Caravans to Motorhomes - Adrian's Arena

With apologies to William Shakespeare. We are talking about our first foray into the world of Motor Caravanning with a Lunar Premier H622. The first thing to say is to give a little piece of background to my, and our, circumstances.

As I sit here, in the Lunar, on a beautiful bright November day, pitched at what must be one of the Caravan Club’s nicest sites in Wales near to the fantastic engineering achievements of some of the men that made this country what it was, I am of course talking about the Club site, “Lady Margaret’s Park” at Chirk, just over the border of Shropshire.

My thoughts were of the events that had brought me to be sitting in a motor caravan in the first place. I am, or was, an ardent caravanner with hardly a sideways glance at the “opposition”. Long term readers the various magazines will remember my wife writing many site reports and various other articles for MotorHome Monthly. That seems an awfully long time ago now.
Anne died in 2005 and my life as I knew it died also, I had plenty of writing to do so did keep busy.

In order to meet fellow caravanners I joined the West Warwickshire Centre of the Caravan Club and started to attend rallies, the new year was looming, I had two invitations to go to France but did not want to leave “Jasmine” my beautiful Golden Retriever so decided to go to a New Year rally near Hereford.
It was at this rally that I met Beryl, a lady that had also lost her husband, she was a motor caravanner and from that time we have been together.

Beryl had an Auto Sleepers Pollensa which was quite a nice machine although the layout was a little inconvenient. It was while we were having a look around the Caravan Show at the NEC in February that Beryl announced that we were looking for a new Motor Caravan. What to look for? Price obviously was a consideration but surely we could find a layout within the price range of about £33000.
After going round in circles, many times, we chose a Lunar Premier H622, this is a Belgian built model which has a fixed bed and a usable separate shower, the rest of the shower room is very cramped but not too bad.

The whole van seemed solid and well made so we ordered one for delivery on 15 May ha, ha, we were due to go to France on 25 May and hoped that we could have the Lunar to undertake the journey, how wrong can you be, to be fair Lunar did lend us a Telstar, the report of that holiday is in the depths of this website.

It did seem very strange to us as committed caravanners using a motor caravan but we are slowly getting to live with it and we are beginning to like the different way of doing things. We are even beginning to think further ahead at the start of each journey, this is, we feel is essential when using a motor caravan.
We are still pleased with the design of the Premier, but now having used it for some time there are things that we would redesign, the lights for example. There are not sufficient lights in the ceiling thus causing a “black” spot over the oven and over the bed.
The oven is on top of a tower, a Dometic Tech Tower no less and it is too high for Beryl, a little too high for me really and I am over six feet tall, it is we feel an accident waiting to happen, especially as the door opens upwards so that you cannot easily put things onto the warm plates.

We think that the Premier is a little jinxed, there has been a few things that have needed work doing to them, not all we hasten to say the fault of Lunar.
The Truma heater was subject to a recall, “do not use it” we were told “it might burst into flames” very comforting you will agree. The oven was subject to a recall as well, it may have been leaking gas, luckily it was OK.

The first time that we took it out on wet roads the cupboard under the fridge became full of mud and water and upon investigation we found that the wheel arch had not been fitted so the cupboard was open to all the stuff thrown up from the tyre.
The latest thing is a creaking from the shower tray as you move on it during a shower.

We, I mean I touched a grass bank when going round a corner and damaged a piece of plastic decorative trim way back in the summer, we still do not have the right piece, so I am sure that you can see that the gilt has been taken off the gingerbread a little up to now, is our pride and joy a Belgian Friday machine we wonder.

Having had our little moan we like the Premier, the Renault Chassis is very good, it is a joy to drive and the performance is adequate rather than sparkling. We have to date travelled about 2000 miles and been to a number of different sites, we are looking forward to a French trip in the summer.

As this is a “running” narrative we are now sitting in the Premier at the Caravan Club Site in the lovely Cotswold village of Broadway at the start of a new year, the piece of trim has just arrived, the wheel arch has been fitted and all is well with Lunar’s finest. We have been to around fifteen rallies with the Premier and are now beginning, we hope, to think like genuine motorcaravanners.
The machine is behaving itself, the bed is bliss, or is it the occupant? And all seems to be well, we still have a few mutters, the seats are not very comfortable to use for any length of time being just slabs of foam, the kitchen is very limited in the provision of workspace, and that high, and we mean high, level oven is difficult.

We have spent the last few months looking at all sorts of motor caravans getting keen and thinking “shall we change” but we have settled down with the Lunar and until something that we walk into and say “wow” we will stick with it.