In today’s show, I give you a rundown onmy first Motorhome and Campervan Show of the year. I walkd around almost 20 vans, opening and closing things, checking out bathrooms and toilets, fridges and cookers.
Link below to all the videos where you can see the walk throughs.
Links to my content:
Social: @RichardChubUK
The transcript below is auto-generated, so apologies if it reads strangely!
It’s Friday, the fourth of February, this is episode 37, and welcome back to driving Horizon’s.
Hello, hello, hello and good morning. Good afternoon and good evening to whenever and wherever you are listening to this Richard here and welcome back to the podcast.
If you’re new here than welcome and if you are a regular, then of course, welcome back. Well, another week has passed us by, and if you’ve been out and about in your vans of hope, you’ve had as much fun as as I did the weather last weekend, particularly for January.
On Saturday morning in particular was it was pretty spectacular on the South Coast anyway. What about 50 degrees, which doesn’t sound warm for January in England? It was almost tropical.
As you probably heard from previous shows, I have been planning to go to the West Point Exeter Motor Home and camper show, which I did last weekend.
Really, really good fun. It wasn’t as big as the NBC one’s going to be, obviously, but that was still, I reckon, is the best part of 100 vans there on show lots and lots of motor homes and larger campervans.
And they also had a smaller selection of the V dampers in the caddies and the Ford Nuggets and other smaller brands on show as well. And what can I tell you about it? Well, I had a good nose around quite a few vans and there was no real new sort of, you know, state of the art brand
new of the production line, 2022 ideas and clever things there. This week it was all mainly second hand ones that were being resold. And on that, one thing that surprised me, I got talking to somebody from South West.
I think it was Southwest campervans or South West Motor homes, and this was about midday. Maybe now, maybe a bit later there, maybe at 2:00 on the first day, and they told me that it already sold six vans and they were expecting to do at least 20 over the weekend.
Now, bear in mind that the Friday was probably going to be the quieter day.
Maybe not, actually. Maybe people were going there to have a good look around before we got too busy. I don’t know, but you know, six vans in the first four or five hours.
I think that just goes to show how much of a demand there is for the motorhomes and campervans and the whole van life and RV and whatever you want to call it, was a bit of an eye opener for me, to be honest with you, you know, thought that have come away from there hoping to sell half
a dozen over the whole weekend, let alone six in the first four hours and 20 odd 20 plus over the three days. So I think that goes to show how how in-demand these vehicles are. And if you’ve been doing it for now, I’ve done it for very long, very, very since 2017, say, four or five years we’ve
been doing it for. There’s something that they’ve been doing it for decades, but there’s a lot of new people going into it. So if you see something you like, I definitely suggest snapping it up because, you know, who knows how long it’s going to be hanging around for?
So what can I tell you? Well, the one thing that struck me as the most as I was wandering around was how different, even slightly some of the vans and motorhomes are. You know, there doesn’t seem to be one perfect layout.
I think that the the perfect layout that you want in your head is probably out there somewhere, but you’d probably have to look at a lot of different vans and a lot of different setups to be able to get the exact one that that you wanted.
So don’t despair. I guess if you look at ten vans and you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for because there are so many different sizes, shapes and layouts, beds, bathrooms, kitchens, toilets, cupboards, fridges, freezers, you know there’s almost unlimited possibilities.
I’m sure that the ones that people have thought have already are the obvious choices and the ones that are meeting most of people’s requirements. But there are a load of companies as well that will bespoke build for you as well.
They have their own layouts. But then also, I’m sure you’ll be able to throw together something that meets your requirements as as a person, as a couple, as a family, we think we have found ours. I mean, the California’s great, which we’ve got now, is brilliant.
We love it. It’s convenient and we probably have that for another year or two at least. But we are starting to get a real good idea what our perfect layout. Is we have a couple of ideas that we don’t think we’ll be able to get unless we do a self-build.
And that’s probably we’ll need a lot more research in terms of whether it’s cost effective to do that ourselves. But you know, maybe buy one off the shelf is the best way to go. So anyway, back to the show.
What was there? There was all sorts of stories as loads of people. They’re not just selling camper vans and motorhomes, but there was loads of different stalls selling cooking stuff. There was a couple of cooking displays going on.
They had pop up awnings. They had clever designs that you put out the back of your booth, holds a barbecue and cooker and gas and things like that. They had things for dogs. They had, you know, there’s lots of they’re still selling sweets and function, things like that.
So it wasn’t just the vans, but obviously the vans with the largest part of it. So I got there about I left here about 9:30. It took me just under three hours to get there. I did stop off for ten minutes on the way and I was in awe walking around by mid-day, by about twelve to 15
. I think I think I got there about ten to twelve feet to be about two and a half hours. And the first thing I did was have a wander around to get my bearings. I saw there was an inside area and an outside area.
There was lots of vans and the more market stall type stores inside and outside, it was mainly just just vans and motorhomes. So I do wander around. I did a video which I will talk about or touch again briefly at the end.
So just stay tuned for that. And by had a wander around, got my bearings, did a bit of filming, and so a few things that caught my eye and then decided to to head back and. Tried to get in a few as many camp vans and motorhomes as I could to have a nose around and do some
video while I was doing that. So I think that I’m looking at about just under 20 different vans because there’s a lot there that too many to go through every single one, certainly in the four or five hours I had thanks.
