the reply Billy!

Yeah, as you found with your search on google the term 'caravanning' is the hobby of using a caravan which is a (usually) small 'mini house' if you like containing all the usual stuff you would have in your house like beds, cooker, fridge, toilet, sink, shower, tv, tables, chairs etc and depending on your budget you can have just about anything you like in it such as built-in generators, microwaves, satellite tv, reclining chairs, full-size double beds, computer system etc.

Here in the UK, a caravan doesn't contain any kind of engine to drive it anywhere. These we call motorhomes, campervans or campers (like your RV's) and they are obviously more expensive to buy than just a caravan as you don't need a car to tow it anywhere!

I have owned a couple of caravans in my time and even a couple of campers (nothing as big as the RV's you have in the states) but I currently own a car that's been converted into a camper, so I have the best of both worlds in being able to go off and 'camp' whenever I want and still drive virtually anywhere without any height/weight restrictions. Plus, I can get myself to work and around generally using the same vehicle.

Ok on your old camping days. Yeah, it sounds like you had a great time. Talking of doing something a long time ago...it must've been around 15 years or so when I purchased a very small van called a Bedford Rascal. I put carpet down in the back on the floor and the sides, threw in my clothes & some bedding along with my mini-disc player and a bag full of discs and as I didn't have a job at the time (I had just completed some contract work) I decided to take some time out and I ended up driving down to southern Spain where I ended up staying for about 6 months (helped by getting 2 jobs!) A few months down the line, my little van died on me and became to expensive to get repaired so I ended up getting a flight back home. It was great fun at the time though!

RV here stands for "Recreational Vehicle". Therefore all vehicles from pull behind campers, to box type truck inserts, 5th wheel trailers, and Motor Homes all fall into the "RV" category. Each has many derivatives of its own within each of their respective categories as well. For example, a "Toy hauler" is made generically to carry toys ( watercraft, ATV's, motorcycles, etc) in addition to the camping aspect of the vehicle..

with your converted car you could probably rent or sell your house and live in metered parking, couldn't you?   . All though if metered parking there is anything like here, it might cost more to park than rent a house, depending on where you park.

Do you have a pic you could post of the car? if it isn't asking to invade your privacy? Just use the button that looks like a camera to find the file and I think there is a 4M attachment size limit ( it may be 4K.... I'm not sure to be honest).

Hi Billy!

Yeah I knew that RV stood for "Recreational Vehicle" there but I thought that just covered the type that you can drive.

Well, my "micro-camper" isn't a large and luxurious one, so I guess I could use it instead of living in my apartment but I would really need to be on a dedicated site more often than not, due to lack of proper facilities like hot running water, toilet & shower etc, but I could certainly get by "off-grid" for maybe a week or so. Here are a few photos of my "micro-camper":

This "micro-camper" is based on the Citroen Berlingo and was converted by a company based south of London on the coast (near Brighton). They usually buy second-hand cars, convert them and then sell them, that's their business. However, looking at the prices of them for sale, I found it cheaper to buy the basic car myself then take it to them to get the conversion done afterwards. I also ended up with a newer vehicle with less miles on the clock as they seem to only buy in and convert a slightly older model of vehicle.

As part of the conversion, not only did they supply a 'drive-away' awning but they also supplied and fitted a roof top box, as that houses all the pieces that are used to make up the double-size bed (or single if preferred). It takes less than 2 minutes to make the bed up by simply folding the driver & passenger seats and placing the pieces from the roof top box on top of the seats and slotting them into place next to the rear seats already in place.

As you can probably tell, below the rear seating area is plenty of storage as well as a few more cupboards or compartments below the sink and gas hobs. Another great feature is that all that seating area with the cushions on is seperate from the part with the sink/cooker on it and therefore can very easily be taken out (by undoing about 8 wingnuts) so you can fit the original back seats in it again!

In the last photo, (behind that cushion nearest the red car) is a double electrical socket to plug any regular device into when on a site with electric hook-up. You can see where the cable hooks up on the outside of the car in the first photo (above rear wheel arch below the window).
In the second photo you can see there are two cupboards (or compartments) the one on the left (below the sink) is split into 2 with the lefthand side housing a leisure battery to power devices when off grid as well as the water container and the right compartment houses the gas bottle for the 2 hobs. The smaller cupboard/compartment on the right (below the 2 burner gas hob) houses a pull-out "portaloo" (a camping toilet like you get in compact RV's).

