20/02/2026
The campervan show at the NEC starts tomorrow and ends on Sunday. Live performers include “Graeme Hall, best known as ‘The Dogfather’”. Erm, if you say so.
Mrs F and I are going on Friday if anyone would like a mini-mingle over an over-priced cup of lukewarm tea or an over-priced lukewarm bottled beer in an aircraft hangar.
I’ll be the middle-aged bloke wearing jeans, a fleece and sturdy walking boots. You can’t miss me.
Sounds irresistible but sadly I’ll be in Brighton visiting the boy.
I wish I’d seen CVB. I did see Cracker at a festival but they didn’t do TTSB.
I have seen CVB but not alas Cracker.
Wear comfy shoes.
Yeah, it is spread over five halls. I’ve printed out the map and there’s going to be a lot of walking between stands.
They’ve missed a trick in not having the “Land of Grey and Pink” hitmakers perform there.
Huzzah!
Should that not be the “If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’d Do It all Over You” hitmakers, which is, I think, the nearest they came to bothering the charts?
Will Candice-Marie be there?
Cue for a song.
Or two…
Nuts In May is currently featured on the BBC iPlayer.
Given that our trusty Autosleeper Kemerton is starting to show its age and is starting to need rather too much being spent on it for my liking, we really should be going to this for some ideas on what to look for next. Yes there is an intimidatingly vast amount to see but budget and favoured internal layouts narrow this down pretty quickly. It’s going to be a real wrench when we actually make the change though…the layout on the Kemerton is pretty much perfect for our needs and it has many good memories attached to it. Can’t make this weekend unfortunately as it’s Mrs L’s and daughter’s birthdays, but we will almost certainly be at the next one.
We’re only going because, with Mrs F planning on retiring at the end of March 2027, there are only 3 NEC shows between now and then, and we’ll have to do something about it next year.
I’ve narrowed the list down to about 50 using the website filters, but I could probably get that down to below 10, based upon the last two vans we hired, if I looked at the internal layouts in advance.
Can you get me Camper Van Barry’s autograph if he’s there?
https://ccmshow.co.uk/exhibitors/lowdhams/
No word on whether or not Barry will be there.
I like his videos. Our minds have been boggled with the sheer range of options just in the camper van sector. Good luck!
The variety of options is why we go to the NEC show, to see them in the flesh, as it were. It is a process of elimination.
We’ve hired a couple of different ones and have learnt what we *don’t* want. Sadly we have not yet found one that ticks all of our boxes.
Where do you hire from? We have thought about it but not got round to it yet.
We’ve hired two.
The first in July 2024 for a jaunt round the NC500, there are loads of hire places around Inverness (where the NC500 route starts & finishes). Because: reasons, we hired ours from Aberdeen, which made our trip into the NC700.
The second we hired last October from somewhere between Northampton and Towcester, for a long weekend in the Cotswolds (including a day at the NEC show).
We’re planning to do this when we’re retired, hopefully in the next few years. But I’m a bit bewildered too by the range of options and sizes available.
There will just be two of us so interested to hear what you “don’t” want @fentonsteve
Get thee to the NEC, Fred. The variety is bewildering and you can eliminate lots by just having a looksee.
I’m 5’11 with slightly dodgy knees and I sleep straight. If I sleep with my knees bent, or my feet touch a cold surface, I have a rotten night’s kip. Most vans are only 2m wide, so I can’t sleep “transverse”, I need to sleep length-ways. The shortest vans to allow this are 6m long. Mrs F has even worse knees than mine and can’t do ladders, so “pop-tops” (where the bed is above the ceiling) are out.
And I don’t want to stoop or bash my head, so I want a “high-top” I can stand up straight in.
The van we hired in 2024 had “front” beds, which were like 3D Tetris. Our first night took about 90 minutes of swearing and grazing my knuckles before we could turn in for the night.
The van we hired last October had a table leg (stored in the wardrobe) which screwed into the floor and a table top stored behind the driver’s seat, which screwed onto the table leg. You can’t drive with the table up, so stopping in a lay-by for a quick cuppa took at least half an hour of table assembly & disassembly.
So we want one with a fixed or fold-down breakfast table behind the driver’s seat. Trouble is, they tend to only come in 6.4m or 6.8m vans, and our driveway is only 6.2m long. I care for my neighbours and I don’t want 20cm sticking out over the pavement.
I do own the verge opposite our house and I could park a 6.4m or 6.8m long van on it, but I’d have to get some groundwork done first or it would sink in the quagmire (very wet very heavy clay soil round ‘ere).
Edith says: most of them run the hob off a Campinggaz bottle under the sink. Some have an LPG tank under the floor which is brilliant… until you have to fill it up. I spent an hour driving around Northampton before I found a fuel station which still had an LPG pump.
