Trials of a reluctant motor home buyer
There is a certain lure about it. I mean the prospect of sliding into the driving seat of a two-litre plus motor home like a modern day supercharged nomad and heading out on a voyage of discovery – free to go anywhere you like and take as long as you want to get there, or not get there, does have the whiff of liberation. That’s what freedom is about after all, isn’t it?
My wife is fond of talking about roadblocks by which she means, not simmering gently in a snail trail of traffic edging its way towards Torbay as children in pedal cars cruise by, but anything, even the most casual thought or remark which is not positive. This means in practice that there can be no objections to anything ever and that nothing can ever by regarded as a problem. It’s as though the word ‘problem’ has been expunged from the English language. It could be that hypnotist cum self-help guru Paul McKenna may have something to do with this state of affairs. Maybe we ought to invite him along for a couple of months in order to keep us from ever getting downhearted and always believing that there is a petrol station just around the next bend as our fuel light is having a flat line heart attack. My wife is very fond of quoting Paul McKenna. Thinking about it, he would make an excellent travelling companion in a confined space.
So when the enthusiasm of ‘her indoors’ turned its attention to our retirement, she was quite clearly lured by the maisonettes-on-wheels that go by the name of motor homes or camper vans or other descriptions that basically mean living for weeks or even months in a space that is the approximate equivalent of a garden shed. Negative thoughts were abandoned such as: Can we afford to retire? What would we do with our two dogs? What about parking? What about getting stuck between a Skoda Fabia and Nissan Micra in the only space left in Tesco’s car park? You see, roadblocks. Of course, in reality these are reasonably easy to surmount. Reversing back up the twisted, cobbled lanes of Polperro, a fishing village like many others designed and built for wooden wheeled wagons, is only a question of mind over matter, surely. It’s rather like the quackery surrounding the placebo effect. If placebos work so effectively why do we need drugs? If reversing cameras work all we have to do is trust them.
Roadblocks aside I joined in as a willing visitor to our local motor home centre to take a look at what was on the market. But that was just the start. Within weeks of this visit I was forking out £28 to get into to the national camping and motor home show at the NEC. I mean, £28 to walk around an indoor car park is simply scandalous – another example of rip-off Britain – but that’s another rant entirely.
After ducking my six feet five inch frame into and out of motor home campers about thirty times I began to get the hang of it. It wasn’t doing my back much good and the chatter of the sales patter was having a negative effect on my tinnitus.
I have to admit, they are little miracles of compact design and after about what seemed a week of opening and closing cupboards to test the fittings, fretting over the size of the shower compartment, assessing bed dimensions, styles and access, asking about broadband access and mpg and comparing layouts I began to feel more at home.
At first I was totally thrown by the differences between the make of cab, the designer of the cabin and the brand imagery of the dealers. I kept seeing the same types of van appearing on different stands with different cabs and different prices.
Still, ‘her indoors’ has now spent a small fortune on motor home magazines and is whittling down our choices. Do we go for single beds or one of those high rise double bed jobs? Going to the loo in the night, the frequency of which appears to accelerate once you pass fifty, could be fun in a double– rolling over your partner and getting the aforesaid six foot five inch frame jammed between the bed, the steps and the floor whilst trying to deflect the attention of two equally claustrophobic dogs as you crawl to the revolving door of the toilet before risking actually standing up. Then, as you proceed to relieve yourself, you find you have inadvertently reminded the dogs of what their hind legs are for.
Still, the freedom of the open road, loving the smell of diesel in the morning and just pandering to your wanderlust does have its attractions. What we need, motor home designers, is a stylish tower block on wheels so that you can’t be accused of ‘heightism’. But, that might be a problem as you approach a low-slung bridge.
If we ever buy one it will have to be a compromise.