All the rear and side windows have curtains with tie-backs and to cover the front windows at night there is another curtain which uses fasteners to clip into place.
I don't know if you can also tell but all the rear windows are blackened out to the highest legal level to keep nosey eyes out and also to keep it cool in the summer sunshine (if we get any! lol)

What do you reckon to it?

Thanks for posting the pics, Leezy. May i recommend to you to blur out the license plate # to help protect your privacy? If you don't have photo editing software, I can do it for you and PM you back the image. My other concern with it is that some scammer sees the pic, then puts it up for sale on a classified site (such as Gumtree). While you would not be guilty of a thing, if the cops were notified by the buyer that bought a fake car for sale, it would likely be a hassle for you that you really don't need to go through if the license # was legible. 

I can see why a flushable loo ( or toilet as we call it) and bathing facilities are desirable. Btw, thanks for the hint at what a loo is.. It never ceases to amaze me at the differences between British English, American English, and Australian English ( not to mention the countries that use it as a 2nd, 3rd or 4th language).

Sounds and looks like a nice setup you have there, like you said for short getaways.... I know a person or 2 in the UK, and they go to France regularly to the beaches there. I'd imagine something like your RV ( as we call it) can save big time on lodging, that is if camping parks with bath houses are available.

it sort of reminds me of the custom van I had back in the 70's and 80's, when in those days it was a "party on wheels" combined with a weekend camping machine for extended stay parties ( I was a lot younger then). my van had zero plumbing, except for the cans / bottles of liquid we ingested.... so we either found a tree to expel it, or happened to be near a building with facilities we could use. At that age, it really didn't matter to us that much which choice we made.

it sure looks like you have the more luxury model of the party machine. If you can use it regularly enough that it brings you joy, then it sounds like you have a real great item in your possession.


 

Thanks for the reply and recommendation Billy. Before I went to bed last night I took your advice and deleted the photo of my car that displayed my registration plate then quickly uploaded an edited version minus the plate of course!

Yeah, it is strange isn't it how certain things get called totally different things on each side of the pond? One that always makes me chuckle is the American way of calling trousers 'pants' but I actually learned a few years ago that these differences aren't always down to Americans simply using something different just to be different and are actually using the proper original term for that thing. An example is here in the UK we use 'autumn' for the season before winter and yet America use 'fall.' Well, 'fall' was the old English word for what we now call 'autumn' for whatever reason!

Yes, it is a nice setup and it would be nice to get to use it but as you're probably aware we get very changable weather here in the UK and it's not really nice to try and camp out when it's raining which it has been doing a fair bit of during the last few months (especially on the weekends when I'm off work!)

I have used it on a couple of occaisions so far and like you say it can save big time on getting lodgings which makes for very cheap vacations as most of the cost goes on the lodgings.

I hope you do not mind me jumping in your thread?  Fall is ambigious word for 2 reasons.  Due to a lack of photosynthesis caused by a growing lack of daylight, causes leaves to age and fall off the tree in a protective measure.  Then we have the great time debate about putting clocks back and forth, in this case we refer to the clocks going back as fall / falling back 1 hour, or Leap forward in the spring, as in Easter and rabbits leaping and playing in the warming meadows or warm commons or downs.

So what we have is fall to describe the act of dead leaves falling off desidous trees, because it's autumn and day light is shortening,  and then of course because it is autumn we have the clocks going back. It would have been far easier for immigrants into the United States to say fall to both refer to the season and the clocks going back.