I decided I don’t going to stay there for one day. And you know, there was the the vans, the that we had I saw on, particularly on the inside seemed to be that a while. I think it was probably just a coincidence, but I seem to be more to my, to my liking and the so I’m just
walking out of it now. So just trying to find a list of some of the vans that I saw. So they have things like Elder Swift Bailey Auto Trail. There was a Catholic. I think I’m saying that right?
They had a company there that was hiring the motorhomes out as well, which is a really good idea, by the way, to try before you buy. We did. I went out for a few nights just to make sure it’s for you and just to make sure that what you’re going to spend 50 grand on is the layout
that you want. And there’s a selection of VW transporters and some VW caddies and things like that. But the looking around the motor homes. The thing that you have to look out for as well is just because it has four seat belts doesn’t necessarily mean it will sleep for people just because it has two seat belts.
It doesn’t mean it will only sleep two people. So there’s quite a few there that had two births, which means you could sleep two, but it had four belts, so two people can’t sleep in the meantime and vice versa.
You might have two bouts. But sleep for. But when I say bouts, I mean seatbelts to balance and sleep for people, which will mean that the other two people that want to sleep in the van will have to bring a separate car or when you meet them there or something like that.
But the show itself is a really good way to meet suppliers. Get your name, get on a waiting list if you haven’t got the exact or if they haven’t got the exact model that you want. But it’s also a good way to test the layout and to stand in a shower because they’re on a couple of occasions
. I stood in the bedroom and when I feel myself, I’m one of them. You could see that there was only two inches above my head and I’m only from less than six feet and five, ten, five, eleven. So, you know, things like that are invaluable when you can walk around 20 motorhomes.
And you know, the Lao may be brilliant, but you’ve got to walk around with a hunchback or stooped head for all the time you’re in there, then it’s no good to you. Excuse me. So my advice for the motorhome shows would be to get through as much as you can.
Why that is the only real opportunity you’re going to get to see 20 or 30 motorhomes from, I don’t know, 5678. However, many suppliers and be able to open things and close things and sit down and get behind the wheel and sit on the toilet and stand in the shower and pretend to prepare a dinner.
See how much worktops there are. See if the fridge is big enough, if the microwave work is big enough. And so I did that on all of them. I went around the lot of them and, you know, I was opening doors and looking at the rings and and seeing how high the shower is and checking out the
toilets. I didn’t do too much sitting on toilets because when we have a better idea of what we want, I will we will do that then. But my point is pretend you’re living in a house just for 30 seconds.
There’s a chance that you will not get to do that for another six months or a year. Even let’s say you don’t want to travel 200 miles to visit the next time show you only want to do instead.
one is down the road once a year, if you’re lucky. So make the most of it. Use that time wisely. Take loads of pictures and. She I speak to the speech, to the salespeople, tell them your idea of motor white motor home because there’s a very good opportunity that they can strike away.
If they know their stuff, they’ll be able to say, No, that doesn’t exist or that does exist. This is the model you need. We’ve got one back at the showroom or something. So don’t hesitate in talking to somebody.
And you know, sometimes I feel bad for wasting people’s time when you know you’re not going to buy anything, but you know, these guys are going to or gals. If these people are going to look after you and they’ll give you all the time they can and hope that you will be there when you’re ready to buy
that, you’ll be there with the person that you call. So that was my quick rundown of the of the motor home show this weekend. It was a fun field for five hours. It’s always good to get around things like this.
The videos for the walk around and there’s two other videos to walk around the actual the actual arenas. If you like the indoor and outdoor spaces where the vans are being held is over on the YouTube channel. If you type in YouTube.com forward slash Richard Chubb, you will find those videos.
There’s also to further videos. They’re a little bit longer there where I go through each motorhome that I visited and show you around inside the motor home. So check those out if you’re interested in vans and motorhomes, and it might give you some ideas of what you like, what you don’t like and also things that you may
, you know, you may see something there that that’s perfect for us in the bottom of the put the model in the mike in the in the videos. You know what the model is that I’m walking around, obviously. So coming up in the future in certainly next week’s show, I one was down in excited loads of sight, seeing
if you like. I saw four or five really, really nice sights along the Dorset and Devon coast, which I will discuss in next week’s show. So make sure you subscribe to the podcast on whatever channel or whatever platform you are listening to it on and give me a review.
I this is also quite new to me. I’m not an expert at doing any of this. I’m just trying to tell you what to do, give you my thoughts and feelings and suggestions and opinions. So we’re off to the NSC in a few weeks.
If there’s anything in particular the like, why not get a message to me? You know, there’s the website and the YouTube channel. You can leave messages on it. Be great to hear from you because without you guys listening, then there’s no point in me doing this and I really love doing it.
So get in touch because anything that you think I should check out or anything you’d like to hear me ramble on about so quick recap of where you can find myself, the website driving ryzens dot com, blog posts and things like that on anything that I can think of writing about that might find useful.
There’s the YouTube channel YouTube dot com forward slash Richard jump. Head over there and check out all the videos I’m putting together, and there’s obviously this podcast here, so that is a real quick one. This week, my quick highlights of the motorhome and camper van show in West Point, Exeter.
Next week, I’ll tell you all about the pretty sights and sounds that I saw in in Devon. Sorry, in in Devon and Dorset, there might be a video coming up for that if I can get it finished on Sunday.
So check out the YouTube channel. And then of course, we’ve got a Lake District Lake District trip coming up in February, which is going to be amazing where we hire what we think could be our perfect van. So until next week.
Happy travels, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate it. And we’ll see you next time.