For badger, ratty and water vole
Q What do Ratty and Practical Motorhome have in common?
A David Bellamy OBE.
When the April issue of Practical Motorhome dropped through the letterbox here at Bancroft Lodge, it was accompanied by the Great Green UK Caravan Parks Guide, which celebrates Professor Bellamy's conservation awards. The free guide is packed full of sites that have been commended
for their sound and sustainable environmental practices.
Many of these practices are aimed at enhancing the natural surroundings of the campsite, to encourage wild animals to make their home within the safety of the site's perimeter,
or nearby. Here in the UK,
a creature in need of such protection would be Ratty,
the fictional character from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Ratty, however, is a water vole not a rat.
Recent figures supplied to the Joint Nature Conservation Council (JNCC) suggest that in seven years during the '90s, water vole numbers fell by 90 per cent, from more than seven million to under 900,000.
Experts claim that there are several reasons for this disaster. First, attacks by the predatory American Mink are decimating the numbers of breeding adults. Second, poor husbandry is ruining their natural habitat – the riverbanks. These have been over-grazed and so replaced by scrub.
Some time ago the University of Oxford's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) started a captive breeding programme, and around a year ago it released 250 water voles into carefully managed sites in a bid to encourage re-population.
Initial assessments of water vole numbers are promising from this and other similar schemes. Let's hope that their decline has been reversed.
Several sites in the guide are using a proportion of our fees to protect water voles, showing just how motorcaravanners can have a positive impact on the community that they visit. And don't forget your binoculars when you next go motorcaravanning – water voles are enchanting creatures.
Judge, jury and executioner
For more than a decade now
it has been my honour to help judge the Caravan Club's Design and Drive Awards for motorhomes (results on pp 146-149). The competition is about far more than just winners and losers, though.
Competitions such as this help to improve standards
in motorhome design and construction. It was only a few years ago that we were asked to assess motorcaravans with such pathetic payloads that the thing was virtually overweight as soon as passengers climbed aboard! Finally, though, many manufacturers are taking issues such as a sufficient payload seriously, although some still advocate putting the heaviest loads at the rear of your 'van
as a makeshift solution to having a small payload.
Many companies have confidence in their product
and so enter the competition.
What puzzles me, though, is why certain manufacturers never enter. Why, for example, doesn't Pilote enter one of its well-received A-class 'vans? And in all the years that the competition has been running, there has only ever been one RV entered: why? In the same vein, our large dealers never enter a badge-engineered, specced-up, coachbuilt. This is a pity as they offer terrific value for money.
Safety is such an important issue that it can make or break a 'van's chances of an award.
For instance, Volkswagen is justifiably proud of
its reputation as a manufacturer of well-engineered, extremely safe, vehicles. The Transporter T5 has a mightily impressive list of safety features fitted as standard. So, to those who say, "they don't build `em like they used to", I would have to add, "…thank goodness".
One of the most fondly remembered Vee-dubs is the bay window campervan. However, given the choice,
I would rather have its modern equivalent which features ABS brakes, airbags, power-assisted steering, dependable handling and crash-tested seating. Unlike the old campervan,
the T5's coachwork has been carefully designed to ensure the greatest chance of survival for those inside the 'van and also for those outside, such as pedestrians and cyclists.
With the T5 boasting such a list of safety features, I cannot understand why VW entered its California into the Design and Drive Awards, and so snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The 'van is right-hand drive but there is no UK-'handed' camper conversion, meaning that the habitation door is situated on the offside.
The full ramblings can be found in the August 06 issue of Practical Motorhome
Happy motorhoming!
Jack Bancroft |
