Campervan security

I read motorhome magazines [MMM and Practical Motorhome] cover to cover, as well as other owners blogs and forums.  Through these I read lots tales about campervans being broken in to and valued items being stolen.  I know it must be dreadful when this happens; a campervan is after all a home as well as a vehicle.  Touch wood, in our ten-years of motorhoming over 90,000 miles we haven’t had many problems but we do take a few precautions.

• We try not to own anything too expensive [no really flash camera, no top of the range tablet] although with a small ‘van where space is limited everything we carry is valuable [to us.]
• We think about where we are leaving the ‘van and consider whether it feels safe; if one of us is unhappy with a car park they are allowed a veto.
• We never leave money or credit cards in the ‘van but always choose to carry them on our person [walking trousers/shorts and shirts have the benefit of lots of pockets]
• We put any valuables [to us] that might be left in the ‘van out of sight
• We prefer to park with the back doors reversed to a wall as they feel like a weak point and this makes it impossible to access the ‘van this way.  Parking in this way also makes it difficult to get at the bikes when they are loaded.
• We have added Lock M Out window locks to the two large side windows and we always lock the ‘van doors at night.
• If the worst happens and someone steals the whole ‘van, we have a tracker which we hope will mean it can be found.

During our year travelling we did have a couple of problems which were both [coincidently] in Spain.  The first time, someone attempted to take the bikes off the bike rack when it was parked in a small town that had felt safe enough.  They had buckled one of the wheels in the process and we had to replace this.  A few week’s later someone tried to force open one of the van side windows and scratched the plastic and then scored the drivers side window [perhaps in frustration] and we had to have that replaced.

Author: Back on the Road Again Blog

I write two blogs, one about my travels in our campervan and living well and frugally and the second about the stories behind the people commemorated in memorial benches. View all posts by Back on the Road Again Blog