by Holly Tribe
Top Gear’s terrible trio are well known for their derision of caravans, campers and, well, anything that might get in the way of flooring a Porsche 911 down the fast lane of a motorway.
But in an interesting turn of events, Richard Hammond and his family recently embarked on a touring holiday in Cornwall in a Volkswagen campervan, “And it was, without doubt, one of our most successful holidays ever and quite possibly my favourite of all time,” reported Hammond in the Daily Mirror.
The family hired the VW campervan from Danbury Motor Caravans in Bristol who import new models from a factory in Brazil. The base van was kitted out with all the mod cons, including cooker, fridge, TV and leather upholstery.
Hammond was keen to extol the virtues of the touring lifestyle, and take advantage of having a home from home out on the road: “Within half an hour of setting off I had found an excuse to pull over, pop the roof up and construct the first of a million cups of tea while Izzy, 10, and Willow, seven explored the roof bed – we called it the loft – and Mindy lay on the leather sofa.”
“As we dawdled about Cornwall I would keep an eye open for places to stop and enjoy the view. And make another cup of tea,” he said.
In fact, the family has been so enamoured with life on the road, they have sold the family car and bought their very own VW campervan; “It’s going to be pink – to keep the girls happy – it’ll be ready in three months and I shall spend the entire summer in it.”
Hammond, who has penned two books about caravanning; A Short History of Caravanning and Richard Hammond’s Caravan Confidential, has been more of a sympathiser to the Great British touring tradition than his colleagues, Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
Their previous tricks have included ploughing an airborne caravan into a field and ‘accidentally’ setting one alight. But whether this will bring an end to the caravan pranks often filmed on the popular BBC One motoring show Top Gear remains to be seen.
