Caravan Site: Oxford Camping & Caravan Club Site

Area Visited: Oxford, Oxfordshire

Date(s) visited site: 6th - 9th June 2008

Number of Night(s) stopped on site: 3

Number of people: 6

Towcar Used: 2007 Ford Galaxy 2.0 TDCi Ghia

Caravan Used: 2008 Bailey Pageant Series 6 Loire

Distance towed on holiday: 503 miles

Notes from this trip: This was our first outing with our newly purchased Bailey Pageant Loire; we decided after our last trip that the fixed bunks in our Abbey were beginning to be too small so we decided to look for a replacement van. After falling in love with the Loire model at a dealers, that was sadly sold it was time to search for a one of our own! We knew the model was in short supply as the series 6 Pageant had just stopped being produced and the Loire model had only been around since March of this year!! So we went to our Local discover dealer they had a phone around and found us a brand new manufactured model, the problem was it was in Kent!! So the dealer brought the caravan to us after a week and we stepped inside it and it just felt like home! Everything suited us, everything was in the right place and the layout seemed to work so well!! My best friend & my uncle were both doing a motorsport event in Abingdon close to Oxford so we travelled down to spectate for the weekend with family. We set off and first of all we noticed that our new twin axle Pageant was much more stable than our previous single axle Abbey. We got there fine and pitched up on a slightly sloping grass pitch, so after using our Fiamma Levelling ramps for the first time we were soon levelled off and ready for a cuppa!! The weekend of spectating went very well and both my best friend & my uncle did well in their motorsport event, also the weather was very sunny and it even got up to twenty seven degrees Celsius!!! The night before leaving we went and did a little sightseeing in Oxford town centre as it was still light even though it was night time as there wasn’t a cloud insight. The next morning we packed up and set off for home, everything seemed fine until we heard a very odd noise from the rear of the car, we were unsure what it was and didn’t know if it was being caused by having 7 adult passengers in the car and the van on the back? So we pulled over just to make sure and we made a shocking discovery!!...... the 12S cable had fallen out of its socket and had been trailing along the ground, luckily this had only been for a few miles so the socket wasn’t to badly damaged, so we tied it up instead of plugging it back in. Then came the next minor problem came when we went through a diesel spillage caused by a lorries fuel tank rupturing!! So when returning home we realised that the van was covered in dark brown/black diesel!! As you can imagine this wasn’t proving easy to remove! So we bought some Autoglym Intensive Tar Remover and it cleaned the diesel off a treat then we re-polished the van up with Autoglym Super Resin polish and replaced the 12S socket with a new one to be on the safe side!!

Short Site Review: When we arrived at the site we were shown to our pitch and the friendly warden helped with tips onto reversing onto the particular pitch as it was quite tight for our new large van. All of the pitches on the site were grass, and the toilet block was in the centre of the site. As per the other C&CC site we visited (Dunstan Hill) the toilet blocks were lovely and clean, as was the site which was well maintained and had beautifull flowers throught the sites that brightened the site up. The wardens were friendly and helpfull. At the site entrence there was a big outdoors shop that sold outdoor wear, bikes, caravan accesories & much more called Go Outdoors and its well worth a look if your staying at the site as there is some bargains to be had if you buy a discount card for around £2. Overall a really nice site in the heart of Oxford.

Our new outfit on the Tib-Shelf services.

Our New Bailey Pageant Loire pitched on the Oxford Camping & Caravan Club site.

My Best friend competing in a motorsport event.

My uncle competing in a motorsport event.

A hot ait baloon seen from our pitch on the Oxford Camping & Caravan Club site.

Our caravan on our yellow Fiamma levelling ramps.

The diesel contamination on our caravan.

All Photographs are Copyrighted to Matthew James Watson.
Copying and taking photographs is prohibited and is illegal under the copyright law.