Caravan Travels

Last week Helen and I had our first outing with the new caravan – two nights at Waleswood near Sheffield (24-25th March).

After waiting quite a while from colllecting our new van, a 2019 Bailey Unicorn Cadiz, back in December we were finally able to test it out on a local site only about 10 miles away from home.

I’m very happy to report that all went well and everything works as it should.

Waleswood is a lovely hilltop-located caravan site run by Sheffield City Council. And I have to say it is easily one of the best caravan sites we’ve visited since we started caravanning about three years ago. The site is an extensive one and has 163 pitches in all (including 33 tent pitches). The vast majority of the caravan pitches are ‘Super Pitches’ which means that they have full water services (including waste water drainage) as well as electrical hookup. Caravan life is a lot easier on a pitch with water services, which removes the need for you periodically trundling around the site with your heavy Aquaroll (fresh water) and Wastemaster (Grey, waste water container). The pitches at Waleswood are also some of the largest we’ve ever seen – with tons of room for your caravan, awning and car. The on-site facilities were excellent, well-maintained and spotlessly clean too. The Reception are is in a large club-house bar area with comfortable seating for around 60-80 people.

The only aspect of our caravanning that we were unable to try-out on this very brief stay was deploying either of our two air awnings (We have a large one which extends over most of the length of the caravan, and a smaller one which is ideal for shorter stays). The weather was very much against us – and being on an exposed hilltop the wind was quite severe. The view over Sheffield was great and extended for some miles however!

And so to the caravan itself: This caravan has two single beds which are inline with the van’s long axis. Our previous caravan had a transverse double bed which we had to extend each night before getting in. We had a bit of an inconvenience in that, once the bed was extended to its full length, it then meant that access to the bathroom (at the rear of the van) was very much restricted. The two single beds have removed that issue entirely and made life much easier.

Another benefit of the new arrangement is that over-bed storage is now much easier to access. Helen and I bought a couple of Duvalay sleeping bags with built-in mattress-toppers and a choice of two duvets which go in the top bits. These worked great and allowed us to sleep very comfortably in the 26 inch wide single beds. (It was a relief to find that the beds weren’t too narrow for comfort!)

One of the other biggest differences with the new van is that there is no front storage locker. Although that might initially sound like a bad thing, for me this is a huge improvement. On our old Elddis caravan the front locker was a pain to use as it meant bending down quite a lot and the A-frame at the front of the caravan made access harder still. With the Bailey, there are more storage lockers located around the van which accommodate various bits of equipment instead. I particularly like the centrally-located dedicated gas locker which means that heavy gas cylinders no longer impact the noseweight at the front of the van.

In this van we also have a full-height fridge which gives us far more storage the the under-counter one we had before. Helen was a bit heavy-handed though and managed to break two of the door-shelf containers – thank goodness for Araldite! We’ll be much more careful with these in future. The built-in oven, cooker-hob, microwave oven, wifi and the JVC stereo system all worked perfectly, as did the central-heating system. (We left the van for a couple of hours shortly after setting everything up and returned to find the heating was set at 27 degrees celsius – it was like a sauna!)

We’ve noted a minor issue with the water system in that the bolier pressure needs slght adjustment to prevent the pump coming on periodically when it’s not needed, but otherwise everything was just as it should be.

All in all, we were very pleased with the new caravan and can’t wait for our next trip which is four nights at Abbey Wood in London in a couple of week’s time.