Going off the grid - Caravan Batteries and Solar Panels

Anybody can go on a caravan touring holiday and plug into an electric hook up on any uk caravan site or camp site. Holidays in France, I don't know about, because we haven't ventured there yet and I suspect they have a different plug or wattage.
Your caravan is your little home from home with all the mod cons, such as tv (sky or freeview) and laptop with wifi and hair dryer and electric kettle and electric blankets and toasters, you get the idea.
Which Caravan you have, will decide on how many sockets you have and how many appliances you could have on the go at any one time, ours only has 2 sockets, but we manage.

 By going off the electric and relying on your caravan leisure battery is a different type of holiday and can be more fun because it makes it a different experience. You need to consider when you can put on the lights or run the water pump to fill your sink. I think of it as like camping in a tent but a very luxurious tent with a fridge and a gas fire. By relying on your battery you need to switch your fridge over to run on gas and to use your gas fire instead of the electric one, although it's likely the same unit.
The caravan parts and accessories that will definitely make your holiday experience a better one are simple ones. A decent Leisure Battery is of course the best one to invest in. The more money you pay then the better the quality is a good adage to go by, but I often buy cheap if I can.
The most we have lasted is 3 nights and 4 days before the battery is showing as depleted.
For the future we intend on buying a solar panel which will keep the battery charging even on overcast days, but especially if we have sunny days.
I've read that you need at least a 100watts version and these can cost over £200, but I like the idea of charging the battery for free.

Wiring a solar panel into the battery compartment

Solar panel ready to go on the roof

 Here is a photo and link to a website that supplies what we are looking for.
The PV Logic range of portable, fold up solar panels is designed to be
highly transportable and quick and easy to set up and use.

 

Each portable solar panel has an integrated stand, a built-in charge controller and battery connectors. All you need to do is open up the panel, stand it up and connect it to your battery for instant power. Because the PV Logic foldup solar panels are self contained the usage is no limited to just caravan and motohomes, you can also use them with trailer tents and even general camping. The PV logic range of portable solar panels are supplied with a premium padded carry bag, easily stored in your caravan or motorhome and erected in minutes.

A couple that we know who go on lots of rallies use 2 batteries and their rooftop solar panel to charge 1 or the other depending which is in need of a top-up, with a simple switch. They use 1 battery for tv use only and the other for everything else and manage a week without any loss of power.
That's where I want to be.
Battery chargers have been a discussion point on many websites with many people waiting for Aldi or Lidl to have their special offer on and selling a very capable device for under £15. We would welcome any comments from people who know where to source the same cheap battery charger from the manufacturer, directly.
Please let me know in the comments below.

Camp Fires

fire pit

A lot of sites don't allow a camp fire to be lit on their pitches for several reasons.
I was wondering what people's experiences were regarding a successful camp fire.
When I was camping in a tent I found more sites that allowed them and we had a great big fire once at Grizedale Forest site where we used a full bag of coal which kept us nice and warm.

Now that I have a caravan I've only managed to use my free standing portable barbecue, similar to a suitcase one to try and recreate the camp fire camaraderie (is that spelt right)?
We just added a few twigsand small branches and managed to keep a roaring fire going throughout the evening keeping our fronts warm but still cold behind us. The kids had a good time collecting the twigs for us and kept them occupied while we got the food ready.
We once bought a firelog from home bargains and that was ok but when we had finished and were ready for bed, we poured water on it and it was still smouldering in the morning which made me worry about the fumes creeping under the awning and gassing us!
Again, when we were camping in a tent we went to fishergrounds site and they had used old wheel rims tied into the ground with metal stakes to determine where the fire was to be located. Brilliant.

We've never bought a firepit so we don't have experience of using one and I know some sites object to them, but I'm not sure what the reason is.

Do you go to a site that allows caravans and campfires? Where is it?

The below 2 photos I took when I was camping in my tent before I got my caravan and they are of my friend cooking meat, but these photos say so much.
When I get back in my caravan and spark up my first bbq of the season I will take some decent photos of veggie food for this blog.

Typical English, Rain doesn't stop us

combining camp fire and bbq

Comments below, thanks.

Vegetarians like BBQ's too

We are a family of vegetarians which we all know, means we don't want to eat meat.
So, does that mean we can't have a BBQ? (barbecue).
No it doesn't mean that at all.
We have had many BBQ's over the last few years and we don't feel like we are missing out because we don't eat meat.

