Campervan vs Boat vs Touring Caravan vs caravan vs 2nd home !

subjecttocontract

We've had a holiday home in Spain for the past 20+ years and have recently sold it.  I've been going through the same thoughts as yourself as to what direction to go in next. I've come to the conclusion that there is no right answer for us. Every one of the options has its own advantages and disadvantages and they all carry a high price, lots of organising, admin, worry, running costs, often depreciation and little or no capital gain. In other words they are a poor financial move. The alternative is just to rent somewhere or something each time you go away. You can get an awful lot of holidays away for £30K or more. 

smallzoo2

We took everyones advice and decided to sit down and think about what we actually want... and as usual you all spoke wisely !

We realise that certainly for the next 2 or 3 years we are not going to have the time ( due to our jobs and family ) to just go away for weeks at a time so really we would be wasting our money buying a caravan or even a motorhome

The campervan would still be an option as long as we could easily find places to stop last minute if we felt we didnt want to sleep in the van.. any suggestions would be great as the obvious site including airbnb are always full up and expensive.

...so we are going to take a pause and see if we can find some say dog friendly b&b's or similar which we can go to last minute ( if thats possible nowadays ! )

Any advice on that would be great but thanks for pointing us in the right direction

Spikeygran

The whole of the Skipton area is very dog  friendly. Cafes etc presented the dog with a water bowl and treats before they took our order. So I would assume the b&b's will be equally accomodating.  Travelodges usually accept well behaved pets. 

I think I'd add for the future that its not actually that easy to offroad down in England. Scotland is a lot more relaxed.  In theory and probably legally you should be able to pull into any layby if too tired to continue, but in practice most laybys are too close to traffic.  The decent ones (with a bit of verge in between) will be mostly occupied by truck drivers from about 1800 onwards, so spaces can be difficult to find.  On top of that many are blocked with big stones, police tape or notices. We stopped in a quiet layby for tea in the early hours, when heading south for a family emergency,  and got a visit from the police, very friendly but making it clear they didn't want us stopping overnight. 

Most private campsites want some notice, though its always worth phoning to ask.  

ChasingtheWelshdream

Just a note on 2nd/holiday homes if you ever reconsider that (we recently were).

Depending on the area you could well be hit with up to 300% council tax premium. If you were to consider letting it out for some income, the rules are being tightened up and some businesses are falling foul if they are unable to prove enough bookings per year, and having to be moved to domestic, rather than NDR rates. 

We live in Wales and were looking at options on the coast as a place to rent out and then retire to. The amount of 2nd homes selling up for this reason has greatly increased, and we calculated the potential costs to far outweigh the benefits. That isn’t considering any extra stamp duty and future CGT liability.

Just something to bear in mind for the future.