Motorhomes or campervans appear, on the surface, to be the ideal off-grid home for a music festival. But that convenience is an illusion. Having attended countless festivals, we’ve learned a simple lesson: for all its perceived downsides, only a caravan truly delivers.
Once you’re settled in that muddy field, you’ll quickly realise it’s the caravan that is, by a comfortable margin, the superior choice for a musical getaway. Here’s why I’d advise choosing a caravan for a festival. And if you decide you want to find out more about touring without hook-up, see what we have to say about caravanning off-grid, too.
You can also take a look at our advice on how to power a caravan off-grid, if you’re touring without hook-up.
The ‘drop-and-go’ advantage
The single biggest, most undeniable factor in this debate is the van’s ‘drop-and-go’ advantage. Motorhomes and campervans are, by their very nature, your one and only mode of transport. Once you’ve wedged your motorhome into its allotted space, got it roughly level and pulled on the handbrake, you are fixed.
Your transport is now your accommodation. If you’ve not forgotten anything, that’s fine. But if you do find yourself short of charcoal, Lambrusco or toilet roll, extracting a motorhome from a festival field is zero fun.
You have to pack up everything. Cups must be secured, the telly tucked away, and the awning needs to be wound in. And once all that is done, you have to thread the needle to get your bus through the adjacent yurts, gazebos and emplacements that infill the gaps in a festival field. And you need to get back in afterwards, too.
With a caravan, the scenario is completely different. You pitch up, unhitch the car, and you’re instantly set up for the long haul. Ok, you need to think about levelling the caravan too, but your tourer becomes your luxurious, stable, and completely self-contained festival base, nestled in the landscape and utterly unmoving. Even if a neighbour wants to move their motorhome.
If you need an emergency tube of Pringles or some more Gaviscon, the best car for towing a caravan is far easier to tease out of a camping compound than a motorhome. Freed from a caravan millstone, it’s free for an emergency supermarket trip and you don’t need to disturb your base camp at all. Hop in the car and go.
Caravans are more likely to escape a muddy pitch
If a fresh tube of Pringles is one kind of nightmare, a full-on, wheel-spinning festival mudbath is another. Luckily, the caravan is more likely to escape that, too.
When it is time to leave, if the weather has done its worst, both vehicles are equally susceptible to getting stuck; but a caravan is inherently less disastrous to recover. If a motorhome is stuck, you’re stuck. End of story.
Once your motorhome is spinning its wheels, you are now solely reliant on a benevolent farmer, his overworked tractor, and a prayer that he doesn’t use your colour-coded bumper as a tow point. With a caravan, you’ve got more options before you call in the big guns.
If your caravan is stuck, you have the option of separating the car, altering the angle of attack and trying again. Or perhaps use your motor mover to creep the van off the pitch and then attach the car. Or hook up a bigger car from a friendly neighbour.
Caravans are comfortable
Perhaps you are more of a planner than that. Generous payloads in many motorhomes mean you may not leave anything behind, but the caravan’s advantages aren’t done there.
After a long night, there is the small matter of space and comfort. Motorhomes are lovely, plush pieces of engineering, but whether your motorhome is a motorised hovel or a hotel on wheels, they all have the same limitation – namely that one end of the accommodation has a steering wheel in it.
For the same volume of living space, a caravan comfortably outpoints the campervan equivalent. With one end dominated by a dashboard, pedals and a single-glazed cabin, that means there are no nice comfy sofas on offer unless you are in huge motorcoach territory.
That is especially true if you have a fixed bed model where a bolt-upright half-dinette, often with a seatbelt fitted, offers all the cossetting comfort of a dentist’s waiting room. If you are lucky and the cab seats swing around (and don’t leave you staring point blank at the washroom wall) they are still not the comfiest perch in the camping field, often groaning and creaking every time you freshen up your Faustino.
Your standard touring caravan, on the other hand, is built solely for one purpose: living.
There are no compromises made for the sake of driving. This means more generously proportioned living areas, often a full-sized kitchen, and, crucially, either a comfy fixed-bed or a nice squishy sofa. Often both – and you can always take a look at how to make a caravan bed more comfortable if you want to improve your sleeping experience.
After a long, muddy day of crowds, music and suspect cider, the difference between a cramped motorhome and a comparatively capacious caravan is the difference between starting the next day grumpy and starting it ready to head back to the mosh pit.
Packing your festival kit
Think about the sheer amount of kit you bring to a festival, too. While motorhomes have storage, you will find when you’re packing a caravan that it offers more usable storage, tucked away in lockers and under seating that isn’t also trying to accommodate a steering column.
Plus, the separation of the caravan from the tow car means you have two distinct areas for dumping gear, keeping the sleeping quarters clean and the living area separate from the muddy entrance and the inevitable debris of festival life.
You can dedicate the front of the car to the ‘dirty’ stuff and keep the van pristine. Your caravan also typically has separate water and waste containers. If you really want to annoy your neighbours, ask them to take their awning down because you need to empty your motorhome waste tanks.
It boils down to this: the motorhome option forces you to manage your accommodation while you’re trying to enjoy a festival. The caravan simply lets you unhitch, settle in, and forget about logistics until the final encore. Then at the end, hitch up the caravan and off you go. After a long weekend of crowds and questionable cider, that’s the ultimate comfort.
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