VENUS 320/2 905kg

VENUS 380/2 998kg

VENUS 490/4 1 1 99kg

VENUS 500/4 1 1 90kg

The lightest, most compact and affordable caravans in the UK. Four stylish 2 and 4 berth models including end kitchen, end washroom and fixed bed layouts.

The Venus Caravans range will exceed your expectations.

For 360° tours, specifications and to find your nearest retailer, go to:

To find out more go to: www.venuscaravans.com

VENUS - A Brand of Lunar Caravans Limited >>PITCHSIDE VIEW The more you use it, the cheaper it gets

WELCOME TO PRACTICAL CARAVAN. The idea of speculating to accumulate has always seemed to me to be restricted to the richest members of society. After all, in order to have the money to speculate, you obviously need some money that isn’t spoken for. In caravan terms, the most obvious expense that saves money in the longer run is membership of one of the major clubs.

For example, a year’s membership of the Caravan Club costs £42. If you don’t use the club sites or take advantage of the various offers, it’s not great value. But spend five nights on one of their sites, saving £10 per night on the non-member price and the benefits quickly stack up.

Learning to Trust Along similar lines, I’ve recently joined the National Trust, which apart from making me feel more ‘grown-up’, cost £88. It did get me free entrance to Wimpole Hall, near Cambridge, when Mrs D and I visited, saving us the £17 combined entry plus the £2 for car parking. While at home, we’re regular visitors to Runnymede on the River Thames, which is run by the NT. Parking there costs £4.50 for two hours but is now free with our NT membership.

Plainly, the more we use our Trust membership as we tour the country, the more we will eventually save.

Whether or not you join one of the major caravanning clubs or the NT, the same logic extends to caravan ownership. It was the topic of a discussion I had with a small group at the Motorhome, Caravan

& Camping Show at London’s ExCeL. One of the group said touring is getting too expensive, due to fuel costs, pitch fees and all manner of other running costs.

One of the other couples, however, pointed out that many of the costs are fixed. The initial purchase price, insurance and maintenance costs, for example, are not related to the amount of use a caravan gets. So if you’ve paid all of that, it stands to reason that the more nights you spend in the caravan, the better value you get. Sticking nearer to home can control fuel costs and specifically choosing sites with cheaper pitch fees can quickly save cash and you can pay for extra nights away with the savings.

Pitch and stay put I suppose the ultimate expression of this is the seasonal pitch. Pay one (albeit large) fee to have your tourer sited for the season and you have capped your pitch fees. Then it just becomes a race to spend as many nights as you can manage in the van to get the most value from it. With diesel at £1.40 or more per litre, it’s not hard to see why more and more caravan owners see seasonal pitches as an increasingly appealing option.

Regardless of how you use your caravan, one thing that really makes it expensive is not using it. The weather is improving, the days are getting longer. If you get your van out in the field more often, you can squeeze more value from your investment and remind yourself why you fell in love with caravanning in the first place.

Nigel Donnelly nigel@practicalcaravan.com www.practicalcaravan.com/blog

We st ay on th es it es We to wt he va ns We li ve th ed re am!

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