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 Reading chalkie's post brought back more memories for me, I remember one van we had, a monza I think and when you used to turn on the grill occasionally a small flame would  come from around the knob and this would have to be blown out, how dangerous I shudder when I think about it now   We never had the vans serviced in those days, or insured, how irresponsible, we'd never heard of caravan insurance.

 I also remember it took forever to fill the kettle because we only had the foot pump, didn't half make your leg ache, it was quicker to pour the water in from a container.

 We used to tow then with our classic car a vanden plas 4 litre R, big black one, felt like royalty we did, only one prob and that was that you had to make sure there were plenty of petrol stations on the way, not much has changed we now have a 4x4.

We had a CI Europa with a canvas hammock. Young son on top wet his bed and as it dripped on younger son below he whined that it was raining. No I don't miss that.

   I love my seperate shower and fixed bed.

the wife and i have only recently bought our van(1995 compass advantage) and are hoping to get a weekend away very soon, as a young boy i can rember our mam and dad taking us to laysdown and we satyed in a friends carvan, must have been about 12 ft, beds each end that the four of us kids had to share. cant remember to much really then about twenty years ago my sister and brother inlaw got a used monza and we spent a week in folkstone in it, foot pump for the water, glass windows, not much of a toilet and i dont think it had EHU. good fun.

our van seems so full of home from home stuff, hot/cold water toilet and shower and so on.

• i did stay in another caravan which was really old and the bed pulled out of the wall/end.
• steve

I think I miss the swaying about on the motorway  our first van was a old Bessacar with an end kitchen ,we towed it with a Ford Granada Estate and it used to sway about all over the place if you went over 45 mph no matter how you loaded it.That was about 40 years ago now they don't build em like they used to (thank god)