With the holidays fast approaching, I thought that now would be a good time to step outside our house and look at getting ready for a spot of camping. One of the defining events for me as a child was our family’s road trips, pulling the caravan along behind us, bonding with my family and just spending some time together. We had relatives all over the country, so we would just travel for a few weeks, setting up camp whenever the mood took us, and spend some time relaxing by the beach.
If you can relate to this picture, then you will know just how important your caravan is to you during these trips. It becomes your home away from home, and you need to look after it during the times that it’s not in use, so that you can be more prepared when the holidays roll around. One of the most important parts of any caravan is the caravan awning.
As nice as it is to spend some time living in the van, it can get pretty squishy in there after a week or two, and it’s good to be able to have some extra space where you can stretch out and relax. A caravan porch awning will provide you with shelter right outside your front door, extending your living area and allowing you to enjoy the outdoors as a holiday should be. In the event that you get some bad weather (which seems to always happen during the holidays), you will still be able to sit under your awning and listen to the rain falling overhead.
One of the biggest hassles of a caravan awning is the fact that it has to be pulled up and down every time you move. Now, this is not a major problems if you are setting up camp in the one spot for a couple of weeks, but if you are like us and always on the move, then it becomes extremely important to have an awning that is as easy as possible to dismantle and put up. 
Maintaining your existing awning on a regular basis will ensure that you retain a smooth action on the awning arms.
If you have a caravan without an awning, or need to look at replacing an old worn awning, then now is really not the time to be buying. If you can hold out, the prices tend to fall considerably during the off season. When the holidays are over, and everyone’s gone back to work, camping shops are more likely to start dropping their prices in the hope of making a few out of season sales.
Caravan porch awnings come in many different materials, and sometimes the choices can be confusing for people who haven’t had much experience with camping. You can get everything from steel to canvas, acrylic and vinyl, even wood. What you need to keep in mind is that the van will be spending extended periods of time outdoors in the harsh elements, and the stronger your awning is, the more likely it is to hold up under these conditions.
When purchasing a new awning, it is particularly important to know exactly what you are after. Make sure you take measurements to the camping shop with you, along with the make, model, and year of the caravan you will be attaching it to. Or, even better, take the actual caravan with you; this way, the retailer will have a much better understanding of exactly what you are after.
If buying new is a little too expensive for you, then you may want to consider looking at used caravan awnings. Quite often you will be able to pick up a real bargain second hand, but you will need to do a little more hunting to find one that suits your needs. A great place to start looking is in the classifieds section of your local paper. One thing to keep in mind is that you should check out the awning thoroughly. Awnings that have spent a long time near the picture will probably be showing signs of rust, and once they start rusting up, it can be very hard to stop. You could also try a second hand caravan yard, as they will quite often have factory seconds on accessories like awnings.