Where have youbeen in your caravan?
 

We're seriously considering buying a caravan for weekend trips in the UK and (if we're brave enough) holidays in Europe anywhere about 2 day’s drive I suppose. Love to try Scandinavia, Croatia, Germany the lot.

I've never towed and the thought of being hit by a wobble, cross wind and also tooling along at 55mph does fill me with dread.

Also I can't imagine how hard it would be if I were driving down a small country lane and are met with something in the opposite direction, reversing must be terrifying and end up in jack knife, swearing and general family breakdown.

So to give me some confidence tell me how it will change my life? We do love the idea of getting away with the kids as often as possible, getting away from the work home life grind and the TV, although we will have a TV in the caravan too for the wet UK weather.

go for it, its great! Don't worry about any of the things you mention - I expect with your XC60 you'll have no problem (good car/caravan weight ratio). While I only caravan in the UK, I do go down smallish lanes at times and in 40 years of caravanning have never met anyone else!

I have motor movers on my caravan. While I have spent many years towing trailers and reversing them I use the movers to maneuver the van on and off pitches and in storage. One of the sites I visit has narrow roads on it with pitches almost opposite each other, plus a one way system. 7.5 metres of caravan plus an xc70 take a lot of space to maneuver,. So much simpler to drop the jockey and use the movers as being a single axil the van will pivot in its own length. I also use the movers to back the van into the storage barn, going from daylight into a dark barn and you are reversing by brail as you cannot see a thing. While I have never had to, the movers could be used to reverse the van in a narrow lane if you felt uncomfortable reversing the rig. The other reason I use the movers is I have manual transmition, why cane the clutch unnecessarily maneuvering.

Caravan and Camping club runs maneuvering courses if you are interested, annual membership about £36, you could also hire a caravan to try before you by these days. If it's realy not for you it's no holiday stressing about the drive home towing. My kids have no interest nor the licence to tow the caravan, they just get dad to do it for them.

Speed limits for towing are 10 mph under the national limit for a given road.
So 30-30 40-40 50-50 60-50 ( single carageway roads) 70-60 dual carriageways and motorway.

Paul.