The news that Ray Mears hated caravans might have come as a shock to the Caravan and Camping Club, but most people know that caravans are a Marmite thing. Either you love them, and you love the lifestyle that comes with them, or you find yourself enraged at being stuck behind one and feel they’re a blot on the landscape.
Caravans have seen a rich history, the first instances of moveable homes were the Karwans used by early Persians, but even back then these travelling people were disliked. By the mid-1800s Romany caravans had started appearing on the roads of Britain, but again these travelling people were not well tolerated and it seemed that the negativity surrounding those who use caravans as their homes would taint them forever.
It would take until the 1950s before someone would think of using one of these travelling homes for leisure and it seemed the nation was sick of holiday camps, organised fun and canteen food, finally adopting the caravan as a means of having an independent holiday. The caravan became a capsule of fun and a holiday where you stayed on control and by the end of the 1950s one in four holidays in the UK was a caravan holiday!
However, caravans still weren’t popular with everyone, and while caravanning had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, cheap foreign holidays through the 1980s and onwards saw many people choosing to fly abroad rather than holiday in the UK and risk the weather. In recent times the swing has taken things back the other way again, the recession, airport taxes and other factors have meant that more and more British holidaymakers are staying in the UK for their summer break and that means more popularity for caravans again!
With caravan holidays costing an average of £25 a night, and giving you that home from home experience where you can plan your own fun, we’re not at all surprised to hear that there are more than half a million of them on the roads in the UK today. Love them or loathe them caravans are here to stay!
By: Kath Cross
