subject: Caravan Accessories for Great Outdoor Living [print this page] Caravan Accessories for Great Outdoor Living
A caravan can be a truly special thing as the annual increase in club memberships and second hand van sales attest. Owning a caravan allows whole families to explore the British countryside, year in, year out, safe in the knowledge that their holiday accommodation is familiar, cheap and extremely comfortable. It can be made even more comfortable with the addition of some common caravan accessories.
The most obvious accessory for any touring van is an awning. Awnings come in all sorts of shapes, materials and sizes awnings with "windows"; awnings, the sides of which roll up; awnings that extend lengthways for the same amount of space as there is inside the van. These days, a person can even pick up a T shaped awning. All awnings have the same fittings there's a metal track running around the door-side edge of a caravan's shell, which is designed to hold the clips of an awning. That makes the awning, number one in everyone's list of caravan accessories, flush with the hide of the van effectively forming a second "room" that can double or even triple the usable space of the thing. Awnings make excellent dining areas: compartmentalised awnings make exemplary storage space, too, for things like fishing rods, sports gear and dirty clothes.
Probably the next biggest thing on anyone's shopping list for caravan accessories is the booster aerial. Doesn't matter how flash the van its' aerial is almost never big enough to pick up a decent TV signal in the country. Countryside areas, particularly seaside ones, which are subject to radical changes in barometric pressure, aren't at all the thing for good picture quality: a booster aerial is the only way to guarantee decent watching in the evenings. Most modern booster aerials are telescopic, easy to fit and equally easy to retract and stow making the great British holiday a much more peaceful affair come night time!
Other useful bits of kit (nearly all caravan accessories are designed to make life easier) include: collapsible water butts (ideal for keeping a fresh supply of drinking water coming through the taps); portable chemical toilets (these things go for days with no odour at all, and actually eat waste matter through chemical action); and collapsible butt trolleys for carrying both toilet and butt to filling and emptying stations. Extra locks for the door are never a bad idea either, particularly when attending unknown camp sites.
One last thing: no roll call of caravan accessories is complete without mention of the camping lead. A camping lead is a power lead with a funny looking socket on it, which runs from a bay under the caravan to the powered post the van is pitched near. Without this lead, there will be no power at all inside the van unless it has a standby battery, and even that isn't going to last very long. Even if a van comes with a camping lead, it's always a good idea to purchase and carry a spare. The great British holiday quickly becomes the great British washout when power is taken out of the equation.
Caravan accessories can turn one's holiday home into a castle making life easy, fun and super comfortable. Don't overlook them they're part of the caravan way of life.
