From a tent to a caravan...

This is an account of the activities that I have undertaken with my best friend and wife, Pauline.
We started out by travelling to New Zealand in 2003.
There, we hired a motor home and travelled around the south island for 3 weeks.
We then did small weekend trips in a dome tent with the kids.
We lived out of a small Coleman Esky and made do with absolute bare essentials in terms of cooking and eating equipment.
We found ourselves enjoying these camping experiences, so we invested in a second hand camper trailer.

The more we went camping we found that this style of camper trailer was becoming restrictive - rain and wind were dictating our movements. Because it was a conventional canvas style camper, these conditions made setting up and packing up difficult when we were on the road. Not so much and issue when you're set up for multiple days because the canvas has plenty of opportunity to dry after the weather subsides.
We then decided to by a Tvan camper trailer. This style of camper allowed us to pull up in any weather, or time of the night, and slip into bed without having to erect the tent section.

The Tvan was great, but it still had it's problems when travelling on the road. The problem of wind, flies, rain and bugs were still there when it came to using the kitchen which is outdoors.

We had a full annexe for long stays, but it was too much to erect it for short stays and travelling on the road. Therefore, all of our kitchen use was outdoors.

We had some great trips in both camper trailers and because we tend to be on the move for most of our trips, we realised that a caravan was the only way forward for us.

We needed a van that was small enough to fit inside our shed and not too big to tow.

After a great deal of research we found a van that would suit our travelling needs as well as our budget. It's a 14' Goldstream Explorer ST off-road model.

So far this little van satisfies all of our needs..

 

You will see some of our adventures in the other posts on this blog.