In today’s show, I briefly talk about the first Campervan and Motorhome Show of the year. I also give you a run down of all the things we definitely recommend you should pack, as they are always the first things in our ‘van when we head off.
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Social: @RichardChubUK
The transcript below is auto-generated, so apologies if it reads strangely!
It’s Friday, the 28th of January, this is episode 36, and welcome back to Driving Horizon’s.
Hello, hello, hello, and good morning. Good afternoon and good evening to whenever or wherever you are listening to this is Richard here, and welcome back to the podcast.
If you are new here than welcome and if you are a regular, well, of course. Welcome back, I hope. As always, everyone has had a brilliant week and I’ve just realized I haven’t got myself a glass of water, so we’ll have to remedy that in a moment.
You may find me talking a little bit slower in today’s podcast and hopefully also a little bit clearer because I am trying to transcribe the words on the show so that I can add words over or the transcription to my website, to the show notes, in case there are people that would like to read it, as well as listen to it or instead of listening to it. And I’m also going to try and cut out the ums, but that’s the hardest thing, I think. What have we been doing this week? Not too much. I have been getting ready for the first or my first motorhome and campervan show of the year that is happening
in Exeter.
It is happening today and probably depending on when you listening to this, but certainly when the show goes live, I will be cruising along a south coast road somewhere. It’s his anything up to a three-hour drive, so fingers crossed there’s not too much traffic.
I think I will be spending two days at this show. The first day I will try and see as many of the motorhomes and campervans as I can because I have a feeling it will be a lot quieter on Friday than Saturday.
I would imagine that there are many children still at school, so if families are thinking of going, they will probably pick the Saturday to go. So hopefully the Friday will be a bit quieter and I can have a nose around all the campgrounds and motorhomes.
I’m not entirely sure how many new models will be there. I think a lot of those will be saved for the NBC show, the month after which we are also going to. But I’m still going to have a look around, get some ideas and try to understand a little bit more about the bigger vans.
What’s the difference between our California and the bigger vans if we ever decided to upgrade to something slightly bigger? So that is what’s happening in happening in next week? And stay tuned or tune in to next week’s show because I will be going into everything there in a lot more detail.
I will also, perhaps I’m not sure yet, but I may flood my Twitter feed with photos and notes from the show. Have a look over on Twitter. Richard Shelby UK is the Twitter handle, I guess is the right word, and let me know.
Follow us over there for updates and bits and pieces on all things complaining. What is today’s show about? Well, I think one of these almost two years ago in the summer of 2020, and we’ve sort of added a few things to the list, and I thought I would go through a few things that we always pack.
first, it doesn’t matter where we’re going, how many days we’re going for or how far we’re going. There are certain things that we always put in the campervan first, so I’m going to grab myself a glass of water.
Stay tuned. And I will run through that list real quick. There’s only about ten or so items on there, so see you in a second. OK. So thanks for that, I just grab myself a quick glass of water and I’m ready to go.
So what are the first things that we always put in a camper van when we are going off on a trip? Now the first two are no-brainers, really. You need power, you need water. So we pack a hook-up cable, which is no surprise.
Most of the campsites that we go to always have. We tend to get electric pitch so we can use the plug sockets. We don’t have we have a battery leisure battery, but we don’t have any way of converting it to 240 volts, so we have to have a hook up for that.
So we always take the hook up cable or the power leave, whichever way you want to call it. And it just means that we can, like I say, plug-ins to power and not worry about draining the battery or running out of electricity while we’re on the road.
The second item is a way that we get water into the van now. Most people, a lot of people, particularly in the big rigs, would have a hose or they connect to a water point and run into their water tanks.
We tend not to do that. The California holds 30 liters, but we never, I think, the most we ever. Putin is about ten liters at a time, so we pop a five-liter water bottle in the car, which can be used as drinking water so we can use it for anything, really.
If you just wanted to fill that up and go from there or you wanted to take it to the beach or swap in bottled water to carry around with you. But it means we can fill that up with a tap.
And we use a special funnel to get the water. It’s kind of like a too flexible hose on the bottom of it, and you can put the flexible hose into the water tank and tip the water into the funnel.
And it goes in easily so that the first two things that we always do, we always put in in the van. Oh, by the way, if you head over to Richard Chubb dot com, if you head over to driving Horizon’s dot com, you will see a post or and such a search on the blog posts of search
for accessories. You will see a blog post that lists everything I’m about to talk about. So if you want to see exactly what I mean, if you wanna see pictures or you want to see, there’s also a video, actually, that will be on a blog post as well.
And then you just note the website and you can see and there’s links to everything that you can find, find the best talk about. Now the next couple of things, and these tend to stay in the van all the time just because they’re not very heavy.
They took away nicely, and it just means we never forget them. The two things there are a pop up bucket, which is useful for once we finished a meal, we just throw everything in the bucket. Would it throw it?