The American way of speaking English is actually what is called a phonemic, this means the person who see's something written down will attempt to say it, in the most simplest of forms.  It had nothing to do with Noah Webster, who would later (during the 1800's) standardize the phonemic spelling of words as spoken entirely by Americans.  The reason for this was two-fold.  1) British English was very different than it is today, it was more complex with nuances and grammar, which made it exceptionally difficult for foreigners at the time to learn to speak the language.  2) If there was a way to simplify the language, without the complex nuances and the advanced grammar, and if the language could be based on the way a word is spoken, rather than the way it was spelled. In British it was the other way around, which made it very difficult especially for Spanish speakers of the Language, of which the United States was made up of many Spanish settlers.  American English as a language does not exist, because it's root language is English from the Mother country.  Take for example Chilean, Mexican, Argentinan Spanish, they are all subtley different from the main langauge, but they are still recognizably Spanish. Each of these spanish languages, have their own colloquilism, mannerisms, way of saying words that are local variations of the main language.  English is exactly like this, and the reason why America fell into the phonetic way of speaking English words, it was especially handy and exceptionally easy for foreigners whose mother tongue wasn't english, to pick it up with ease, because there was nothing to get in the way of how to spell the word. And because the Language was entirely phonetic, it was extremely easy to incorporate other words from foreign lands into the language too, without all this difficult and fussy way of spelling getting in the way of pronouncing words.  Washing, Franklin would have spoken inpeccable British English and so would their first generation families, but American phonetism the way they spoke, would have flooded across the US within the first 5 or 6 years, and gone from coast to coast within 20/25 years these are only rough guesses of the time scales.  The spanish would have refused to speak English, and we know that because of the evidence for it in the shape of documents and other important letters.  It would take at least another 100 or so years before the Spanish would convert and become anglicized in terms of the english language, but americanized because that is what they became. In the mean time the speed at which the English language is evolving (immigrants in the UK, and Americans teaching English and popular tv/cinema / gaming culture) is astounding, there are now more American words in the British English dictionary in the last decade than there have ever been since it's inception / beginning).
I am really sorry for invading your forum thread and sticking my nose in, but i couldn't help it   At least you now know where the word fall comes from, and the reasonw why American's speak english differently from us.  However since British English is evolving, and more and more American words are appearing in British English don't be surprised to see a complete reversal in the next couple of decades where pretty much most of words have been replaced by the phonetic types (because of the heavy immigration in the UK)

I used to go camping in tents across the Nordic countries including Iceland. I would go with a couple of avid hikers, and we'd go Norway, Sweden and Finland because the law of the land there is pretty much camp where you want, but just common sense.  They have the right of the land and the use of it or rather freedom of it.
I have had many long night's during the summer into the early autumn laying in my sleeping bag outside by the side of the fire, looking up at the Northern Lights. Honestly if you have never seen them before, you should spend a few weeks camping in the wilderness in Finland, especially Northern Finland and Sweden.

I am not sure where you have been camping in Southern Spain, but there is this little camp site in Torremolinas, which has a cheap chalets with AC, it has hard based camp ground, toilets and showers , and the most exquisite restaurant next door to it. Have spoken numerous times to the onwers, and his grown up kids, perfect little place to have a cheap excellent quality meal at night, or stop off late afternoon for a cool beer, or cold drink and a bite to eat. He makes the most amazingly tasty sandwiches.

Also your only about 2 miles away from the town of Torremolinas, which has pretty much everything. Sadly it's also very British there. The place looks like its hundreds of years old, but it only because a holiday resort during the late 50's early 60's, and everything is sun / heat blasted, which gives it that aged look. Never the less the people there where so friendly and helpful when trying to find shops / things etc.   Basically from this campsite, you are within 5 minutes of walking straight on to the beach. Malaga is about 6 miles to the East, so again it's really close.  As your probably aware, try not to eat in any of the restaurants along the beach unless your prepared to spend quite a chunk of money doing it, since it's entirely and obviously created for the tourists, there are however lots of little nooks and crannies you can go for top quality food at really cheap prices like the spaniards do

Quote from fiddlesticks1 I hope you do not mind me jumping in your thread? 

feel free to jump in any thread ( topic) you want to, fiddlesticks1. The forums are here so that everyone can voice their opinions on the topics. And so we can all get to know each other in a public medium as opposed to private chat.

There are reasonably simple rules to follow here in the forum (in the forum rules forum) in addition to the terms of use found at the bottom of each page. We only ask you post according to the rules.

I'm not implying the rules have been broken, my goal is to make you aware they exist, that is all.

happy posting and thanks for posting.

I was camping in HK and Taiwan

camping in the mountains of mexico, just 4 hours drive fron the borderline with texas