Ian03/54
Guest
Hi All,
We, that is me Ian and my better half Jackie, are seasoned travelers currently enjoying our eighth motorhome. We have two teenage daughters, 19 & 16, who have traveled with us over the years although the elder is now “Too grown up for camping holidays and in need of more sophistication!” Through the years we had built up to a Hymer 665 S Class which we enjoyed for eight summers only changing last year when we needed a smaller (and faster) motorhome to carry our daughter’s possessions back and forth home in Suffolk to university on the south coast. We now own a Westfalia James Cook Sprinter which has the 2.9litre 5 cylinder engine mated to the fully automatic gearbox. This makes a fantastic, very quick, motorhome and when we toured the French/Swiss Alps last summer we realized just how marginal the Hymer performance had been – fine for 99% of the time but it just wouldn’t have been able to manage were we wanted to go in the mountains. We like to wild-camp whenever we can either in the UK, where we can normally find somewhere off the beaten track, or when we tour in Europe. We love the system of Aires and make full use although having a teenager with us does mean that we sometimes use commercial sites for their facilities. When in the Alps we really enjoyed riding the chair-lifts and found that it was best to be the early in the queue in the mornings and to do this without having to rise and drive very early we used the chair-lift car parks to overnight. Every lift we used was placed close by a restaurant and this gave everything we wanted all in one place and with the bonus that we could lay-in till a civilized time in the mornings.
I look forward to reading of others’ experiences of wild-camping.
Regards to all, Ian
We, that is me Ian and my better half Jackie, are seasoned travelers currently enjoying our eighth motorhome. We have two teenage daughters, 19 & 16, who have traveled with us over the years although the elder is now “Too grown up for camping holidays and in need of more sophistication!” Through the years we had built up to a Hymer 665 S Class which we enjoyed for eight summers only changing last year when we needed a smaller (and faster) motorhome to carry our daughter’s possessions back and forth home in Suffolk to university on the south coast. We now own a Westfalia James Cook Sprinter which has the 2.9litre 5 cylinder engine mated to the fully automatic gearbox. This makes a fantastic, very quick, motorhome and when we toured the French/Swiss Alps last summer we realized just how marginal the Hymer performance had been – fine for 99% of the time but it just wouldn’t have been able to manage were we wanted to go in the mountains. We like to wild-camp whenever we can either in the UK, where we can normally find somewhere off the beaten track, or when we tour in Europe. We love the system of Aires and make full use although having a teenager with us does mean that we sometimes use commercial sites for their facilities. When in the Alps we really enjoyed riding the chair-lifts and found that it was best to be the early in the queue in the mornings and to do this without having to rise and drive very early we used the chair-lift car parks to overnight. Every lift we used was placed close by a restaurant and this gave everything we wanted all in one place and with the bonus that we could lay-in till a civilized time in the mornings.
I look forward to reading of others’ experiences of wild-camping.
Regards to all, Ian