Obviously, but we put it all in a bucket, and it’s just there for us to walk off to the washing up facilities we have. When we there was one time when we stayed at our campsite in Bewley last year, where we didn’t have washing up facilities that we used, we decided to boil the kettle and do it
in the van because it was a pop up campsite and that campground, we used the bucket to fill up with hot water and we did the washing up at the van and it was it was fine. So you could use it to carry stuff to the washing up facilities where you could use it for washing up as
a washing up bucket as well. The other second, the next thing alongside that is a dish strainer. Now this is a relatively new addition to our arsenal of camping equipment, and it’s again a pop up one bit of an extra item, bit of an extravagant item, if I want to call it that.
But it just means that if you get to washing out facilities, you’ve only got a draining board and you have to power your plates up. This is a real good things. It is like it once is probably down is less than two inches thick.
It’s about the size of, I don’t know, the average size simple tray. So it’s not doesn’t take up much room. It sits in a drawer underneath our back seats quite comfortably alongside the bucket. But it just means that we can prop our plates up, cutlery, things like that, and it drains better.
It is easy to dry, which might sound a bit extreme, but then it just means that your tea towel doesn’t get as wear and it is quicker. And all these things, the little things make life a little bit easier.
So if the campsite doesn’t have one next to the sink, we’ve got that there in case we need it. The next thing is for a lighting point of view, and there are two things on the list for lighting.
We have a Oh, I have, because it’s mainly me way. Ways it’s a. Beanie hat with a torch on it. It just means if you’re going off to the toilet at night time or and you’re carrying things or you’re taking a dog for a walk and you have to do that wonderful job of scooping poop.
And it’s in the winter months. It’s dark and things like that, or early in the morning and it’s dark and the sun’s not quite come up. You need a bit of extra light, probably on your head pushbutton and you’ve got light wherever you look really handy like sites, keep your hands free, see where you go and things
like that. The second thing to do with lighting is we have a hanging lantern and it is like a old fashioned, especially an old fashioned oil lamp. I think more modern it Sir Ali, the USB lantern with a hanging handle on it that we put in our driveway awning.
You carried around with you as well, like. You know, like you’re going down the mines or something, it’s that I’m going to hold it up and I’m holding my hand off and showing you, but it looks like that and you can walk around holding it if you want to, but we just tend to use it as a
ceiling light if you like. It goes in the driveway warning, and it’s easy to turn on just big push button, and it gives us low a light or as much light as we need in the morning. So they added to light so you can carry around with you.
It has a different light settings. It flashes, it goes to bright white to a warm yellow light, and it just charges up from a USB port in the van. So really easy, really convenient. And it just becomes a room light for us, basically, because there’s no lighting in the driveway, awning talking or driveway awnings.
We also have a small pop up tent is a two man sleeping tent. We have never slept in it. We have no intention of ever sleeping in it, but it’s super useful. We use it for storing things in to give us a bit more space in a van useful for the car.
See, Max is still in quite a big car booster seat, high backed booster seat, which takes up a whole seat in the camper van. He used it when we’re driving, when we get to our campground. We put it out and chuck in the pop up tent and we also put dirty shoes.
Cohen not so much coats, but dirty shoes and the baby through the barbecue in their safe back, old down and put it in the back of the van and in the box with all our camping gear and with pegs and stuff like that.
And we put all that in a pop up tent as well. And it’s just really useful. We have chuck a scooter in there. Washing up stuff is like 30 pound. I think this thing and it pops up in a knock joke in two seconds and then you peg it down.
That’s another two minutes. So within two or three minutes, you’ve got a little outdoor space that you can use for storage. Great. If you’ve got a smaller camper van and useful to get rid of those things that you may not, particularly the car, see the ones you’re on side, you’re not going to use it again.
So you might as well get out of the way for a night or two, two or three more things coming up. Microfiber towels. Now these are pretty, and this is probably one of the first things we pack for sure, because they’re so they take up very little room, easy to carry to the shower.
They dry you easily, they dry themselves quickly. They’re perfect for the sort of van life where you want to heat all loads of wet stuff hanging around for hours. And we have a small one that we use sometimes to clear condensation from the windows if we have it in the morning.
And yeah, it’s convenient again. It’s just super convenient because they’re small and they are easy to dry. They’re not as luxurious as a big, fluffy bath towels you might have at home. Suzanne used as one in the form of a dressing gown, but it is just real convenience and that’s what you need.
The main thing The main good thing about this is you don’t have wet things hanging around. You know, you can hang it on the back and get back from the shower. Assuming it’s not raining, hang on the back of the van hanging over a wing mirror or something and within half an hour.
If there’s a bit of wind or a bit of sun is normally dry and it’s good to go again, so super convenient. Definitely recommend the microfiber towels. Another one, which is convenient in and around the van, is a USB extension lead.
