First outing of the season

Well, we are just back from our first outing of the season. We always go for a couple of nights to a local CL to sort the van out for the new season. We left the storage at 1200 and it’s only half an hour to the Site. First thoughts were about the state of the caravan battery as we had not used the outfit since last November and we have a tracker alarm fitted which was going to be running the battery down. We hoped the trip would put enough back into the battery as our favourite pitches at the CL need the mover to manoeuvre the van into position. On arrival at the CL the first thing we saw was that there were already two outfits there, but fortunately not in our favourite pitch. Manoeuvred the van as much as possible into position with the car and engaged the mover. Fortunately we were able to get it into position, including lining up the Al-Ko wheel lock, without any problems or the battery giving out.

Once levelled and the steadies down the most important thing was to get the Electric hook-up connected and the heating on. It was the coldest we had ever found the van when using it for a trip. The previous night it had been down to -4C and the gauge showed the inside temperature to be 3C and didn’t it feel like it. The big difference was that the whole fabric of the van was this cold, not just the air. We set up the Alde heating on the 3Kw electric setting and decided to pop off and do some food shopping (including a visit to M&S which just happens to be the nearest shop to the Site. You can see why my wife loves this CL!!) We got back to the caravan about 90min later. What a transformation, the temperature gauge was now showing 18C and the whole van had started to feel warm. This is our first winter with a van with Alde heating and to say we are converts is an understatement. We have been away many times in the winter with other vans and blown air heating and always found them warm enough. But, the way the whole fabric warms with the Alde is totally different. Within another hour the heating had settled down to the 21C we set it to and from then on spent the next few days in comfortable temperatures. Overnight I set the temperature to 15C and it stayed there no matter how the external temperature changed. Both nights it got down to the -4/5C but the interior of the van was fine.

We had a great couple of days ‘chilling-out’ in the van getting everything sorted for the season. We had remembered most things apart from washing up sponges and the like. We compiled a short list of problems with the van to be sorted out in a couple of months at its first service. We had no problem with the water system or the toilet as we had made sure to empty them when we last used the van in November and when we packed away this time again ensured a full drain down.

Well here’s to the season ahead. We have 72 nights booked so far this year so the van will get well used.

Dave