Motorhome Adventures 2016: Burnham on Sea

We arrive at Hurn Lane Caravan site where the guy on reception asks if we've been there before. No, we say, we've not been anywhere before. He tells us to find a vacant pitch and then return to let him know which one we took. Arthur tried backing in to the first one he came to and I had point out it was a disabled pitch. We're not that decrepit yet - there are people who need that far more than us!

We move on and take pitch 69. We're getting the hang of the lingo already. The area you park your vehicle in is a "pitch" and plenty big enough for a motorhome and a car. We could probably park our whole house on it. Your vehicle is an "outfit" - presumably caravans don't count as vehicles the same way and this term encompasses both.

Our "outfit" on our pitch

We forgot to bring any bread so we head back to reception where there are a few essential items for sale. Not exactly a shop so much as a couple of shelves and a chest freezer in reception. Several people greet us on the way across the site, so we conclude caravan and motorhome people are very friendly.

The inside of the van with our travelling companion, Paul

There's also wildlife. I open the blind at 6am next morning and there's a rabbit right outside.

We figure out that we're supposed to tighten the wheel nuts on the van, but can we find the tool kit? You guessed it, no. We looked in the "garage" which is a fancy name for what is essentially the boot, although it's rather bigger. We looked under the bed and in all the cupboards. We e-mail Nigel who sold is the thing - he assures us it did come with a tool kit. So where is it? We eventually find it under the seat in the cab, and tighten the nuts.

The site has two toilet/shower blocks, which close for about an hour a day for cleaning, but they seem to stagger that, so no need to worry about getting taken short at cleaning time. The toilets have the radio on 24/7 - it seems whatever time you go in, even at 11pm and 6am, there's music playing. Presumably it's left on all night. There are play areas, dog walks, a laundry, a place to do washing up and even a special tap for washing your dog.

This month's Caravan Club magazine features, by coincidence, the very site we're on and has printed a walk you can take into town. It takes about an hour and is mostly along Berrow Beach, a vast expanse of sand with a shipwreck and a surprising number of discarded vehicle wheels. Very windy on the beach, as we were warned, and hard for anyone with even chin-length hair to see where they are going! (By an even more amazing coincidence, the next issue of the same magazine features the site in Much Wenlock, part of our next trip. Will be interesting to see if this happens again in the September issue.)

At the end of the walk there's the wooden lighthouse on nine legs and a wonky church tower, and more importantly by this time, somewhere to have lunch. Ready for the nice chilli they served up.

Shipwreck on Berrow Beach

Nine legged building

Wonky church

On the second day we'd had enough walking so we drove to Axminster and visited King John's Hunting Lodge, a museum run by the National Trust. Their blurb said that it was never actually used by King John, it's never been used by hunters and it's not strictly speaking a lodge - but otherwise the name is accurate! Exhibits included two human skeletons, a vintage fire engine which was basically a tin bathtub on wheels fitted with contraptions for pumping water.

We tried out the cooking facilities in the van and dined on pasta with a Lloyd Grossman sauce and polished off what was left of the box of white wine we bought for our recent barbecue.

One of the purposes of this short trip was to find out all the things we ideally need for these trips, over and above what is provided and what we considered to be the absolutely obvious. I'll include our list for anyone thinking of a motorhome holiday:

• Coasters/place mats
• Dustpan and brush
• Power adapter so we can plug the van into the electrics at home (when we bring it into service as an extra bedroom)
• Low wattage toaster (has to be low wattage or you blow all the fuses)
• Kneeling mat (to extend the stabilsers it's necessary to kneel beside the vehicle and this is very painful on a gravel pitch)
• Something to hang washing on to dry
• Wheelie thing for suitcases (people seemed to be using those to transport their toilet cassettes to the emptying point)
• Marigolds (for this and other dirty jobs)
• Foil windscreen screen (the blinds that come with the vehicle apparently get damaged with too much exposure to sunlight)
• Groundsheet for the awning
• Dustbuster
• Fitted sheet for the bed (you can get them custom made for the funny shaped mattress)
• Small washing up bowl
• Doormat.

This was a very short trip, just to get used to the vehicle; even shorter for me, as I needed to leave first thing on Friday morning to get to my volunteer job.