Caravans and caravan holidays in general, suffer from a very bad image problem. Visions of rainy days with games of Scrabble in very compressed little cabins of fibreglass and synthetic fabric ‘sofas’ swim through our minds with this phrase. Yet dig a little further below the surface and you will find that caravans make an ideal holiday home this summer. Choose the right place or places, and a caravan journey could make a really cool, and unexpectedly interesting summer getaway. To explain why, please see the following four reasons.
One – Get off the beaten track
To have enough space to be able to host a caravan park, you need a lot of space. Really, a lot. So much that you cannot expect your caravan park to be anywhere close by to town names you know well or urban centres that many would recognise. This gives you a chance to explore somewhere new, and have somewhere very different to report back to your friends about when you get there. You might think that ‘poorly known’ is a synonym for ‘boring’ in that if it was more interesting, more people would be aware. But that attitude means nothing new would ever be discovered. The world is your oyster, and while you might have to crack your way through some very bland clams to get there, there is still a pearl worth finding in the middle.
Two – Explore Nature
Remember where we said before about the amount of space that a caravan park needs? Well, the only place that you’re likely to find that kind of space is far out in the depths of the countryside. This, of course, presents a great opportunity to get out into some of the uncoordinated, unplanned, and completely natural and everyday beauty the world has to offer. There is something deeply soothing and restorative about the time that you can spend in the countryside when you really delve deep, and the great thing about caravan holidays is that you don’t have to travel far from your home-away-from-home to find it. That’s why so many people go one step further, actually selecting from a range of holiday homes that are for sale and making it a permanent holiday launching point.
Three – Your Own Space, Alongside Others
With a hotel, just how much of the space around you is really yours? You have to be pushed in with every busy travelling businessman, every lovesick set of newlyweds, every over exhausted family, and every snap happy solo traveller. It can feel strangely dehumanising because you’re just another meaningless face to the staff. With a caravan, that kind of issue is pushed to one side, because a caravan is functionally a very small house. Not only is there a nice barrier of outdoor space between you and your neighbours, but they actually are neighbours. Because of that extra gap, you can feel like talking to people feels less of an imposition. Friendly relations can happen, and the people you meet can share their own stories and you might actually find its interesting.
Four – It’s not the Destination, it’s the Journeys
When you stay at a hotel, the expense and the difficulties involved generally means that’s where you are, and that’s where you’re going to stay. While you can hop between hotels, the cost then gets much higher. The same is not true with caravans. Visiting multiple caravan sites in a single holidaying season doesn’t come with the same kinds of problems. Caravan sites are not only generally cheaper, but they are also generally more amenable to shorter stays since you are literally staying in a mobile unit. If you take care with regulations, there are even places outside of parks that you can stay on a very short term basis, as long as you do not leave any rubbish or other such debris behind.
Caravanning might have a bad image, but it mostly is just reputational problems. You look deeper and you find a great way to explore unfamiliar parts of the country, get back to nature, stay in your own space, and visit a range of different stops in one trip.
This post is in collaboration.
