Gordon Stables
The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer"; or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066172220
Table of Contents
"Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan"
"Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan"
Preface.
I need, I believe, do little more herein, than state that the following pages were written on the road, on the coupé of my caravan, and from day to day. First impressions, it must be admitted, are not always infallible, but they are ever fresh.
I have written from my heart, as I saw and thought; and I shall consider myself most fortunate and happy if I succeed in making the reader think in a measure as I thought, and feel as I felt.
It is but right to state that many of the chapters have appeared in The Leisure Hour.
Some of the illustrations are from photographs kindly lent me by Messrs Valentine and Sons, of Dundee; others from rough sketches of my own; while the frontispiece, “Waiting till the Kettle Boils,” is by Mr Eales, of Twyford.
Gordon Stables.
The “Wanderer” Caravan, Touring in Yorkshire, August 1886.
Chapter One.
Introductory—Written Before Starting.
No man who cannot live in his house on wheels, cook, eat, and sleep in, on, or under it, can say that he is cut out for a gipsy life. But to do this you require to have your temporary home well arranged—a perfect multum in parvo, a domus in minima. The chief faults of the old-fashioned caravan are want of space—two ordinary-sized adults can hardly move in it without trampling on each other’s toes—general stuffiness, heat from sky or stove, or probably both combined, and a most disagreeable motion when on the road. This latter is caused by want of good springs, and errors in the general build.
“The man who is master of a caravan,” says a writer, “enjoys that perfect freedom which is denied to the tourist, whose movements are governed by the time-table. He can go where he likes, stop when he lists, go to bed at the hour which suits him best, or get up or lie daydreaming, knowing there is not a train to catch nor a waiter’s convenience to consult. If the neighbourhood does not suit the van-dweller, all he has to do is to hitch in the horses and move to more eligible quarters. The door of his hotel is always open. There is no bill to pay nor anybody to ‘remember;’ and, if the accommodation has been limited, the lodger cannot complain of the charges. In a caravan one has all the privacy of a private residence, with the convenience of being able to wheel it about with a facility denied to the western settler, who shifts his ‘shanty’ from