A Frog or a Prince?

We have been looking on EBay, the MMM magazine and Dealers web sites for our potential new home that we will live in for at least the next seven years so it has to be right first time.
Unfortunately some of the potential RV’s were too far away for a proper inspection but we did see two likely candidates locally. So after a couple of phone calls we arranged a visit.

Visit No 1


A lovely Four winds Windsport 2008 it ticked all the boxes so off we went to meet a wonderful gent of 74 years that informed me he had just passed his HGV for a larger model hence the sale.
(There's hope for me yet).
The RV was undercover in huge garage and the condition was first class with many extras, I fell in love with it straight away. We were given a good look around and we thanked the gent for his time and help.
This was without doubt a PRINCE the only downside for us which Kay had picked up on, was the lack of storage space especially for clothes (trust a woman to spot that one) and the asking price. We had set a budget and unfortunately it came in well over that (my fault for mixing up the reserved price and the offer price).
So with deep regret it had to be rejected.

Visit No 2
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A dilapidated Fourwinds Windsport 2000 this was without doubt a FROG. The asking price was £32.000 well within budget, but Ohh…. dear we felt as if we needed to wipe our feet on the way out it was in such a deplorable state. At one time this would have been a nice unit, but neglect had severely damaged the machine. The huge awning was missing and when I asked where it was he pointed under the RV to the ground where it lay mangled and dirty. ‘It blew off last week but we can come to some arrangement,’ he said.
We came away laughing like school kids at the cheek of it. I would have offered him £5,000 to drive it away to a company to totally gut and refurbish it then it would have been worthwhile, but to be honest I didn’t want to go to all that trouble.

We are planning a visit to a couple of dealers to view some of their RV’s and we will keep you posted on the outcome, but we have to be very careful on what we select. Thank god for the Full-Timing and motor home forums where we post and receive some very good unbiased information. We are joining the ARV Club were we will receive the ARV magazine so that should be helpful.

If anyone is planning to do what we are doing you really do need to do some research, like what are the going prices for the units you’re looking at, what are the legal aspects such as weight and what your licence will allow you to drive. The big one is what to look out for when doing an inspection i.e. damp, legal ownership, MOT & Servicing records, the right layout and so on.
The dealer would be a safer route but obviously more expensive, as they have to make a profit so its swings and roundabouts.

Anyway wish us luck on our future home hunting.