IT IS nineteen eighty-something and the four of us – me, younger brother, mum and dad – are having a fabulous time in my aunt and uncle’s little touring caravan at Croy Bay in Ayrshire.
Correction: my parents would say ‘fabulous’ is too strong a word. My mum, used to her electric one at home, hated the gas oven because it scorched the mince pies too quickly. She found the lack of an inside toilet horrifying. My dad got exasperated quickly at having to build the bed out of the dining table every night and then he ran down the battery on his car because he left it ‘plugged in’ to the caravan, prompting an emergency rescue visit from my uncle and red faces all round.
But my brother and I had a whale of a time. The caravan park was right beside the beach, and every day we would skip down to the shore with buckets and spades, building sandcastles, flying kites, exploring rockpools and listening, with shivers down our spines, to my dad’s stories of the hermit who lived in the nearby caves.
I loved our little magic house, where chairs turned into beds and back again, and every hideyhole had something interesting inside, like a colouring-in book or a toy or a bag of sweets. I enjoyed every second of that holiday. I could never understand why my mum complained about it for years afterwards.
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Fast forward to just a few years ago, when our boys were roughly the same age as my brother and I were at Croy, and NOW I get it. It seems caravanning is great for kids - maybe not so much for parents.
The place was a riot of toys and clothes and sand in seconds. Trying to get two young boys showered in a room the size of a chest of drawers was not fun. Having to clamber over each other in the middle of the night because the bed took up the entire room, to attend to small children needing a drink of water/a window open because it was too hot/a window closed because it was too noisy/ was exhausting. There was just NO ROOM. We needed a holiday after our holiday and it put me off caravans for life.
I am in a grumpy minority, I know. According to the Caravan and Motorhome Club, bookings are up 35 percent for summer. Auto Trader claims one in three of us are planning a caravan staycation and caravans are set to overtake AirBnB-style accommodation and hotels as places to spend a post-lockdown break.
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That’s great news for the industry and children. But not even coronavirus-inspired stir-craziness will make me want another caravan holiday.
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