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 very patiently from collecting 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 about the caravan works as it should do.

Waleswood is a lovely (hilltop-located) caravan site run by Sheffield City Council and lies to the South-East of the city, about three miles from M1 Junction 31.

I have to say Waleswood is easily one of the best caravan sites we’ve visited since we started caravanning about three years ago. It was highly-recommended to us by our good friends Garry and Jacquie who have stayed there several times previously and were there staying with us last week too; Garry is our resident caravan-guru and it’s always really handy to have him around for ‘consultations,’ to say the least!

The site is an extensive one and is beautifully maintained with tidy paths and close-cropped grass. There are 163 pitches in all (including 33 tent pitches). The vast majority of the caravan pitches are ‘Super Pitches’ which are fully-serviced with fresh water, waste water drainage and electrical hookup. For those who don’t know, caravan life is made significantly easier on a pitch with full water services, which removes the need for you to periodically trundle around the site with your heavy Aquaroll (fresh water) and Wastemaster (waste water) containers.

The pitches at Waleswood are also some of the largest we’ve ever seen – with loads of room for your caravan, awning and car. The on-site facilities (two large shower/toilet blocks) are excellent, well-maintained and spotlessly clean too. The Reception area is in a large ‘club-house’ building with tables and seating for around 60-80 people, with a licensed bar and small shop facilities. Outside is a kids’ playground.

One key element of our caravan setting-up procedures that we were unable to try-out with the new van during this 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 has a detachable sleeping extension, and a smaller one which is ideal for shorter stays). Unfortunately, the weather was against us during our stay at Waleswood – being on an exposed hilltop the wind was quite severe and was accompanied by the odd rain shower. One or two caravanners on more sheltered pitches across the site had deployed their awnings, but the majority of us weren’t taking any risks with them blowing away!

And so to the caravan itself: This caravan has two single beds which are in-line with the van’s long axis. Our previous caravan had a transverse double bed which we had to extend each night before getting into it. We had a bit of an inconvenience with this arrangement, however, in that once the bed was fully-extended, it then meant that access to the bathroom (at the rear of the van) was very much restricted. The two single beds in our Bailey caravan have removed that issue entirely and made life a lot 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 different-tog duvets which go in the top section. These worked great and allowed us to sleep very comfortably in the 26 inch wide single beds. (It was a further relief to also discover 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 (and not just because it means that the lounge sofas are extra long!). On our old Elddis caravan the front locker was a pain to use as it meant bending down quite low and leaning into the locker under the horizontally-projecting front cover. The A-frame at the front of the caravan made access harder still. With the Bailey, there are multiple 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. (PS. Although the gas locker is designed to hold two cylinders, we now only carry one in order to keep the weight down and to give a bit more storage space for various bits of equipment).

In this van we also have a full-height fridge which gives us far more storage than the under-counter one we had before. Helen had a bit of an accident on first filling the fridge door storage containers with my beer though, and inadvertantly broke two of them (thank goodness for our friend Garry and a tube of 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 inexplicably 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 outing which is a return-trip for four nights to Abbey Wood in London starting on April 19th.