Family HolidaysBack in the 80s when my Dad got made redundant (hello Dad!), he spent all the redundancy money on one of those big motor caravans.
Us kids loved it, apart from when my sister threw up on my sleeping bag, but looking back I'm not so sure my mum did. There was a certain tension every time the big van was even mentioned, let alone driven around France for weeks on end with her still having to cook and do all the washing.
What went wrong, what went right, and how did you survive the shame of having your family with you as a teenager?
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chthonic, Thu 2 Aug 2007, 14:33)
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Caravanning woeWe always went on camping holidays when I was a kid. Usually somewhere wet, like Wales or the Lake District or anywhere else in Great Britan in the summer. After one too many 'holidays' with only a tent to shelter us from the monsoon raging outside and having to swim to the shower block, my folks decided to upgrade to a caravan.... Unfortunately, they insisted on towing with a succession of woefully underpowered cars, culminating in our final caravanning holiday when the 'Tard family heap conked out halfway up a very steep hill somewhere in Wales.
Imagine the situation, if you will; a narrow mountain road, a precipice falling away to unseen depths on our left and a mighty wall of rock to our right, the four 'Tards (not a bad name for a band, actually) and our vehicle, stranded, and a queue of impatient and angry traffic starting to form behind.
After a bit of a rant and a swear, Dad had a bright idea; he would unhook the caravan and single-handedly manoeuvre it into the convenient layby a few yards back down the hill. However, he had obviously underestimated the power of gravity in Wales, because when the brake on the caravan was released it promptly took off down the hill faster than a tour de France winner being chased by a drugs tester, with poor old Dad a helpless hanger-on! Fortunately, he managed to slam on the brake mere metres from the edge of the cliff, before the caravan (and he) disappeared over the edge.
In the end he turned the caravan around, towed it back down the hill, found another way to the campsite and discovered it was on the top of yet another hill that the car didn't have a hope of climbing.
Many, many hours later we found somewhere to stay and, in total, it took over 11 hours to travel from our home in the Midlands to a grotty campsite somewhere in Wales. You can fly from London to LA in 11 hours ffs!!
Thankfully, after that, they gave up, sold the caravan (and the car!) and started going abroad.
Length? Hmmm.... About 15 years worth of holidays times 3 weeks a pop equals 45 weeks of misery under canvas. Correcting for rain-induced time dilation equals about 1000 years!
(, Tue 7 Aug 2007, 21:12, Reply)
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