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for those that cant find it.You are bidding on an extremely dubious item. This is an Auction for an old dilapidated Abbey GT 212 caravan. It’s two berth, has a gas/12V/240V fridge, a cooker with a grill an oven and two rings, a thermostatically controlled heater, two electric water pumps with foot switches, and a stainless steel sink. All these have worked in the last 3 months but there are no guarantees with this auction. Heck it actually works as a caravan. Check out the picture below. That’s us caravanning in Polzeath, in this very caravan, Easter weekend this year. Despite being 2 berth it was warm and comfortable for me, my two daughters and our somewhat bouncy Dalmatian. Yes it was snug… but served the purpose admirably. So onto the finer points of this piece of caravanning flotsam. It leaks, there are a few broken bits including the skylight which is sealed with mastic and the cover for the gas bottle storage didn’t make it back from Cornwall. I can give you details of the route I took if you want to go look for it. The charging circuitry is all over the place but the towing lights all work. I used a Halfords battery charger to keep the battery topped up for the internal lighting. You don’t get the battery charger but can have the old car battery if you want it. I’ve also taken out the gas bottles to use on the BBQ. At least one of the props doesn’t work properly. The other three seem to do the job but they are a tad rusty. The jockey wheel is seized and doesn’t wind up and down but slides OK in the clamp. It has two new tyres fitted. I only got as far as Bath on the trip to Cornwall and the old ones shredded. Oh and you can have the air in the tyres for no extra charge. The brakes also work so you can tow it away safely! The interior trim is really dated and would suit someone with no taste or very low personal standards. It is all there though, including curtains and seat covers, a table and even part of an awning. There isn’t all of an awning as I have never seen any poles and the track around the outside of the caravan where the awning attaches is twisted from contact with something hard, probably a wall. There is a separate toilet area with a sink and space for a portapotti. Yeh I’ve taken out the portapotti as my brother is building a love bus… I mean surf bus, and wanted it for those ‘caught short at the beach moments’ when the wetsuit is already warm enough… Important bonus extra, thrown in for nothing – This caravan will give you the incredible ability to really p*ss off your neighbours, it looks so untidy on a driveway your neighbours will bust a blood vessel. This is a proven feature as I left it in view of my neighbour for a day and she got pretty upset about it. My neighbour is pretty hot though so this was a bad move on my part, blown any chances I had there then… You may find this feature a major asset in any ongoing feud with your less hot neighbours. So don’t be shy, bid with confidence there is no reserve. You could be the new owner of a historically insignificant piece of caravanning history. Use it to get a taster of caravanning before you take the plunge on an expensive new van or use it as an extra room for the least favourite kid at home. You could even stage your own Braniacs event and blow it up, or convert it to a chicken coup and use it as the stepping stone to a new satisfying life of self-sufficiency. You’re not just bidding on an old caravan you’re possibly bidding on the start of a whole new life. You know you deserve it! Have fun and good luck.

On 09-Jun-06 at 09:39:52 BST, seller added the following information:

Those of you following this auction will have noticed that bidding is off to a blistering start. Close inspection will reveal that the current high bidder is from the USA. This is a testament to the true rarity of an opportunity of this calibre. Our poor cousins in the colonies have to shop internationally to find bargains on quality products such as this. In the interests of fair play I have contacted the bidder to inform him of the shipping costs to California in case he thought I was going to drive it there. Turns out this bidder is a true romantic and is bidding on this classic item to be sent as a gift to his sister-in-law who lives in the UK. Ahh who says that Americans have no soul.

On 12-Jun-06 at 11:51:57 BST, seller added the following information:

