Ooh, the daffodils are out, you can just start to feel the warm sun on your skin, and the Easter weekend has just been and gone.
Right now, families up and down the country will be taking out their road atlases and guidebooks, and consulting Google Maps, saying, “Where shall we go touring this year?”, and which of the best caravan sites to pitch up at, or even thinking about registering a caravan for Europe and heading overseas.
Asking yourself where to tour is an important question. And one that, phrased that way, I think will ultimately lead to disappointment. Why? Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying there is anything wrong about planning ahead.
It’s just that the “W” word at the start of that sentence – “Where shall we go touring this year?” – is the wrong one.
So what “W” word should it be? When, perhaps, instead of where? Well yes, there are plenty of good reasons for having a think about when you want to go to a place, especially if you are in the luxurious position of not having to worry about fitting into school holidays.
For example, shall we visit the Scottish Highlands this August? Well, possibly not, not unless you want to share your experience with about a million midges. But shall we visit the Scottish Highlands in the autumn – even during October half term? Yes, almost certainly. You should have at least a couple of gorgeous crisp autumn days, and no sign of a midge anywhere.
OK, it could be a tad cooler, but you don’t exactly head north to Scotland for the warmth anyway, do you? And if you’re thinking of caravanning in Scotland, you would be surprised how many Scottish caravan parks stay open well into the autumn.
For instance, Linwater Caravan Park, our Regional Winner for Scotland in our Top 100 Sites Guide 2026, is open all year, making it an ideal base for exploring the countryside to the west of Edinburgh. Plus, there are a variety of things you can do to keep a caravan warm if the temperature drops.
For similar reasons about avoiding hordes, this time of the human variety, I would advise against visiting any of Italy’s really famous medieval cities in the middle of August. I once visited Florence in January – come the evening, I only had to put a jacket on to keep the chill out, and had the Piazza della Signoria largely to myself, save for the odd local huddled over an espresso to escape the worst of those savage winters they clearly get in Tuscany.
But there is actually a much more important “W” word you should be asking – definitely more important than where, and possibly more important than when. And that is why? Why do we want to go on holiday this year?
Because, after all, you will almost certainly have toiled away many hours to earn the money to buy a caravan that you are proposing to travel in. And then you will have had to toil a bit more to be able to afford all the overheads that will inevitably arise while you are touring – meals out, museum fees, and so on, there could even be ferry or Eurotunnel costs, depending on where you go.
So surely you want to spend all that money doing something that you – and of course your nearest and dearest – actually want to do?
This is one of the reasons why I find the whole idea of bucket lists very depressing. Who says there is any definite list of places you “must” visit before you go? Do they have any idea what your interests actually are?
All too often, you find these lists are put together by journalists who have half an eye on what some useful potential advertiser might be hoping to see. And how often have you heard someone who has followed one of these lists come back and tell you that such and such a world heritage site was in the end disappointing?
This is one of the reasons I now tell anyone visiting Paris for the first time not to bother with the Louvre: you stand a better chance of admiring the Mona Lisa by looking at an advertising poster featuring it outside the museum than by making your way past the phone camera-clutching hordes crowding around the picture on the inside. And yes, they are there at all times of day.
I should add a note of caution here. Obviously, we carry travel articles in every issue in Practical Caravan, where we may suggest ideas such as the best adults only caravan sites, or the best family caravan parks. But I would hope that these are only ever suggestive, not prescriptive. We only want to give you ideas, not commands.
So if you read in them about some place that matches something you have always wondered about, but this place happens to be very close to some all-important monument you feel you really have to see, and you only have room to do one of these things, I hope you will sway towards the former.
That’s at least what I try to do now. Last summer I took my daughter on holiday to the Dordogne. Because she is currently studying Michel de Montaigne, the “father of the essay”, at university, I said we would go to the chateau he owned.
It is by no means the best chateau in the region, and the lady in the tourist office scratched her head and had to look up in her own guide to be reminded of where it was. But we had a great time when we got there.
We discovered, among other things, that the great man never actually wrote anything – he just wandered around a rather claustrophobic room, thinking aloud, and some poor scribe sitting in the corner desperately tried to annotate what he said. I am sure generations of students following would sympathise.
I know in the future that, because no one else in my family was a big fan of relaxing on a beach in years gone by, now that I have more possibilities to travel on my own, a beach is definitely where I am going to head. for me that means Atlantic beaches with proper waves, not Mediterranean upstarts.
If that means I miss out on visiting the latest fashionable Eastern European destination that apparently is great for a city break and where there is a café where they make divine cappuccinos, so be it. Without trying to boast, I think I make a pretty damn smart cappuccino at home.
If you are in need of some touring ideas, you could take a look at our guide to the best caravan parks in Dorset. Alternatively, if you will be setting off with your canine companion and want some tips about touring with a pet, see what Lottie Gross has to say about why she loves caravanning with a dog.
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