Hi All, Another New Member

Hi all,

After 17 years without a Motor Caravan, and being with my wife for 16 years, we decided to invest in a new bathroom!! After looking at options for months and finally getting quotes, we decided that a new bathroom would make no difference to our lives whatsoever and instead purchased an old motor caravan. After much debate and research, we had narrowed the choice down to either an Autosleepers Duetto/Symphony, or Legend/Clubman etc. We opted for a sound looking 1993 Clubman GL after every single older Ford Transit bases Legend seemed to be plagued with major rust problems and the van body models didn't seem to have quite as much space for us. The VW T4 based Clubman GL seemed to have the slight edge rust wise and the one we bought was a duel fuel Petrol/LPG although the LPG hadn't been used for 2 years, but we made an offer to reflect that.

We viewed and bought last Saturday, 4 days ago, driving it back up to Lincolnshire from Wimbledon with no problems. We have spent a couple of days tidying it up and it will go in for a service and check over tomorrow, but not before we took an afternoon trip to Sandringham the day after buying it and a late afternoon and evening trip to Hunstanton with the dog, to watch the sun set into the sea. All went well, so looking forward to some happy times :-)

Although my wife has no experience of motor caravanning, I had a number of different vehicles over the years in a previous life. The first was a Ford Thames van when I was 17 back in the 60s, which I built a bed into, plus a cupboard with a hole in the top for a plastic bowl, and a camping stove balanced on a piece of ply. My DIY skills were very limited at that age! In the mid 70s I bought a Bedford CF minibus, added a GRP hi top and did a fairly reasonable conversion that served me well for a few years. The next in the early 80s, was my all time favourite, an automatic Bedford CF ambulance that I converted into a comfortable motor home that my 3 kids still remember fondly. That was followed by another CF with an odd UPVC clad wooden framed camper body. It was soon replaced with an early Fiat Ducato motor home that was my first professionally built one, although I can't remember who by. The last, back in 2000, was a 24'6" Ducato based Swift Royale about 5 years old, which was a lovely motorhome, but probably impractical for the casual use I wanted it for. Divorce saw the end of that, with no more motor caravanning until 4 days ago.

So finally after boring you with all that, I shall think about many of the questions I will want to ask, and look forward to the wealth of expertise available here.

Roger

Hello and welcome to this most friendly and informative forum.

Welcome from N.E Wales.    

Welcome from worcestershire, Matt and jo

  From Sandringham THS

You should have stayed at Sandringham there are a few AS vans on the temp holiday site and there are a couple of Clubman vans I can see from here

Welcome to the forum Roger  

That was a great introduction, good luck with your return to motorhoming  

Hi and welcome to the forum from Bridlington 
Boaby

Thanks for the welcome guys 

@Roli, Hi Roli, we live about 12 miles from Sandringham, and the day after we bought the Clubman, we took her for a quick afternoon trip to test some of the basics. We weren't ready for an overnight and we still aren't quite as the leisure battery has had it and the original habitation lighting is in need of replacing. There may be other things that we find, but we will try overnighting on a site in a couple of weeks.

There are plenty of free parking places at Sandringham for just relaxing, walking through the woods etc, and a great place to check out the van.

Roger

Not boring at all.

Welcome Roger from Llandudno

Frenchenstein wrote:Not boring at all.

Welcome Roger from Llandudno

Thank you for the welcome and we hope to get the MH down to your area perhaps next Spring. We love North Wales and are overdue for another visit. We camped there about 14 years ago, but will be much more relaxed with the MH. We won't be taking her up the Great Orme though 

Roger

We can see the Great Orme from our bedroom. However it gets packed to the gunwales in the Summer with nowhere to park! Plenty of other lovely places to visit. Snowdonia National is stunning.

Frenchenstein wrote:

We can see the Great Orme from our bedroom. However it gets packed to the gunwales in the Summer with nowhere to park! Plenty of other lovely places to visit. Snowdonia National is stunning.

I've visited Snowdonia on a number of occasions and am looking forward to taking the MH there. It would also be nice to get down to Portmadoc again and perhaps get the MH on to the Blackrock sands if they still allow it.

Roger

I seem to remember you can still go onto Black Rock sands (though not been there for ages).