This morning we collected our caravan from Dave Benson Caravans, not without a little drama.

Collecting the Caravan

Prior to collecting the caravan, we had a new heavy duty towbar and electric brakes fitted by Halls Towbars on Main North Road, Enfield. This took around two and a half hours.

We then proceeded to drive around the corner to Prospect Road to collect the caravan from Dave Benson’s service yard only to find no-one in attendance and the gates closed. We then went to the showroom yard 2 kilometres up Prospect Road to be told that they were there!

Back we went and this time someone was there – we’re sure they weren’t when we first went, but never mind.

They then proceeded to do a hand over explaining how everything worked. After an hour or so we were ready to go on our way. We checked all connections and lights and set off.

About thirty seconds later we received a call on the mobile to tell us that they had forgotten to stow the jockey wheel and that it was still attached to the caravan. We pulled over and removed the jockey wheel. No doubt others will have similar stories about what went wrong when they collected their caravan.

Initial Fuel Consumption

We were somewhat surprised at the fuel consumption as we travelled home to Berri. We sat on between 85 kph and 100 kph. Usually we get around 500 kms from a full tank of gas. Towing the caravan we got around 300kms. This equates to about 20ltr/100kms.

We will be doing some further research on fuel consumption before considering whether to upgrade our towing vehicle.

Update on Fuel Consumption

As the trip home to Berri was our first trip towing a caravan, we weren’t expecting our fuel consumption to be as great as it was. We believe we will be able to achieve a slight improvement by driving a little more consistently and not travelling over 90k/hr.

Tom Olthoff (Caravan World Magazine Writer) emailed me a story he wrote regarding towing a caravan behind a TJ Magna on gas and in his article he achieved similar results. We now don’t feel as concerned about our fuel consumption – it just means we need to budget more for fuel expenses than we might otherwise have anticipated.