I recently had to replace my 2015 VW Crafter and got a late 2022 Crafter thinking they’d be more or less the same. To coin a popular phrase round here, Wrong. The body is different and the new to me van has the turning circle of an oil tanker, unlike the old one which I could back into almost anywhere. I’d suggest, whatever you go for, have a really good test drive and make sure you can manoeuvre it.
Friends of ours bought a campervan, in a 6.8m MAN TGE van (a VW, in other words), last autumn.
As the weather was dry on Saturday, they took it out for a run and popped into ours on their way home. It was huge!
They don’t look so big when you’re inside, or parked next to a caravan, but parked next to an Offspring’s Fiat 500…
You probably know but the Crafter and the Mercedes Sprinter have the same body but engine and running gear, I believe, are different. The “medium wheelbase” is the van Amazon use and is noticeably shorter. No good for me as my 80” screens won’t fit between the bulkhead and the wheel arch, I have the LWB. This may be relevant for any conversion. Incidentally, there is also an extra long model but you’ll never be able to park that anywhere.
Edit: I use premium fuel as I’ve had trouble with the Diesel Particulate Filter on the old van and my grease monkey says it’s worth it to keep it clean. A new DPF is over £3k without fitting and a lot of grief if it becomes blocked.
What’s the mpg rate for these monstrous things?
My Crafter gets low 30s to the gallon but I’m a steady driver and it depends on the load. City driving is less obviously.
Actually not as bad as you’d think, similar to my VW Golf Estate 1.6l diesel at 45-50 mpg.
I think both vans I’ve hired had 1.9l or 2.0 diesel engines and did about 40 mpg.
They don’t accelerate very quickly, or go round corners very quickly, and get to 70mph… eventually.
What did you hire?
One was a 6m VW Transporter Highline 1.9l, the other was a 6m Fiat Ducato 2.0l. Apparently.
The Fiat was a lot more noisy, which slightly put me off. The campers built on VW & Merc vans are a lot more expensive, which also puts me off!
Our neighbour has a Peugeot Boxer which he likes. A newish Crafter, one year old, 10k miles or so would probably be around £35k and that’s just a van. Heaven knows what a converted one would be.
Think: the price of two cars for a Fiat. Two very nice cars for a VW/Merc. We paid less for the house we bought 25 years ago!
Wow, that’s impressive. I am sure the equivalent vehicles over here would be half that at best.
* but probably with 4 litre and above engines
We didn’t really do any city driving, either motorways at 60mph or pootling along A-roads at 45-50mph.
The coastal NC500 route in Scotland averaged 25mph as it isn’t very straight and the vans don’t really ‘do’ cornering at speed.
I should have added that gas/petrol cost is about half what it is in the UK
That’s why the UK vans have 2 litre diesel engines, and not 6.4 litre V-8s!
I think this thread might have achieved peak Fenton!
I’m sorry, Bry. I am very dull.
I have zero interest in caravans, campervans or motorhomes so not sure why I read it but it was so dull to me it became fascinating, if that makes sense. I have always wondered about the magazine ‘Practical Caravan’ though. Are there impractical ones available, eg no doors and only one wheel which is on the roof.
You win today’s ‘tea on keyboard’ moment. Well done.
All caravans, motorised or towed, are impractical in some way.
Good point.
Since using Readly / PressReader I have started wondering about magazine titles, eg Your Horse to which my immediate thought is “I don’t have a horse” and one I noticed just recently called Modern Cat. I asked our cat if she was interested but she just yawned and went back to sleep. She is 15 and probably old fashioned.
How do the sound system options look like Fents? And how do caravans compare to tents acoustically?
The entertainment system in the Fiat Ducato we hired last October included a massive touch-screen panel (which doubled as a reversing camera) with DAB+, Bluetooth and a surprising amount of wallop for a van.
It was very noisy to drive, though, partly because the oven & hob were not screwed in tightly enough and rattled.
Tents are actually very good acoustically as most of the sound goes straight out, so does not reflect, and the mics are protected from wind noise.
I’m not taking my turntable in a campervan though, not even one with a sprung subchassis. Too many potholes in the road.
I remember my sister’s first husband’s old Austin Sheerline had an oil-damped 7″ single player under the dash. Had to go pretty slow around corners or the records would skip.
Excellent question. This thread might implode. We bought a car from new a few years ago, for the first time, and when we specced it I got carried away and had a Bose sound system put in. I should have thought it through, not only did it cost about £600 but we lost boot space and the road noise means that most of the time it is pointless even having it on.
About 20 years ago, a well-heeled friend of mine was looking for a new car*. He tried out a Merc and a Lexus and found no real differences in drieability or comfort but plumped for the Lexus, as the sound system was much better.
*His previous Mercedes was written-off when he hit a badger, at speed, driving through the New Forest. The badger was a write-off as well.
