First time Caravan

[poopgirl]

So its my second year at glasto and I am bringing the parents! We have hired a caravan and have ticket for the east site.

I was after a bit of advice on the following:

• best time to arrive to avoid hours of queuing
• for second cars - where the nearest car park is from the site
• if you do have a micorwave or fridge in a caravan how can you power them?

Very excited now - however the boyfriend will be towing a caravan for the first time, he is a little nervous - any advice?

We are coming from London

[David]

The best time to arrive would be early on Tuesday afternoon - the campervan fields opened at midday on the Tuesday last year and I guess the same will happen this year.

The car parks are adjacent to the campervan fields, however you don't get to choose which particular campervan field or which parking field you end up in so it could be really close or a little bit of a trek.

There are no mains hook-ups, so you have to run everything off gas or 12V.

(You can get 12V microwaves but I would imagine they're supposed to run off the alternator of your car / campervan as I think they'd almost certainly drain your leisure battery in no time at all)

[poopgirl]

Thanks so much. I am real novice when it comes to caravanning, but what is better to use in terms of gas or 12v?

We would need power the fridge, microwave and warm water.

[David]

Ideally, you'd only need your 12V for lighting when you get back at night - everything else (water heater, hob/grill/oven, fridge/freezer) should run off gas (apart from the microwave, obviously).

[Roo]

Thanks so much. I am real novice when it comes to caravanning, but what is better to use in terms of gas or 12v?

We would need power the fridge, microwave and warm water.

If your fridge will run off gas you're laughing, same for warm water, but if you are pumping water for shower use, this means 12v and using your 'leisure battery'. Microwave, forget it, it will drain your leisure battery in no time at all, probably completely flatten it just warming up a tin of beans, so use gas for cooking. Getting a gas recharge on site isn't impossible, but can be quite tricky and would mean quite a trek with gas cylinder, so take a spare if you think you gonna be heating a lot of water and/or doing a lot of cooking.

As for warm water, well, you do have to carry/roll your water from the nearest taps, which can have queues and be a good few hundred yards from where you get directed to pitch. So don't count on all of you getting a shower everyday.

As for 12v, depending on battery capacity you may run out of power to work the shower pump by the Sunday anyway. And if you do have an inverter to run 240v stuff off, it will run out even quicker, especially if you are planning on using things like hair dryers! and if you do think you can maybe use a generator to charge the battery up, these aren't permitted. Charging off plugging into your car, well you can try, but it will take a while to put a decent charge into flattened batteries.

To avoid queues and to hope you get closer to the festie gates aim to arrive Tuesday afternoon, much later that Tuesday evening and you will be increasing the walking distance to the gates and chances of queues!

[poopgirl]

This is great, thank you so much!