Many moons ago, when we started our family, we lived in a mobile home.
We didn’t have a lot of money, but we were always determined to have a holiday each year.
We began with camping holidays, taking our tent to Devon and Cornwall, and occasionally Wales, from our Hampshire home.
We continued with tents, even when we had four children (we had six in total, and are about to greet our 19th grandchild).
Eventually, a bad storm in Cornwall – where we spent the night holding down the tent, even though we had roped it to the car towbar to stop it blowing away while the children slept – made us think about a caravan.
Time for an upgrade!
Soon after that, we bought ourselves a secondhand Lynton six-berth and had many happy holidays towing that around the country.
Over the years, we had four caravans, the last one being a four-berth Lunar, because some of the children had flown the nest by then.
We kept this on a site and went to it most weekends, but finally ended up with a static caravan on a site near Exmouth, which we kept and shared with family over a three-year period.
By then, we had started our family-run electrical business, which is still in the family today, so we had a bit more income than when the children were growing up.
We reached a point where we felt we had worn out the Exmouth area, and wanted to broaden our horizons.
Moving on to motorhomes
So we visited a nearby dealer and decided to buy our first motorhome, a four-berth Auto-Roller.
We sold the static and then progressed from our first motorhome to other models, trying various layouts.
We are now on our 14th, an Auto-Trail V-Line 635 SE.
In between, we have had Swifts, an Adria, a Home-Car P59, one of the first Bailey motorhomes and several coachbuilt Auto-Trails, finishing up with a Mohawk.
We feel quite settled with our V-Line now – we are getting used to downsizing!
We have been all over the British Isles, but we tend to visit Cornwall and the Isle of Man most frequently.
We love our pastime, especially now that we are retired, and we recommend the lifestyle to everyone we meet!
We recommend the lifestyle to everyone we meet!