They were my first questions
Has it got a cd player?
How many speakers ?
Who is the manufacturer?
ok now you can talk about the car
I miss out the last bit. For me, a car is a mobile stereo.
We went to the show last October. Essential if you’re thinking of getting one so you can get a feel for what you want.
Was invaluable for us. We ended up with a lovely 3yo Tessoro which we have taken on its maiden voyage this week.
We went last October, too, and the October before that.
Essentially, in 2024 we saw a couple we thought we liked the look of, hired one the day before visiting the NEC in 2025, and 24 hours in it long was enough to realise we didn’t like it. Which rather threw our plans out to visit similar vans on the day.
This year I’ve left the ‘potential visit’ list at about 50, in the hope of finding at least one we do like! Then we’ll try to find one like that to hire for a week.
I may have misconstrued.
I for one would love to meet @fentonsteve. A man who plays bass in a Quo covers band is a fine man.
However faced with a choice of looking at tents in an exhibition centre or creosoting my knackers then it’s the latter.
EDIT: Hang on! Do I mean @fitterstoke as the 4 Stringer? Either way, sterling chaps both.
I do play bass, Beez, but not Quo covers – that’s Fitz. Easily confused.
I bought a dome tent for the 1993 Reading Festival and ended up using it for years afterwards. It fell to bits and went to the dump last year. 30+ years is a pretty good run.
My trusty Lichfield (the name of the tent, by chance, and where I live) is now 20 years old and doing just dandy. No leaks and easy to erect.
Fnaar fnaar
Did you know that when youngsters go to festivals these days , they can’t be bothered to bring their tents back and just abandon them at the site. Genuinely rubbish.
You both play bass? *licks pencil* *makes note*
I see. Carry on.
It only takes three bassists to play Big Bottom…
Breaking news: I think we found one we like.
It wasn’t like any of the ones we had on the list to see, we stumbled upon it because it was the end of the day, and I needed a pee, and we took a wrong turn after the loo, and there it was.
Two hours drive there, six hours on our feet in the NEC, and two hours back home again. I’m going to bed early…
@fentonsteve Eh? You can’t do that!
What have you gone for? And why?
It’s a Rapido/Dreamer D62, which is similar to the one in the first half of this video. They’re from near Le Mans in that France.
It has a proper bed which short-arse Mrs F can get in an out of, and is long enough for me to stretch out, four seats, and a table. The internal layout is unusual, as these things go, more like a scaled-down motorhome.
The other one we considered had a similar layout but with bunk beds, but I struggled to get in the top and, although the top bunk folded away, you couldn’t comfortably sit on the bottom without bashing your head on the top bunk.
I’m now going to try to find one for hire.
There’s another NEC show in October.
Seems to be based on a Fiat?
Yeah. That’s the one potential downside.
I’m going to find one, or a similar one, to hire before we commit all that dosh.
Look forward to your review @fentonsteve!
Myself and Fraü Steady have hopefully got all this to look forward to in the next few years so it would be lovely if you could do all the heavy lifting research…
Come to the NEC in October and I’ll buy you an overpriced lukewarm tea in a paper cup…
Definitely worth going on a weekday. Our first visit was a Saturday and it was insanley busy.
Today’s update: having found the model we think we want, I’ve found two similar (same brand but slightly different internal layout) available for hire. One is in Perth (Scotland, not Oz) and the other in Thatcham (which is not too far from @Leedsboy).
I feel a week in the Cotswolds coming on, which will give us an idea of the road noise & quality of fixtures & fittings.
Thatcham is an underrated holiday destination. Plenty of walking to be had around the Greenham Common airbase.
And if you push out a bit further, you can marvel at the roundabouts of Basingstoke
I will give them a look. We think we are pretty set on the layout but definitely need to try one. The shower/toilet arrangement seems important. Sitting on a wet loo with wet feet doesn’t sound ideal.
We’ve always* stayed on sites with shower blocks, so never had to use the on-board shower. “Wild camping” is allowed in Scotland but not in England or Wales. The closest you’ll get to it is a pub car park.
(*) the night before we returned the hire van to Aberdeen at the end of our NC500 jaunt, we stayed in the car park of an NT visitor centre which had a toilet block but no showers. We had a shower after we’d returned the van.
I like the idea of being able to shower each morning but with frequent deep cleans at campsites. Really need to hire one this year and practice.
Yeah, don’t forget the van only holds a limited amount of water, typically 50-100 litres, depending on the model.
If you’re going off-grid, that’s got to cover drinking, cooking, washing up, toilet flushes, and showers. You’d be surprised how quickly it all adds up.
In places of high tourism (e.g. Scotland) there are places to pull in to top up fresh water and to dispose of grey (sink/shower) and black (toilet) water. These facilities are always included on sites.
This thread has well and truly exceeded my expectations.