GO ON THE MOVE

IT WAS MY first full caravanning holiday. We’d arrived late at our campsite on lovely Ile de Re, off the west coast of France, and found our pitch number taped to the door of the closed reception.

I was towing a pretty sizeable family four-berth, and my heart sank when I saw the entry to the pitch. The slender aperture had a brick-built barbecue on one side and some dense, scratchy bushes on the other. The entrance was off a sloping Tarmac campsite road, which was liberally doused with fine, dry sand (not ideal for my front-wheel-drive tow car).

But those weren’t the only things that reminded me of an It’s a Knockout obstacle course – to make matters worse, I also had an audience. A dozen or so Belgian and Dutch guests were sitting around their lamps and firepits, eagerly awaiting the evening’s entertainment, provided courtesy of the English team. No pressure, then...

I don’t recall how many points the turn involved, but I think I gained one degree of entry angle with each full-lock back and forth. Yet, with the heady aroma of flambéd clutch plate wafting across the site, and my shirt drenched in sweat, I eventually slid the pristine Swift onto its spot. A ripple of applause drifted across from our foreign friends; although it was probably less in response to my manoeuvring, and more for the free lesson in creative English cussing.

Of course, these stressful shenanigans could have been avoided, with the addition of a very simple caravan accessory costing from around £600.