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Hiya.  OK, so this is the story.  I bought a rather old folding camper on Ebay a few months ago, it needed a few things doing to it and my plan was to slowly bring it up to a better standard.

It wthstood the howling gales in Wales the other week and is waterproof and everything, but I just can't for the life of me get to grips with hitching up!  I dont mind towing, am not bothered by that but hitching up/off just drives me mad - especially as I am usually doing it on my own (well, assisted by a helpful 8yr old!!)

Anyway, I am now thinking of trying to get an old 5 berth motorhome - I will only be able to spend about £4k-£5k so nothining fancy.  Reading on this forum though I have seen mentioned the fact that getting down little country lanes etc can be a problem, so I was wondering, what other draw backs are there to this plan, and is driving them around our country lanes really as bad as I am beginning to thiink?

I would appreciate hearing about your experiences :) 

We looked around and asked ourselves a similar question, and ended up buying a caravan with a motamova fitted, which makes the hitching part so much easier.

We considered the financial side of Motorhome ownership, the extra RFL and insurance which was going to be a fair bit more than basic caravan insurance cover. We realised that there wasnt much around that didnt need major work doing or was in danger of being a pain in the rear when it came to getting spare parts due to its age if we looked for something in the motorhome sector. We even looked at home conversions and Rally vans designed for track race meets of which there were several around at our price range of up to 8K, but all had various difficulties regarding insurance and registration status which put us off. Although the interiors on some looked super, the base vehicle was often still classed as commercial for tax and insurance purposes and had lived a fairly tough life of hard wear and tear  beforehand.

The final crunch came when we chatted to an old guy who had just about tried every kind of camping going, including yachts and riverboats, and we all came to the conclusion that the benefits of being able to leave your tempory home on site whilst you went out for a days touring round outweighed the convienience of not having to hitch up as with a motorhome.

I dont only think its the size of them, its the restictions you get when wanting to park in a town centre car park, and the fact that you have to pack everything down securely and disconnect the EHU before you can nip off out down the road for milk and a paper or a bag of chips, that rather put us off, plus of course the extra fuel consumption over a car and caravan unit that drops back to being more economical once you have pitched and left your caravan behind for the duration of your stay.

If your uncertain, you could always hire a motorhome for a week to see if you like it, we did, and it helped us make the decision immencely 

Julia

Thanks for your answer Julia, it has raised a lot of issues for me to consider, which is what I need at the moment.  I have been scouring the Ebay pages every second of the day, and some of them look so good in the pics, but then I think of the age of some of them and dont see how they can't have some rust/problems brewing etc.

I did see one American RV which would have been ideal - its living area was bigger than my house and it had a HUGE garage at the back I could have fitted the car in and just unloaded it at the campsite

Where's that lottery win when you need it