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stevecuff-blog · 8 years ago

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Our Teardrop Adventure begins soon, were becoming Teardroppers.......follow us

I can't start to explain how many variations of camping with have trialled over the years since we have been married, in fact even before that. We have bounced between tents to caravans, more caravans back to tents, then a two week unsuccessful stint in a trailer tent, oh and few months back an air tent. But we thought we we had found our jewel when we bought a brand new Eldiss 540 caravan from the NEC in the late part of 2015, honestly it was fantastic with all the mod cons and would have been perfect apart from the following. Caravans are great I think if you have the time to use them, but unfortunately we both work full time and only get five weeks a year off, two weeks have always been set aside for America which only leaves just under three weeks. So here is my first issue, if lucky we would only get maybe two weeks a year away in it, and you think " well we will go away for the weekend" in reality it's a lot of hassle for just one night, leave work Friday afternoon, drive to storage, unlock it all which took some time due to it being an expensive bit of kit , then do all the hook up procedures to make it ready for towing. So then you can't go to far from home due to timescale or chance getting to a site to late.

So once on site it's all the reverse of the previous hitching up, unhitching, locking secure, levelling, water collection, electric hookup, gas, awning, the list goes on until finally your set. Therefore Friday is almost over, so that just leaves Saturday to enjoy before waking up early Sunday to do it all again as usually you have to be off site between 10-11am. I know a lot will disagree with us, don't get me wrong we loved our caravan but they are a lot of everything and if I was to list the top five disadvantages for us then this would be how it went. 1. Storage costs were high, 2. Insurance costs, 3. Setup, 4. Set down, 5.Amount of use during year.

So we had the chance to sell the caravan and cut our loss, having sit on a site for most part of a year was to hard to explain, along with trying to keep it regularly clean(another issue).

A few months have gone by now and the camping bug has started to bite, my brother purchased a Airbeam tent which we thought was impressively quick and decided it would be a speedy alternative to the caravan, so we purchased a £494 Coleman four man Airbeam for our next trial.

I can say they are great to to put up and we did really enjoy the ease of putting it up, also the fun of actually camping, but OMG it was cold at night, and noisy.

Anyway we were walking around the camp the next morning and saw our first Teardrop trailer, at first we laughed it off as just a quirky design but then after some investigation on the internet we started to see some advantages.

When in the tent the only thing we didn't like was sleeping at night on the air bed on the floor and the lack of cooking space, it got us thinking that the Teardrop was not such a bad idea after all.

Somewhere to sleep off the ground that is cosy and warm and place to make a cuppa at, plus the ability to use it to store all your chairs, tables and gazeebo etc on the move, and the Big Bonus for us is that we can store in our garage free of charge.

We have yet to take delivery of our new adventure as it is being built September as I write, but we are quietly confident that this will be our surprise camping venture that fits our lifestyle.

Our Nodpod lux is being handbuilt by West Midland Trailers to our specification, it will have a space inside for a full size double bed, TV for those inclement evening watching Netflix or Amazon videos, it will have internal storage for travelling, the rear opens to a kitchen prep area with a small sink with extendable shower hose to wash your boots or bikes act, led lighting and mains usb sockets throughout, alloy wheels, and a front to house the battery and fridge cool box.

These trailers are relatively still rare to see in England, the USA maybe much more but we think they are ideal for what we need to enjoy camping or for that quick last minute weekend get away when the weather is promising to be nice, either way we will continue to blog our experiences when we receive it to let you know how it performs.

Ps. We have just purchased a Coleman 15ftx15ft Event shelter as these are the apparently the preferred choice for teardroppers as you can actually fit the Teardrop under with still plenty of room for chairs and tables.

Will update as soon as we know it's build timescale hopefully this month (September 17)

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