So we’ve all got devices, iPads, iPhones, the hanging lantern I spoke about earlier, even the beanie hat with a light on it. They all charge by USB sockets, so a USB extension needs is useful. If you wanted to just put it out of the way, move it to one side, you know, put it further away than you
normally would reach. It just means that you can take outside. If you’re running out of battery, you want to charge something up while you’re sitting outside. So we have a six foot two meter extension lead. We also have a two meter Apple Lightning connector that goes to the USB as well, so that can charge straight to a
device so it can go via the where you had to 686 meter. You had the two meter Apple ID and a two meter USB. Essentially that you plug, you can lend it to your neighbor. You know, they can charge their devices from your van if you want it to be that kind.
But the point is it just gives you that flexibility. You don’t have to be tethered to close to your charging points, and it’s just handy, especially to got kids and they’ve got iPads and things like that. Another thing that we like we are, I’d say, 80% of the time we cook in the van depends on what’s on
site. If there’s a bar or something, we will try the bar in the food out there. But we do like cooking at the van as well, particularly in the summer months. So we. Have a I recommend a compact, like, really versatile barbecue, the one that we’ve got is the Cadillac Safari Chef.
And it’s when it’s up, it’s about the size of a beach ball, no bigger than the probably smaller than the size of a beach ball. A big football, almost. It sits about twelve inches high, maybe 18 inches high, and it’s about the diameter of a large, large dinner plate.
But it can cook anything on there. It’s got a grill which got a hot plate. It has it. It can cook pans. You can do hands on there. It’s got a lid that you can pop over the top to keep the heat in.
If you wanted to excuse me, if you wanted to make it, you know you cook something slower and keep the heating more like an oven, if you like. And it’s just really, really versatile, really small, really convenient. It goes kind of the legs fold up and everything tucked inside itself.
Again, I’m demonstrating with my hands for no real reason other than me being strange, and it’s just really convenient. If you’re looking for a small barbecue that can, it’s not going to help if you’ve got a family of five or six or something like that, there’s only three of us.
But for us, it’s pretty can easily cook three burgers sausages, bacon for breakfast. You know, it’s super, super convenient. And if I say convenient one more time, I have no doubt everyone is going to turn off, but it is convenient.
Sorry. Anyway, so that’s the barbecue. So that’s most of things that we always take. There are two things that we don’t always take, but it depends on where we go in. one of them was bought out of necessity and the other one was not the camping toilet.
We have a porta potty now that we bought when things opened up after COVID, and it made it useful. Well, it made it the only way we could go camping because we had to put the camping toilet in the van so we could prove to the campsites that we had.
I don’t think that’s approved. Then we just had to tell them that we did have a toilet or we’re going to go do all necessary, necessary things in a bush somewhere. But it’s easy to do. We easy to for easy to empty well, as easy as tipping in no one’s number turns into a waste area can be
. Excuse me, but it’s perfect for us. Is small, not very big. Aboriginal small means, by the way. And oh, I need to have a drink. Excuse me. Again, you may have noticed I’m going to go through this without any edits.
Hence the IMing an offering, but is all genuine. I promise I’m OK in a phone call as well. See live live television and not quite live, but they can leave a message. Anyway, sorry, I was also talking about.
Yes, the camper toilet. It is a I’ve been distracted, as you can tell. Excuse me. Okay. The on yeah, we bought because you had to after COVID. And you know, it’s not a particularly expensive one, I think is it is is ¬£100, but it was it was like, say, we wouldn’t even have to go camping if we
hadn’t have bought it. So we have that in the we don’t take very often anymore and we keep it when we use it in the driveway awning and again, that we don’t take that very often unless we’re staying somewhere for more than one night.
If we’re only going for one night, we throw the pop up tent out because it’s not worth spending half an hour from the driveway or winning half an hour to take it down there for only there, for one night.
But if we’re there for two nights, it is worthwhile because then we can spread out more. We can keep that chairs and tables and clothes and get changed in there and and it just makes life in a a little bit easier.
And so the driveway awning is something that we pack very small, very rarely, but only when we go somewhere for a couple of nights or more, which we don’t do that often as you like to move around and see things.
They are the main things and two that are not the main things, but there are a lot of things that always go in our camper van without fail because we use them every day that we’re camping and there might be one or two items on there that you hadn’t thought of, or you might just be interested to
hear what we take. And if you’re not, we made it this far. Then hats off to you and I will do the shameless plug again. Don’t forget to head over to driving Horizon’s dot, where you can see all my blog posts and don’t forget to head over to YouTube.com forward slash Richard C.H. YouTube, where you can see
all our travel related videos. And as I said before, there are going to be lots of things coming up because we’ve got the motor home show this weekend, and then in three weeks after that, we are going to the Lake District.
We’re hiring a motorhome or a camper van, but something bigger than what we have now, and that will all be revealed on my YouTube videos as well. And we’re also going to the Big Motorhome show or caravan and motorhome show, the NSA said.
Lots coming up. And I thank you as always for listening for making it this far. It’s just tipped, I think, 20 minutes, maybe more. So thanks for sticking with me. Have a great week and we’ll see you in the next show.
Happy travels! See you next time.