The trip would be mainly in Italy and Germany with a few days en-route through France.

This would be our longest caravan adventure to date and the first trip with the new van – our Lunar Quasar (well, Campbells Cosmos actually). This van was towed by our Kia Sorento with ease, just as we had hoped.

Leaving England on Friday 3rd May 2013, mid-afternoon we had a good journey down to Folkestone, all the more pleasing given that this was the start of the May bank holiday weekend.

Every campsite had been pre-planned and booked prior to departure. A bit of a habit since historically we have travelled during the peak summer weeks where all of these sites require advance booking.

I’m not so sure this was entirely necessary this time and only one section of Italy would have resulted in some possibility of encountering a fully booked site. We also lost out on being able to stay longer at some of our in-transit stays. More of that in the detail though.