Hello and welcome ...

About time we started this blog! ...

Well!  Here we are then.  At last!  We've been intending to start this blog for, well, years.  But never got around to it ... until today, when we bought Roberta.

She's a 1983 Castleton HL Roberta Two Berth, and is about 13 feet long.  Isn't she lovely?  She needs a bit of TLC to get her looking her best, but she will be a beautiful van when she's been restored. 

The original paintwork is a lovely cream, but unfortunately someone has painted over it on the front, back and roof.  We think this is because these areas are plastic rather than aluminium, and the paint started to peel off the plastic.  So someone painted over it - without removing the original paint first!  So the paintwork on the front, back and roof is white rather than cream, and peeling rather badly!

The interior is really well designed, and very good quality, but in a 1980s stylie ...

Dig that orange woodwork - and beading!!  It will be coming off, before the drawer fronts and cuboard doors are painted.  The curtains have already been taken down and consigned to the bin - a couple of them disintegrated as I took them off the rails!  

The worktops are generally in good condition, and are a really nice pattern.

They will be staying!  They're lovely!

The bathroom/WC is minging.  Really.
  

Who thought avocado vinyl was good in a small space??  Or, in fact, good at all?  The sink is staying, despite the colour - it's a well designed, drop down sink which can hopefully be fixed so that it stays up when the loo is in use!  This grey porta-potti style loo is not the original, but it's in good condition so it's staying too - after a jolly good clean!

The WC is a great design - it's tiny, but there are sections on the door and the wall that swing out and clip into place that give you far more space for your ablutions - you basically include the area inside the doorway into the WC space, closing it off from the rest of the van.  It's difficult to describe, and I don't have a photo as yet, but it's genius design.

Carpet and curtains.  Best 1980s brown.  Enough said.  The flooring will be replaced with a sturdy vinyl or laminate throughout.  Why would anyone want brown shaggy carpet in a tiny caravan?!  The bird design on the curtain fabric is cute, and quite trendy at the moment, just not in sludge brown!  I *might* try to find a similar design in better colours, as an homage to the van's history.

So, there we have her, in all her faded glory.  She's had some issues with damp in the past, which appear to have been fixed, but one front corner inside will need the wall panels replacing.  She's been stored outside, and it's rained heavily recently, but she isn't wet at all inside, so it seems the repair worked.

We picked her up from storage and towed her back home - about an hour and 15 minutes drive.  She towed really well, and behaved herself beautifully - all the lights worked, the brakes worked, and she even went backwards with no problems!

Hopefully, the next post will show her without the grim carpet.  I can't wait to rip that out ...

M&Q x