How we nearly packed it all in

How we nearly packed it in.

We’re fairly new to caravanning, this is our 3^rd year.

Our 1^st trip was to little CL a few miles away, a friend

Towed the van there as we still didn’t have a tow car.

It was a big field with a few vans on it, you could pitch where you wanted. It was a 2 nighter and all went reasonably well.

Our 2^nd trip was to a larger site about 25 miles away inRutland. We arrived to a large field, about 5 acres of rough grass with 3 other vans on site. Not being overly confident about what we were doing we headed to a corner of the field well away from the other vans.

As we got out of the car a very large 4x4 was suddenly hurtling straight for us with no driver !  ‘my god’ I thought. The 4x4 then came to a juddering halt right by us, out stepped a little old lady. How she ever saw over the steering wheel I’ll never know.

“Hello” I said, “we are…..” I was interrupted, “YOU CANT PARK THERE !” she roared, “oh” I said “we are new to…..” I was interrupted again, “ YOU HAVE TO REVERSE YOUR CARAVAN SO YOUR REAR NUMBER PLATE LINES UP WITH THE PEG” she boomed,  “oh sorry” I said, “we are new to …..” I interrupted again , “NAME ?” 

I was now thinking site owners were retired Gestapo officers, my eyes wondered down towards her feet, expecting to see shiny black jack boots, but no, green wellies were the order of the day.

“NAME ?” she said again in an even louder voice. I told her our name, she studied her list. “YOUR NOT ON MY LIST !” she growled,  “oh, sorry but we did book” I said “ we’re new to…..” I was interrupted again “SPELL IT !” , so I did.

By now she was on the phone, presumably to HQ inBerlin, whilst she was doing that I took my several attempts to get the van reversed up to the peg being carefully watched by the little old lady. I finally succeeded.  

“Ok” she boomed once more, and with that stepped into her vehicle and the driverless 4x4 headed back up the field and we never saw her again.

With that being our 2^nd time out and 1^st time on our own we really questioned if we wanted to carry on caravanning……..  I’m very glad to say we did carry on, but what an experience that was.