Wednesday 10 April 2013

First night on site or how not to pitch

In the blurb which I received as a new member of the Caravan Club, it said that the wardens would help me to pitch my caravan on my first visit to a site. It neglected to add that this would only happen if I turned up before 6pm and it wasn't pouring with rain. As it was, when I finally reached Culloden after my first day towing I was given directions as to where the empty pitches were and left to get on with it. No problem I thought - I'd been on the towing reversing course. I drove into the site and selected a pitch to reverse on to. All was going well until I realised that I was about to hit a wooden 5mph sign with the back end of the car. They didn't warn us about this on the course. The road was too narrow to avoid it so I had to find another pitch. This I did, and reversed on perfectly, only to find that the site was sloping. Again, no problem - I had come prepared with a levelling ramp. Unfortunately, the mover wouldn't move the caravan up the steep self-levelling ramp, which it turned out was more suited to grass pitches than hard-standings. The tilt of the caravan was too much to live with so the only solution was to hitch up again and find a more level pitch. By this time the rain was hosing down and so I wasn't hanging about. To get to a level pitch I had to go back out into the reception area and do a wide turn in front of the office. At this point I noticed a wee caravan in front of me, nose down in a flower tub. In the few seconds it took me to realise it was my caravan, the warden had come running out of the office, presumably to stop me demolishing his campsite. In my haste, I hadn't hitched on properly and a pothole had caused the caravan to unhitch. Fortunately no harm was done and the warden helped me get sited on a level pitch, something he should probably have done in the first place. No matter - once I'd got out of my soaking clothes and put the pizza in the oven all was well and I have to say that I have never had so much trouble pitching since! (Avoiding sloping sites like Culloden helps.) The first time is always the worst.