After my previous post about first holiday in our van , Fish suggested I posted some hints and tips so here goes !! We stayed at Ruda , Croyde Bay on the North Devon coast , fantastic site in a great location , we had been before in static caravans and we love it there so it was always going to be our first destination .
We stopped in Croyde burrows which is the motorhome section of the site , nestled in behind the sand dunes and very sheltered which was important at this time of year and it's literally 2 mins walk to the beach . Some of the other camping fields would perhaps be better in summer (sea views etc) when the weather is better !! We had one horrendous stormy night where I was getting worried about the awning dissapearing and was very glad we were in a sheltered spot !
We have a Vango Cruz 2 awning which is excellent ( although I have to return it due to faulty zip but that's another story ) plenty of space and very well made , however when we took it down I noticed it has left lots of swirly scratches on the side of van where the tunnel touches the paint , im a bit annoyed but they should polish out , thinking of ways to prevent this happening again , I have bought 2 strips of the thin magnetic sign material , 0.5 mm thick, 300 mm x 1000mm which I am going to trim to fit the van where the awning touches it , then it can rub as much as it likes !! When it's time to drive away just peel them off and put them under the mattress on the pop up bed
The ground was very soft and after a couple of days you could feel the mud squishing about under the awning , not helped by the rain that ran off the van and also we had parked on a slight hill and all the waste water coming out the van was trickling down under and making things even worse , we were there 5 days so probably quite a lot of water in total , if we had put the van 180 degrees the other way round the water would have ran away from the van instead of underneath it !! I've put a pic of our pitch after we left , it wasn't pretty !!
I made some lights for the awning using the flexible 12v LED strips from eBay , absolutely brilliant and total cost about £15 , including remote control !! They just plug in to cigarette lighter socket in the van
The van and conversion (Vanworx) performed brilliantly and is everything we wanted and more , me and Mrs B are very happy and the kids loved every minute , can't wait to get away again
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