Campervan errand bike

One of the things people often mention when comparing camping in tents to camping in camper vans, is that it can be a pain to pack stuff down in a camper if you need to drive to a shop to fetch groceries.

There is some truth in this – once Rocky is set up with the pop-top up, with bedding in place, kettle and pots and pans on the stove, awning attached and thermal blinds attached to windows, we need a good 20 minutes to get it back into a state where we can drive it. I think it’s true to say that it affects your behaviour – not always a bad thing, once i’m camped-up and have a cup of tea in my hand, the last thing on my mind is driving. However, when you run out of milk, teabags, or beer something has to be done!

You often see people towing small cars behind large motorhomes, it makes sense that if you have a very large motorhome, once you’ve parked up on a site, you really don’t want to keep moving it, particularly if you need to take it somewhere where it would be difficult to park up a Winnebago.

We haven’t gone to quite that extreme, but the last few trips we’ve always taken at least one bike to use for errands – fetching water, shop trips. I’m now experimenting with cargo systems – a bike trailer would be good, but they aren’t cheap, and would be more to store and carry, so for now this milk crate attachment is proving to be a simple and effective cargo system for my old mountain bike. I think I might need another on the front to balance things out a bit!