It was an impulse buy - an expensive one too. I thought I would take a look around motorhomes, having had a brief experience with a hire one in Australia with my family five years earlier. So there I was at the local dealers, and liked what I saw - there were bathrooms (the Aussie one didn't spring to those), and, yes, said the eager salesman, this model is very nippy. (The Aussie one had been very sluggish.) There was a water heater and cylinder too (the Aussie one had a combi-type affair). But no air conditioning (the Aussie one DID have that!)

The model was a second-hand Compass Drifter. Yep, I'll take it, I said. (I did have a quick test drive first.)

And so I was hooked. Two years later I traded up for a new Compass Drifter with better standard fitments all round. Except the heater was not as efficient. It was not blown air, so I stuck a fan on top of it, which helped, but was noisy. Five years later, it turned out to have bad damp problems, especially around the Luton, and around the rear window.

Six years later, I traded up again. By this time we had swapped our bikes for a 50cc moped/scooter/bike, and thought a garage for it would be a good idea. That narrowed down the choices, and plumped for an Italian make, a Laika Ecovip 5LG.

Goodness, what do we do with all this space - under floor storage, cupboards galore, not to mention the 'garage'. We even have the gas locker for the electric cable etc, as we had a gas tank fitted underneath. Goodness, what a lot of water we can hold (480 litres). Goodness, look how many times we can go to the loo - it had a 'marine' toilet. Goodness, we can dry off properly and dress in the bathroom, with its separate shower. Forget the big fridge and freezer - it has three-way automatic switch-over.

Of course, we were as quarter as big as the Drifter. And you can load up all that storage space, fill up with water and push the moped into the garage . . . and weigh a ton, and spend more on fuel, not to mention ferry crossings.

Still, that's a very brief history of my mobile holiday cottages.Then came the adventures. I've kept a TraveLog each time my partner Pat and I took off. Some of them are more about places we discovered and what happened along the way rather than motorhoming. But it's rare if there isn't a camper mishap, or close scrape!

You will find links to each article below:

Into a Stone Wall and Beyond - March 1993
Novices in France - June 1994
From cave-dwellers to elbow-bridges - France 1995
To Mistakenly Go Where No Camper Has Gone Before - France 1996
How I only just missed the apocalypse - France 2002

These articles were originally posted to the Motorhome List. They appear here, with the addition of the photos, with the kind permission of the author, Tim Sinclair.