We bought a new caravan!

One of the conditions of our storage yard is that you must consult them before changing your van. This is to make sure you have enough space to store it in your space, so your new pride and joy does not mean that your neighbors can no longer get their van in or out.

We have been considering a different layout for some time and finally managed to get the time to nip to the storage yard and ask the question… Can we go 2 feet longer?

The answer was yes.

Off we went to look at what was available.

That was the first mistake. The second was heading to the new vans. The third was going in them in price order…. Lowest first.

We both fell in love with the final well almost final van. The final van we went in was the buccaneer twin axel so no.

The layout we always thought we wanted was the Elddis 550 layout with a rear island bed and the bathroom in the middle. Other brands have this layout but they just didn’t quite do it for us. Anyway after sitting in said 550 at the Manchester Caravan Show with out friends Mick & Michelle and closing the bathroom door it suddenly felt very claustrophobic. Their van is a transverse island bed with bathroom at the rear and we decided that felt much roomier.

That meant we changed our eligance to the Elddis 554 layout.

That is until we walked into a Buccaneer ok it had the same layout but was bigger…lol too big. We can’t have a twin axel van at our storage plus it was £33k. OMG!

So what have we picked?

The Elddis Crusader Mistral

The trim level is about the same as the buccaneers just a slightly different colour. The van has everything we had on our wish list.

• Fully lined shower
• Large shower
• Toilet on off side of van
• Outside BBQ Point
• Drawers inside the van
• Outside power outlets
• More convenient TV point
• Island bed

It certainly has that Wow factor when you walk in.

Even the lighting is modern and adds to the feeling you get of home.

So a deal was struck, yes we haggled, made the salesman work for his sale. We think we got a pretty good deal, luckily we can see past the salesman’s patter and trying to make us think he has done us a huge favour. He told us he was giving us a better trade in price for our van when in reality they had shaved some profit off the van we are buying as they expect to make that back when the sell our van. I fully expect to see our van on the forecourt for at least £2k more that they paid us. But I don’t care we got the deal we wanted and more import the caravan we wanted!

Now it’s just filling in time until we can collect it. Being busy we have to wait until ours and the dealers schedule collide…. In short 22nd June. In time for our French Holidays. Oh and that gives her time to buy new stuff. Silly me thought we already had everything we needed for a caravan….. Apparently not!

BTW, the van in the pictures is the demo van, ours is being delivered from the factory.