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My partner and I are looking to start our journey into Caravanning and we could do with some help and advice please. Below are some details that hopefully will help with this. Please be gentle, I may of not understood something, or missed something We own a Fabia Estate, we have no intention of changing this, so we know we are looking at something light and this limits our market. The gross vehicle weight is 1591kg, the gross train weight is 2691kg. This gives (as long as I have understood things correctly) 100% - 1100kg 85% - 935kg. Maximum axle loads for the front and rear axles respectively - 810kg each. If I have it right the 935kg @85% limit needs to include the following; us in the car, two Labradors in the car, the caravan, anything we want to take with us - either in the car or in the caravan! MTPLM is going to be less than 935kg as I need to take into account us in the car, two Labradors and anything else packed into the car. Positively or negatively...I am not sure as it is age related, we both passed our driving tests before 1997 so we are good to go for towing. We are looking for a 2 berth. Budget under £4,000. We will only be using this in the UK. We are happy to have something that needs a little interior TLC and refresh. However we do not want to undertake a major renovation. We are aware of the things to look for such as damp etc. This will be our first caravan, we do not even know if it will all work for us. So some of the things we would like advice on are: Do we go for an older model for around £1,000-£2,000 or do we go for something a little newer up to our budget limit of £4,000? I would love to have an end bathroom with a separate shower cubicle arrangement, rather than the wetroom type arrangement (I suspect we will very rarely use either as we will use the facilities provided on sites when in them, but obviously we may be somewhere there are none) Am I being unrealistic in this, for this weight range and price range? Please can we have some recommendations of suitable caravans. I have made notes on the ones on the forums here and also this site https://www.lightweightcaravan.com/what-is-a-lightweight-caravan/ Best places to look to find suggested caravans - dealer, private seller, AutoTrader, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree etc. Anything else that is helpful really or I have missed Thank you all in advance for your help and suggestions.

Hi. Thinking about starting up. Is £20k a realistic budget for a start up. Was considering:- A diesel 4 x 4 for winter use as well. A 4 berth tourer with fixed twin beds and a large toilet area. Any ideas welcomed. Also Single Axle or Twin. Manual or Auto Gearbox ?? Brands for van or car also welcomed. Thanks in advance Steven

As the topic title says. Would you fit budget tyres on your tow car?? My Galaxy needs new front tyres. Looking around the tyres as fitted (goodyear) are about £140 each. Budget tyres are coming out at £60. The wallet is saying go budget, but is there really any difference in day to day performance between tyres when towing. With previous non tow cars I have fitted budget tyres and not noticed any difference. Maybe I've just answered my own question :-/

Morning all, I know there are loads of "What first van should I get" threads but as everyone's needs are specific to them I though id ask for some advice. Its probably a little different from the norm too. I was pointed this way from another (unrelated) forum by someone who was very helpful so I'm hoping others on here will be too. From reading through many posts it appears your a lovely bunch. I have wanted to get into caravans for years, but I’m only now getting around to it due to work and family. A bit of background info. My wife and I have 4 children, two teenagers and two toddlers. Holidays for six of us are expensive and sometimes hard to organise and that it what has given us the push to finally get a 'van. I know it’s not as cheap as it used to be but it should give much more opportunity for holidays than we currently get. Here is the question. Whatever we get will be on a tight budget. We could save for one next year (maybe the end of this year) for the £1000 - £1500 mark or the year after for the£4000 - £5000 ish mark. That may change slightly (increase) as I am looking for a new job, but for now I’ll go on these figures. As there are six of us were either looking for a 6 berth or a 4/5 berth with awning and preferably something that could be pulled by both of our cars (Citroen C8 HDi and Nissan Primera 2. 2 dci). I’m not too bad with a set of spanners so I would be willing to take on something needing a little work but my experience with 'vans is limited and my wife would probably prefer something that was ready to roll. The problem being we are totally new to this so don’t even know where to start looking. It may sound strange asking when its 1 or 2 years before we can buy but planning ahead is the only way we could manage this and will hopefully enable us to get a better suited and priced deal. So. .. If you were in our situation what would you do and which vans would you consider? Many thanks, Mark