We’re hooked!
It is often believed that the
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word “caravan” is Romani in origin, but it is actually derived from the Farsi word “karwan”, meaning “a convoy of travellers”.
In Europe, the origins of travel
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trailers and caravanning can however be traced back to the Romani people, as well as showmen who spent most of their lives in horse-drawn caravans.
The world’s first leisure caravan
3 was built in Bristol for writer Dr William Gordon Stables in 1880. He toured the British countryside in it, writing a book called The Gentleman Gypsy in 1885 about his travels.
By 1901, caravanning for
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leisure had become a popular activity. That year, the first dedicated club for the hobby, The Camping and Caravanning Club, was established. Six years on, the other major group for caravanning fans, the Caravan and Motorhome Club, was created. Both clubs offer services including advice, insurance and community activities.
It’s now believed that the
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caravan industry, which includes touring caravans that are hitched to a car, static caravans on a permanent site and motorhomes, is worth a massive £1billion to the UK economy. In 2018, about 65million nights were spent
camping and
Great Britain.
There are more than
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550,000 caravans in the UK, but the country they’re most popular in is Germany with an estimated 674,700.
If you put all the caravans
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in the UK bumper to bumper they would stretch for 3,000 miles – almost caravanning in the same distance as London New York.
In 2012, a caravan was converted
8 into a nightclub at the Trailerpark Festival in the Danish capital Copenhagen. Called The Black Box Revelation, it paid tribute to retro mobile home designs.
Celebrity fans of caravanning
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include Coldplay singer Chris Martin, whose father owned a Devon-based caravan empire that sold for £5million in 1999, singer Gary Numan who says his favourite holiday destination is Littlesea Holiday Camp in Weymouth, and Dame Helen Mirren, who is a paid-up member of the Caravan and Motorhome Club.
But TV presenter Jeremy
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Clarkson is known for his hatred of caravans and has destroyed several of them on television, prompting complaints from the caravanning community.
In the UK, you can only travel
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at 50 miles per hour when towing a caravan on a single lane road and 60mph on a dual carriageway.
You can now buy luxury caravans
12 that include marble kitchen counter tops and builtin hot tubs. One mobile mansion called the Palazzo Superior sells for £2.4million. to