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THE VOYAGER VECTOR

The future for touring caravanning is about to take off …

This revolutionary new caravan on Barron’s Stand 132 at The Caravan & Outdoor Leisure Show, Earl’s Court, 1-6 November 2005.

Ticket comp on the way............not a comp to win the caravan I,m afraid

Like it? Loath it?

What do ya think. I like it

release to Touring and Tenting 15/09/05

Posted by: Tenaki at 22:47 | link | comments

Our First Time caravanning in France

Article by Stuart Dalzell
15th September 2005

I thought this might interest people who are going for the first time, a sort of perspective from a first timer if you like. We are, Stewart, Sandra and Nicola. We drive a Vectra and pull a Swift Charisma 555. We plan to visit three sites over a three week period, stretching from Normandy to the Loire and up into the Somme. We’re from the North West of England so none of the Ferry ports are handy. To travel to the docks is effectively one day of our holidays.

After an overnight stop we sailed from Dover on the 04.45, arriving at Calais at 07.00 local time. If we were to do this route again then I would choose this sailing again. The reason being that if you have to drive all day and all day is I think probably no more than 300 miles, then you will arrive at your over night stop or destination mid afternoon, which I think is ideal. Also It was for us, the cheapest crossing. First site for us was a Camping and Caravanning Club Rally held in the Town of Le Haye Du Puits in Normandy. My idea here, being a first timer was to get amongst the seasoned Brits who could give me a few tips and I have to say the plan worked as we were given loads of excellent advice. Great site as well. It’s called L’Etang Des Haizes and is equipped with a pool, waterslides, bar and a well stocked Carp lake.

Just a quick word about our route. I, being tight, decided to go via N roads and free stretches of the motorways. To aid me on my way I have a Navman 510 Sat Nav. First leg, E402, a free motorway to Boulogne, then it’s on to the N1 down to Abbeville. I liked the N1, It’s not fast, but it was a steady road for me to cut my teeth on. There are some beautiful Towns and villages to see on route. From Abbeville it’s back on the E402 free motorway to Rouen. First big built up area for us to navigate. Without the Sat Nav this could be a bit daunting but with it we had no trouble, you’ve just got to trust it. The next part of the journey was for us the worst part. We took the N175 to Caen. The trouble I found with this road was that every time we accelerated out of one village we were breaking for the next. This leg of the journey seemed to take a life time and by now I was getting tired. In future, I would bite the bullet and pay the tolls from Rouen to Caen and save myself a lot of stopping and starting driving. Caen is a breeze to drive round and it’s motorway almost all the way to our destination.

Things I would do different next time.

Consider a crossing to one of the nearer ports, i.e. Cherberg, Caen or Le Havre. Probably not a cheaper option and we would not have seen so many picturesque towns and villages. Also book the site direct, I think I could have saved quite a bit of money.

Stage 2 of our adventure, 5 days in the Loire.

A town called Loches to be precise. A journey of about 260 miles, all done, again on N roads. It’s a French bank holiday Monday and the roads are quieter than normal, we saw only 3 lorries all-day, unheard of over here. I must admit by the time we got to Loches I was getting pretty sick of the N roads. As an experienced lorry driver, 260 miles isn’t an awful lot and yet I turned up at the site absolutely drained. Next leg, we're going to do the toll roads. The site is La Citadelle and sits on the side of the river. A great site again but be warned there are a number of French 2 pinned electric boxes here and reversed polarity as well so take all your cables with you. Our pitch was under the trees and we had to run our cable over the road for power so at the beginning I wasn’t so suited. I was less impressed when I found all the Brits on huge service pitches and out in the open. As with a lot of first impressions they turned out to be wrong as the shade from the trees was a god send and the cable wasn’t a problem either. The vans on the open service pitches must have been like ovens during the day. The night times always cooled down so that we needed the quilt on, which I call perfect. I can’t give you a lot of details of what we did there as we didn’t do much at all except relax and soak up the sun.

Third part of our adventure.

Loches to Peronne in the Somme valley. About 280 miles and almost all of it on Toll roads. The overall cost for the tolls was about 40 euros and the route took us round the infamous Paris Peripherique. I managed the Paris Peripherique with the aid of the Sat Nav and if I was to do this road a 1000 times I would use the Sat Nav every time. If not, then I think you really need to know the road or have a super navigator beside you and even then you need to be able to decipher the French road signs which I think are poor. To say the signs are poor might not be fair. Had I needed to use them from the off then I may well have grown used to them. As it was I just followed the directions from the Sat Nav. Would I use the toll roads again? Yes certainly, but not exclusively. WE did 2500 miles on this holiday and if I had used toll roads where ever possible then it would have made a large dint in my wallet. I will take each stage at a time and if I have time to amble then I will take the N roads.

The site for our last week in France is called Camping Du Port De Plaisance, sitting on the banks of the River Somme. Again, a good site although a little muddy due to the weather. We were here for a week but on the whole most people used the site as an overnight stop, which meant we could hear people packing up to go from about 05.30. We used this site as a base to visit the Somme battlefield and I would urge anyone remotely interested in the battle to visit. I won’t go on about it now as I intent to publish an article about the Somme. I want to think about it for a couple of weeks first. I have in fact written a diary about our holiday but it is 73 pages long so it’s too long for an article but I may create my own web site and put it on there. The site, once again has French 2 pin connectors and reversed polarity.

This just leaves the journey back. Only about a two hour drive back to Calais We were booked on the 00.20 sailing from Calais and we hadn’t given a thought to the journey home. All our energy was devoted to going, not coming back. Defiantly a mistake. We did have a piece of luck as I had inadvertently booked one too many nights at the site. This meant we could have a quiet day getting ready to go and when we did leave we could go direct to the docks for the ferry home. Much better than getting turfed off the site at midday and having to kill time somewhere before we could catch the ferry. We did in fact catch an earlier ferry home. It seems to me that it is the luck of the draw as to weather it’s possible to do this. This is the point were I will plan in an overnight stop next time. Once we got back to Dover we had nowhere to go other than a lay by so I decided to drive through the night. Over 350 miles home and we arrived there some seven and a half hours later, not recommended. To be fair it was the bank holiday weekend and I didn’t fancy battling back home in all that traffic. That’s the reason I decided to drive straight home but I won’t do it again.

Three things I would consider changing for next time.

Change of ferry port and ferry destination. We choose Dover because of the price. Had we gone from Home to Portsmouth to Cherberg, then on to site our mileage would have been just over 450 miles. As it was the journey via Dover was a touch over 650 miles. The journey via Dover was by far a lot cheaper but time could be a factor. Secondly, All our sites were big ones with lots of extra’s like pools and bars. We never used any of the facilities on any of the sites. I think we will look at smaller cheaper sites next time. Our average site fee per night was about 25 euros and we stayed 19 nights in all. I will look at municipals next time and I think we could save somewhere in the region of 200 euros. Thirdly. I will plan our return journey with as much consideration as our outward one.

Did we like France? Oh yes, this by far, was the best holiday I remember, even after three weeks I wanted to stay a bit longer.

Will we go again? Just as soon as we can, we’re hooked.

Posted by: Tenaki at 22:00 | link | comments