The first thing we put on the BBQ is chopped onions sprayed with vegetable oil and wrapped in foil.
Then we put some large mushrooms on, the kids love the large mushrooms, which always shrink to about half their size and are very tasty when cooked this way.
We get Quorn sausages/ burgers or Linda McCartney sausages/burgers and put them on. To be honest as an ex meat eater I can't remember the difference and still enjoy what some people call carpet burgers.
Another favourite of ours is to chop feta cheese into squares and add cherry tomatoes, basil, olive oil and wrap it all up in foil in individual portions and cook for about 10 minutes. When they are cooked we add a small amount of balsamic dressing. Delicious. We add our burgers or sausages with our cooked onions to a barm cake (bap or bread roll), add some mayo, mustard or ketchup as you prefer vans tuck in.
On the table we always have boiled new potatoes and a large bowl of salad.
We sometimes bbq some vegetable nuggets then chop them up and add them to pitta bread with salad and dressing to make a vegetarian kebab.

Photos will be added later.
A quick note about BBQ safety and carbon monoxide.
Never put a BBQ in a tent or awning or caravan, because they give off poisonous fumes that are deadly. 

This photo says so much about the English

BBQ's can catch fire! This is my friend cooking meat!

Comments below please.

18th trip - St.Ives Cambridge - last of 2011

Our eighteenth trip was to St.Ives in cambridge for 3 nights at the end of October 2011.
The site is pleasantly located near a river and an old mill - Houghton Mill.
We were here to visit our Auntie talkalot, so we ended up doing stuff that pleased her rather than our usual stuff, but we still had a good time.
This was our last trip in 2011

Blue Skies

Houghton website Mill

Life on a campsite 1977

In 1977 I was aged 12 and my parents got a job managing a campsite at Salcombe Regis near Sidmouth Devon.
I can remember walking around both camp fields and being told that the 2 fields were 16 acres in total. We explored the various wooden sheds and outhouses and I spotted a fantastic looking machine which was the grass cutter. It was almost like a mini tractor. I volunteered to drive it and my Dad said I could at some point after he had tested it out.
We also found a full sized actual tractor that my Dad said I could use maybe in the future. There was no safety roll bar but we never needed it. I did get to use it and it was great fun.

Our tractor looked just like this

The site consisted of about 8 static caravans. When the season got underway my parents organised the bookings for these and there were many different visitors to these statics. There was one family that I remember very well and they were from Hanover in Germany and I spent the whole week hanging out with the 2 boys and I showed them around the local area and all the dens that we had found or made. I ate some of my meals with them and the one meal which sticks in my memory is a plate of meatballs which I still remember the taste of and I've been a vegetarian for at least 15 Years as an adult!
I used to love cutting the grass in the middle of the site, using the giant ride on lawnmower;

Ours looked similar to this

 tents were pitched around the outside of the field and the centre was left for playing games on, except one week when it was the Sidmouth folk festival and the site was absolutely packed with tents wherever there was a piece of grass there was some hippies camped (that's what they looked like).
I remember teaching one of my sisters how to ride a bicycle down the hill towards the shower block, but I can't remember which sister. The shower blocks were very old with 2 showers in the gents that cost 5p to operate. The toilets were outside and consisted of a wooden seat over a large smelly tank!

Sometime during the summer my mum and dad started an onsite shop, where we sold mainly chocolates and crisps, maybe more but I don't recall. Apparently the proceeds of the shop paid for our 2 weeks in Spain in November 1977.

My sisters and I made new friends every week and I remember my eldest sister changed her accent every week depending on who she had made friends with. In particular she mastered the Stoke on Trent accent to a Tee.
Our caravan had gas mantles for lighting and I can recall occasionally changing the mantles.
I had great fun driving my dad's tractor around the site, although I would be horrified if my children ever did such a thing.
I have a memory of my dad cleaning out the drains with some long poles after a blockage, I bet that wasn't a fun time for him.
During the holidays or at weekends we used to take our new friends of the week down to the sea, which was about 2 miles away. Whilst I'm thinking about the sea, I had asked for a pair of flippers (fins) for my birthday in March and went straight down to the stormy sea and lost them when a giant wave crashed over me. The sea was freezing and I should not have been there on my own. Quite dangerous and I wouldn't have let my kids do such a thing. Different times, I suppose.