Go Family, Go—In A Caravan

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31499, 13 October 1967, Page 11

Go Family, Go—In A Caravan

All over the world caravan holidays are increasing rapidly in popularity. In the United States caravans and caravanning have long enjoyed a firm place in leisure plans, and Europe has followed suit.

New Zealand is not behind in this. Here, as overseas, caravan manufacturers are offering better and better products to the public, and a large related industry exists to offer the potential caravanner almost every conceivable item of special equipment be could need.

Nor have the industries laboured in vain, and today the caravanner can have more comfort and convenience in his mobile home than ever before. New developments in caravans and caravan equipment appear regularly, and more are on the way.

The reasons for the growth in the popularity of caravanning are not hard to find.

Increasing prosperity has brought increasing use of the car, which not only provides more mobility, but also whets the appetite for further trips to pastures new. Today, more than at any other time in history, the individual, and the family, is mobile. To most families, the holidays almost automatically conjure up pictures of a trip away from home, of sun-baked beaches, leafy glades, and sun-dappled roads writhing up hill, down dale, and through tall stands of verdant trees.

The car makes such holidays possible, but for many families there is a problem —accommodation. At holiday periods most accommodation is wellfilled and it may be difficult to obtain bookings for the dates wanted. But that is only part of the problem. Many parents wince at the thought of staying in motels or hotels with young children, and often, too, they find they cannot obtain accommodation at the places they wish to visit when they want to go there. In such cases being able to take your accommodation with you, complete with all conveniences, seems like a dream come true. No longer is the family tied down

to pre-arranged timetables, set meal hours, or sharing table and lounge with strangers—something many are glad to avoid. Mobility is increased. You take your lodgings with you, at your own pace, and “No Vacancy” signs no longer dictate stopping places.

Nor does the use of the caravan have, to be restricted to holidays: with your accommodation going along with you, you can decide almost at a moment’s notice to go Sway for the weekend, confident that there will be no problems with bed and board.

Caravans come in all shapes and sizes—and at all prices. The economyminded can even buy plans and parts and build their own. Used regularly, however, the cost of the caravan will come back in accommodation, booking charges saved, and convenience gained.

The caravan, by virtue of its mobility, lacks a major drawback which many sad-der-but-wiser bach owners subscribe to their holiday houses.

“If you’ve got a bach or holiday house, you feel almost obliged to use it for holidays,” one former bachowner put it. “You've got to maintain the place, equip it, keep the property tidy and free from weeds. After all this, you just wouldn’t feel right going somewhere else for your holiday—so it’s back to the same old place. "Sure you can work an exchange with another bachowner, but this doesn’t always work out. Things get damaged, it’s inevitable. And even if it does work.

you can still have only a pretty limited list of places to go. And you end up going back to the same place each year, having the same neighbours, seeing little that’s new.” Undoubtedly many holi-day-house owners would not entirely agree with the disgruntled owner quoted above, but most would admit he has a point But it is different with a caravan, very different The living space may be smaller, but the caravan has something the holiday house can never have—mobility.