During our recent trip to Seal Rocks, I watched with interest an admitted newcomer to the caravaning world get himself into a real pickle. The couple arrived with a bright and shiny new Lotus van. It was dual axle and I'm guessing about 20ft. Tow vehicle was a new twin cab ute (not sure the make). On arrival adjacent to his site, he did a recce of the area and how best to locate his van. Couldn't drive through, had a van on either side and on the road there were two large marker posts (diameter of a power pole). Being late afternoon on a dreary overcast day and close enough to happy hour, myself and several others pulled up a comfortable chair, grabbed a cold beverage and sat back to watch the action. As you may expect there was plenty of advice from the peanut gallery, some constructive, majority though was typical Aussie humour. Not what you need when you are attempting your first back-in of a van. Things took an interesting turn when the newbie unhooked his tug and pulled out a remote control from the boot of the van - the van was fitted with a motorised self mover on the dual wheels. Hadn't seen one close up before so was very interested. He started moving the van backwards along the dirt road opposite his site, stopped, then started moving the van, drawer bar first, into the site. Seemed odd especially when there was a van on the site in front. With plenty of encouragement and a few questioning looks, the van was parked on the site. Next he parked his tug beside the van but space was so tight that they could not roll out there awning. Overnight, there was fairly constant rain. You can probably guess the sites were a bit soft in the morning. Check out time is 10am. Around 9am, the guy was trying to reverse his van out using the mover. When I left, his jockey wheel was not visible above the mud. And there wasn't enough room for him to get his tug in front of the van to hook up. I expect he finally got it sorted but somehow I don't think he made the 10am checkout.
Maybe a moral or two in the above story about the size of your van and site selection for your first caravan trip. Makes me really appreciate having the small 'Panda......
Maybe a moral or two in the above story about the size of your van and site selection for your first caravan trip. Makes me really appreciate having the small 'Panda......