How Britain fell out of love with the caravan

Telegraph

17-07-2025

If I had a pound for every time someone has asked me: 'Why didn't you just get a campervan?', I'd probably have enough money to book a hard-standing, electric-hook-up touring pitch on my favourite campsite in the UK (Culzean Castle, if you're wondering). I have felt the need to justify and defend my caravan persuasion on several occasions over the past few years since I bought my 1997 Eriba Familia, a small two-by-four-metre white metal box on wheels that hitches to my car's towbar and follows me dutifully on my travels around the UK and Europe.
When I reel off the reasons I love my caravan and chose it over a camper or motorhome – the main argument being that I prefer to have the freedom of the car, rather than packing up my camper every time I want a day out – it seems to go some way to convincing friends, family, and occasionally strangers, that I'm neither mad nor old beyond my years. But there is always a slight tinge of judgement from people who learn I'm a caravanner instead of a campervanner – a look that says 'surely you're too young for that?' or 'oh, I thought you were cool'.
The thing is, once upon a time, well before #vanlife and digital nomadding became a thing on Instagram, caravanning was actually quite cool.
It all began with retired naval surgeon Dr William Gordon Stables, who in 1885 had a 'land yacht' built out of wood by a Bristol-based wagon company.
Dubbed The Wanderer, it weighed two tons, had mahogany-lined walls and was more than 18 feet long. His two heavy horses pulled it all the way up from Twyford to Inverness, creating something of a spectacle along the way and making him famous for pioneering this outdoors lifestyle – so much so, he was dubbed the Vice President of the Caravan Club (now Caravan and Motorhome Club) in 1907.
'It wasn't until 1919 that the car came into being with the car-pulled-caravan,' says Andrew Jenkinson, author of Caravanning in the 1970s and The Touring Caravan Story among others. 'By the mid-1930s, car ownership was getting more affordable for the middle classes and there were more caravan manufacturers producing cheaper caravans, so it all started to take off.' The Second World War put paid to any progress in the late 1930s, but leisure caravanning resumed in the 1950s, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a real boom. Caravanning became the go-to holiday for families seeking more affordable breaks.
Those were the days, says Jenkinson, when you could set off at a moment's notice and park up in rural lay-bys for the night. 'When I went caravanning with my parents in the late 1960s we hardly used campsites at all. We'd go to the Yorkshire Dales and find a small back road pull-in, we'd unhitch the caravan, head out for the day, then come back, have our tea and go to sleep. My mum's idea of security was to leave the table set with knives and forks – it made it look as though somebody might be back anytime. Of course, all that came to an end in the early 1980s when they stopped caravans from going in lay-bys.'
It wasn't just new regulations that slowed the popularity of caravanning, either. The economic disruption from the 1970s oil crisis – inflation rises, a three-day week – had an impact on the market. Caravans shot up in price while the public stopped spending, and so sales began to decline. 'It never picked up again to the dizzying heights of pre-1973 and so in the early 1980s, caravanning took a real downturn. Manufacturers went bust and output was way down,' explains Jenkinson. 'In the 1970s, 65,000 caravans were manufactured in the UK each year. It's down to about 12,000 now.'
The modern picture of caravanning today certainly isn't as rosy as it once was. While there are estimated to be half a million caravans on the road in the UK right now, according to the National Caravan Council, the campervan and motorhome markets have taken a sizeable chunk of sales. 'The demand for both motorhomes and tourers peaked during the pandemic as they provided a self-contained and easily accessible form of holiday accommodation that proved particularly popular during the UK's staycation boom,' says Simon McGrath, the Council's director of communications.
'Since then, touring caravan retail sales in the UK have fallen and are following a growing trend seen in most European countries. In contrast, the market demand for campervans and motorhomes has risen significantly and this crossover was seen for the first time in the UK in 2023. The current statistics suggest this trend is continuing into 2025. Motorhome sales in 2024 rose by 38 per cent compared to 2023, while touring caravan sales declined by 12.7 per cent year-on-year.'
Campsites are seeing similar trends, too, with only 16 per cent of pitch reservations on popular booking site Pitchup.com coming from touring caravans this year, while more than 50 per cent are campervan and motorhome bookings.
The call of the open road and ability to park up almost anywhere you like is certainly appealing to the masses, and social media influencers have turned the #vanlife movement into something of a cult. You'll rarely see a caravan influencer pulling back the curtains or opening their side door to reveal a dramatic coastal backdrop or beautiful lakeside view. More often than not campsites offer pitches side-by-side with other caravans, and views tend to be into your neighbour's kitchen rather than over a beautiful ocean vista (except at my beloved Culzean Castle).
In fact, you rarely see caravanning influencers at all. There are thousands of accounts dedicated to bragging about epic adventures in campervans and motorhomes, some, such as Courtnie & Nate, with well over half a million followers, but the caravanning contingent is small with far more modest followings. Rachel Witek, known as @thecaravanningmummy to her 22,000 followers on Instagram, says most of the caravanning online community is found in Facebook groups rather than influencers posting idyllic pictures on their pages. 'Van life can be made much more aspirational for social media,' she says, 'whereas caravanning is more practical.'
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There's no denying, the aesthetic of caravanning isn't quite the same and perhaps that's feeding into the pastime's apparent decline. Caravans, and caravanners, are a misunderstood breed, says Witek: 'The idea that caravans are slow on the roads just isn't true anymore. And many think it's just for older people, that it's something you do in retirement.' Like me, Witek began caravanning in her mid-thirties, so there are other younger travellers taking up the towbar.
The caravan industry has a multitude of challenges to overcome in the future, says Rob Ganley, editor-in-chief at Camping & Caravanning magazine, including 'lighter cars, concerns around towing with the growing crop of electric cars, and increasing costs of producing and buying caravans'. But the future isn't entirely bleak for those of us towing our white boxes behind us: 'Caravan makers at home and abroad are working hard on making caravans funkier, lighter, more appealing to younger audiences, more affordable and more compatible with the modern breed of electric vehicles.'
New models such as the Swift Basecamp and iconic outfits like the Airstream – and modern versions of my own Eriba – offer a less conventional version of the caravan that might just shake off some of the preconceptions built up over the years. And besides, how can you tell me that my little vintage van with its silly pop-top and curved corners isn't the epitome of cool on the campsite?