I’m proud to say that I can do almost anything I need to with or in my caravan on my own. I tow it, park it, push it and pull it around all by myself – who needs a gym when you’ve got a 750kg metal box to contend with?

I can even hitch up my caravan without the assistance of a rear-view camera on the car these days – I had to learn that one quickly when my car broke down in Aberdeen this summer and I was given a janky old pick-up as my tow car for the onward journey.

What I love about solo caravanning

I’m not ashamed to admit that all of this makes me feel quite accomplished. It’s a serious boost for my self-confidence to be so self-sufficient in my caravan. I’ll never tire of throwing my weight around with the Eriba to manoeuvre it into the perfect position as other campers watch on, no doubt entertained by my completely inelegant huffing and puffing.

For my final trip of summer 2025, I did just that at the Winchcombe Camping and Caravanning Club Site. My pitch was right beside their small fishing lake, with its own pontoon and a small family of chatty ducks waddling about.

The view out the window at Winchcombe
Image: Lottie Gross – the view at Winchcombe

While most caravanners had their vans pitched with the rear to the lake, I was able to swing my towbar around and sit horizontally across it, with my door and living room window looking right out across the water. Afternoon beers by the caravan have never felt so good.

Earlier in the summer, while I had been caravanning in Scotland, when the sunshine was at its warmest on the Kintyre Peninsula, I even managed to put up my Isabella Shade Canopy all on my own, and not a swear word was uttered while trying to get the poles to stay up as I grappled with the guy ropes.

The Isabella Shade at Kintyre
Image: Lottie Gross – Isabella Shade goes up at Kintyre and Arty can’t believe the lack of swearing

The sense of achievement in such situations is unparalleled. Solo caravanning is both empowering and energising, and it comes with all the benefits that other kinds of solo travel have, too, such as long lie-ins on no one else’s clock and the ability to follow your whims and fancies wherever you like.

The downsides of solo caravanning

But there are downsides. It’s all well and good being a smug solo caravanner when all is well and good, but when things go wrong and you’re the only person there to clean up the mess, find the solution or pep talk yourself out of a bad day, it can feel like a grind.

In France, in the spring of 2024, my Kia Sportage let me down at a pivotal moment, something which can happen with even the best tow cars.

I put my foot down as I entered the slip road onto the motorway, aiming to gain enough speed to join the traffic, but without any warning, the car went into limp mode and refused to go above 30mph. I found myself crawling along the hard shoulder with my hazards on until I could get to the toll plaza and safely park up out of the way.

Lottie with a picnic set up at a French toll plaza
Image: Lottie Gross – time for a leisurely sit down and picnic at a French toll plaza

For two full hours, I sat on the Tarmac in baking 30-degree heat, with little water and no company except for the dog, who had nothing remotely useful to say and spent the entire time eyeballing a trucker’s meatball stew bubbling away on his mini stove in the next parking bay.

The Eriba on the back of a pick-up truck
Image: Lottie Gross – nothing wrong with the Eriba, but it must also come along for the ride if the car malfunctions

After a frustrating rescue experience that involved having to sit in my own car on the flatbed trailer with the dog because the French breakdown driver refused to have him in the cab, I spent a further three hours twiddling my thumbs at the depot where cars go to die, before eventually being repatriated to a campsite with my caravan but no working car.

Lottie sitting back with her feet up as she waits at the 'dead car depot', while Arty lays under a table
Image: Lottie Gross – feet up for another long wait at the ‘dead car depot’ and by now even poor Arty has had enough

The realities of going solo hit me hard during those few days stranded on a Normandy campsite, with no car, no gas left in the caravan and nobody to talk me out of my semi-regular stress spirals – except the lovely people on the phones at Red Pennant insurance, who dealt with my claim and occasionally chaotic phone calls with some serious professionalism.

When the going gets tough

Twice more this year, my car has broken down with the caravan in tow, and while I’m now experienced in breakdown etiquette (and looking for a new tow car, of course), it doesn’t get any easier or any less stressful.

The driving can be hard-going for us solo caravanners. On my two-month jaunt around France, Spain and Portugal in 2024, I was ambitious with my distances and ended up on the road for up to seven hours a day at times. The dog has zero car chat, and so I was left alone with Radio 4, a few audiobooks and – gasp – my own thoughts for much of the journey.

For all the liberation of travelling alone, there’s also a heavy dose of responsibility and, often, mundanity involved in being a solo caravanner. I’m not giving it up, but I also wouldn’t complain if somebody else felt like emptying the Thetford some day.

If you’re thinking of heading to Europe in your tourer this summer, make sure you know how to register a caravan for Europe first, too.

Follow Lottie on Instagram at @lottiegross

Images: Lottie Gross

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