Keeping the doors shut

Now that I've invested so much money on a major repair job - it was £2,477 in the end, to fix damp damage, cure damp ingress, and firm up a sagging floor - I'm giving the caravan its best spring clean for years. It deserves it.

Not that it was looking scruffy: I'm not a cleanliness-obsessive, but I'd still regularly dusted, swept, washed and wiped the interior; and the exterior had been comprehensively washed twice a year, with sundry wipings-down in between.

The interior fabrics had been particularly well looked after, and were surely in remarkably good condition for twelve years of use - thirteen, by the end of the year. Indeed, not a single blemish. No red wine spills in my caravan! In fact, no red wine.

But now I've washed all the curtains and cushion covers, and shampooed the carpet, and although there won't be much visual difference to see, it'll all be genuinely fresher and brighter. The big side-bunk mattresses are covered up most of the time, which has not only protected them from wear and sunlight-fading, but kept them clean.

Once everything is put back, the caravan interior will seem very much as it was when new in late 2006. Next year, in 2020, I want to install a new fridge-freezer. And then there'll be regular upgrades, inside and out, in the years after that.

I might as well stick with what I've got. My caravan is so pleasant and practical, both for touring and for storage at home. I can in fact imagine the caravan outlasting Fiona, ending up hitched behind the all-electric car I plan to buy seven years from now, when Fiona will have reached her sixteenth birthday. That'll look unusual, to say the least! A swish, aerodynamic, futuristic car coupled to a (by then) semi-vintage caravan. It'll turn heads.

I may sound in love with my caravan, but I do recognise its faults. And one annoying fault had gone unfixed for twelve long years.

The cupboard doors under each side-bunk have magnetic catches to keep them shut. Unfortunately, these catches aren't up to the job. The magnets are too weak, and if there is any strong side-to-side movement when towing, any of these cupboard doors may flop open, spilling out whatever is stored inside. One door in particular will open at the slightest provocation, and I've grown accustomed to finding the carpet strewn with kitchen rolls, or potatoes, or a banana, whenever I take a break from driving and hop aboard for a toilet stop, or a bite to eat and drink. No harm is done, but it's a pain, and I do wonder why I've never before devised a way of securing these doors properly.

But now I have. It's a low-tech solution, but I dreamed it up myself, and I think the execution isn't too disgraceful.

So, the first photo, which shows the nearside cupboard doors immediately after my fix.

I had to do the splits in order lean back far enough, and place my feet far enough apart, to get both doors in the shot! Yes, it's curtain wire under tension, stretched and fixed simply into position by means of hooks at each end, and threaded through a central eyelet.

That's how the doors will look when travelling. Pitched on site, the curtain wire will be disengaged from the door handles, and left to lie horizontally above the doors, where it will be unobtrusive.

I've now done both sides. Henceforth no bumpy road or track will be able to make those doors open. Here's what the doors now look like, when ready for a journey.

I do enjoy inventing very simple ways to make or fix things, rather than devising anything elaborate. Especially if the result has a certain symmetry to it. It doesn't matter if the method is unsophisticated, so long as it's neat, will do the trick, and will continue to function for the indefinite future without constant adjustment or renewal.

Incidentally, the caravan floor isn't normally bare like that in the front half. A cream-coloured fitted carpet goes down. And on top of that, a luxurious sheepskin rug that friends Jean and Geoff gave me last autumn, which feels wonderful beneath my bare feet.

There's another problem waiting attention. Not part of the caravan this time.

I use two 10-litre water containers, bought back in 2010, and their plastic screw caps (always their weakest part) are now starting to crack and disintegrate. New containers of similar shape (and with carrying-handles just as comfortable) appear to be unavailable. So I intend to keep using the containers I've got, but with new caps fitted. Or stoppers of some kind - maybe rubber bungs, if you can still get those. So tomorrow I'm off to the nearest hardware store, to see what they have. There are two within a few miles, and a really good one down in Brighton. I'm not sure there'll be enough in this Bung Quest for a post, but you never know. You can discover many a strange thing when tracking down something as dull as a rubber bung!