Well the time has come to fess up about the caravan. I have had a good telling off from my brother because I am underselling the van. He is building a camper van and has spent a lot of time recently checking out and buying old caravan bits for his ‘surf bus’. He tells me that a lot of the vans he looked at have been far worse than this one and have been going for 1, 2 or even £300. So, you ask, why has this seller got such a downer on this caravan. Well genteel reader I will tell you; you already know about the hot neighbour but you haven’t yet heard about the EX… When my ‘ex’ decided to depart to pastures new, with the paramour of her choice, she neglected to consider the impact that would have on her accommodation situation. The trouble and strife of the paramour found out shortly after and she gave him the old heave ho resulting in the ex and paramour being cast adrift amid the cardboard boxes tucked under the railway and canal bridges of Wiltshire. Now while this may be a life choice for many, with the onset of colder weather, it was not an ideal situation for the aforementioned middle-aged amorous duo. Now call me sentimental, call me stupid or just call me Paul, I couldn’t have the mother of my children contributing to the under classes of the world, what would they say at parent teacher meetings. This is when the caravan came into our lives. A quick trip to a friend in Somerset secured the two berth haven of tranquillity which I tucked away behind the garage. Ex and paramour moved in and lived a secluded life like two gnomes at the bottom of the garden. It served them well for several months while they sorted themselves out. So dear friends you will see from this tale why I, the poor jilted spouse, would harbour such a bleak view of the poor unsuspecting caravan. In some of my lower moments I have considered the option of blowing it up, crushing it, burning it to the ground and pondered the weighty question of would it be better if they were in there at the time or not… So in all fairness to the caravan, and after all none of this was the caravan’s fault, it is a tired old thing but it still has life left in it. Bottom line someone is going to get a bargain.

On 13-Jun-06 at 16:01:43 BST, seller added the following information:

Good grief, just had a phone call from my Mum commenting on my ebay listing. Now you wonder what is so unusual about that. Well my Mum is one of the least computer literate people I know and not only was she using a computer she actually was looking at ebay and indeed found my listing. Wow it must be far easier to find things on ebay than I thought. Which started me thinking... I’ve been pretty open in this listing about the neighbour, sorry Mum. I’ve bared my soul on the demise of the ex, sorry Mum. And while I have mentioned the Hottie and the Nottie there is just one more piece of the caravan saga to unfurl. I have so far not mentioned ‘THE GIRLFRIEND’. Now you can see why I’m just a little phased by my Mum’s call. If my Mum who doesn’t know her Ctrl from her Alt from her Delete can find the listing, the girlfriend who is pretty sharp on the old keyboard is certainly going to find me out in nothing flat. So I had better fill in the last snippets of information on the caravan before my soft bits suffer from bunt impact trauma. The final reason for getting rid of the caravan is that like the ex and the hot neighbour it has been superseded. The caravan has been replaced by a super duper new model and the ex and hottie have been superseded by a super duper new model too. As with all upgrades there are compatibility issues. In the case of the caravan the secluded hideaway behind the garage has now become the home of the new van in our life leaving the poor redundant Abbey with no place to call its own. It was this that forced it to finish up on the driveway blocking the light from the neighbour’s living room and precipitating the whole sorry saga culminating in this auction listing. Oh the intertwined progression of events that drive our lives forward… I mentioned compatibility issues with the girlfriend, I know you are clamouring for that bit of the story… Well actually the compatibility issue is between the girlfriend and the Abbey not with me. Ha, I’ve got me a good one this time!!! So what is the compatibility issue between the Abbey and the girlfriend? Well the girlfriend is a major upgrade on all pervious models I have tested, in many ways, especially those of an ‘adult’ nature and the poor old Abbey, with its dodgy strut, just wouldn’t have stood up to the rigours of a weekend away with the girlfriend. Oh yes, that and the fact that there are now six of us when we go away... There you have it the full and frank reasons for the disposal of the caravan. It is tatty, untidy, tired, old and a little infirm; hey this is beginning to sound a bit like me… It has been superseded by a bigger better replacement; hey that’s a bit like me too… It just couldn’t keep up with the rigours of the new super improved model girlfriend; now this is getting scary… Finally and probably most importantly; it’s in the bloody way and I can’t park my car properly…

On 14-Jun-06 at 07:17:51 BST, seller added the following information:

So here we all are in the final 24 hours of the auction. I got curious yesterday about the sort of person who would want to buy a run down old caravan like this one. Well what a surprise I got. The high bidder for most of the previous days was lilacmoggie and lilacmoggie has a ‘me’ page on ebay. It makes great reading. It always makes me feel warm inside when I see people who genuinely want to help others. Lilacmoggie is a great example and uses ebay to raise money for a sick child and the air ambulance. The caravan coming into my life was as a result of an act of charity so I’ll let it leave with a similar act. All the money raised in this auction will be sent to lilacmoggie to use for her charities. If you read her page you will also see that she really needs a caravan. Here is a suggestion to those of you out there who were thinking “hey I would sure love to be a part of this auction and bid on that caravan but can’t because I have a very tasty neighbour that I don’t want to upset”. Win the thing and give it to lilacmoggie. How high can you go?

Think Clarksons selling this

yeah, and it sold for more than i paid for mine!!