If your tow car has roof rails, there’s no need to overload your caravan with all your outdoor gear. Just go shopping for roof bars and pop the camping chairs, caravan awning, children’s scooters and other bulky kit up on the roof! 

Caravan holidays are so much better if you can take all the caravan accessories you need. And now there are roof bars for sale that are designed to fit virtually all cars with their own roof rails. We chose a shortlist of 10 products for our roof bar tests and got them in to the Practical Caravan test bench. We were keen to find out how these sets of roof bars compare in price, strength, how easy they were to fit, and what kind of weight they could support to make all your load-lugging tasks easier.

Here we bring you our Mont Blanc 1250 Activa Alu review. At £70 more than Summit’s excellent, but similar-looking, 500 series bars, this set has you wondering what extras you get for the money. Well, first off, these bars can support up to 100kg. 

But, unlike the portly Atera Signo, aluminium construction keeps the bars themselves lightweight. A five-year warranty offers reassurance that the bars are up to the heavy loading, too. 

When driving, the Mont Blanc 1250 Activa Alu roof bars produce slightly less noise than the Summits, and they’re easier to fit. They come ready for use, and one of the feet’s end covers — all of which have to be removed to access the adjusters — even boasts an Allen key, meaning that no separate tools are required.

So, how does the Mont Blanc 1250 Activa Alu measure up to other roof bars available for caravan holidays?

The best roof bar set we tested was the Thule WingBar costing £150.50 at the time of our test, a superb set of modular roof bars with an easy fitting system, noise-reduction built in, an aerodynamic shape and 100kg load. We awarded this Thule set five stars.

We also liked the Summit 500 Series, at £89.95, which you have to assemble yourself, and which can take a 75kg load. We gave the Summit 500 four stars.

The Mont Blanc Supra 004 roof bar set costing £103.43 is ideal if your tow car has no roof rails, because you can buy versions of it to fasten into fixed points, door apertures and roof gutters. The Mont Blanc Supra 004 suffers from the fact that it can only take a 60kg load and has no locking system, however, so we gave it two stars, considering the price.

The cheapest roof bars we tested were the Spanish-manufactured Cruz SR+ 130 roof bars, which cost just £49.95 plus shipping. Check out the rest of our Practical Caravan roof bar test results before you part with your cash.