I was having a rather disturbing dream last night in which I believed I was trying to sleep underneath a tap dancing school for elephants. A particularly loud crash woke me, and I realised that there were no tap dancing elephants upstairs; merely “My Boy TM ” quietly getting ready for work. After a little stomping about he came downstairs. It might have been quieter if he just came straight through the ceiling. He then clumped about downstairs for a while before setting off to work; closing the front door behind him so quietly it was probably heard clearly three counties away.
Fortunately being on a late start I got the chance for a bit more kip once he’d set off, and over a bit of brekky I did a bit more finding out about caravans. The obvious first question is to find out whether my car is up to towing a caravan, or do I need to trade it in? It turns out that my car weights (about) 1430 kg and therefore it would be capable of towing a caravan (and associated luggage) of up to 1215 kg.
Needless to say, that figure meant absolutely nothing to me. I have no idea how heavy a caravan might be. So I phoned the nice bloke at Chilham who I saw on Sunday. He was of the opinion that I can tow anything up to a “small-medium” caravan. He went on to add that he caravans regularly and his towing weight is restricted to 1000 kg.
The obvious next step would be to get a tow bar attached. Ironically when I chose my current car I had to decide between the one I got and another which was almost identical. The other car was at the same price, but with slightly more mileage so I went for the one I’ve got. However the other one had a towbar.
I phoned Renault – they could sort me out with a towbar. Together with fitting the thing I would be looking at six hundred pounds. Ouch! ‘er indoors TM had found another company that fitted towbars, so I gave them a ring. It turned out that they were part of Trident Trailers (who are quite well known locally). The nice man there said he could fit a fixed swan neck tow bar and the electrical fittings for three hundred quid. That’s more affordable.
I then had a look at my diary dates. The year has rushed by, and I’ve plans for most of the weekends for the next few months. It occurred to me that we’ve two trips to London planned in the next few weeks (or so) – to see the sci-fi exhibition at the British Library and to see the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History museum. Bearing in mind the cost of a train ticket to London, it occurred to me that we might make some savings if we combined both of these trips.
Fortunately for us the British Library is almost on top of St Pancreas station (named after the patron saint of abdominal organs!), so having got to London all we’d have to do would be to get to the museum at Kensington and then get back to where we started.
It seems like a good plan….. let’s see how it pans out.
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