Driving my Motorhome for the First Time

Last weekend me and my wife went to Madrid and bought our first MotorHome.

This website will be dedicated to share our experience with our new (at least new to us) used Detleffs A771 motor home. I’ll talk more about actually buying the Motorhome another time, but right now I want to tell you how it felt to drive it the first time.

Keys in hand

After signing the papers and shaking hands I stood there outside our Caravan as you say in Spanish. It was time to take the 600 kilometer drive from Madrid to Marbella where we live. I have to admit I was a bit nervous. Jokingly I told my wife I was too nervous to drive and that she had to take it out from the parking lot. She stubbornly refused…

OK, I went into the cockpit, put on the belt before starting the engine like a good boy and then slowly drove out. The first thing that struck me was taking the corners. I am definitely not used to drive a vehicle that weights 3,500 kilos and definitely not something this long. You have to keep a distance when turning the corners and roundabouts. After clearing the 23 or so roundabouts, the Spanish they do love their roundabouts, we were on the highway heading south.

Our new GPS (actually completely new) steered us the best way south and if I didn’t have a wife my new Navigon would certainly be a runner up. She has a sexy voice and always know what she wants. But more about her another time.

Strong winds

On the highway we were hit by very strong winds. This was the second thing that hit me, with a car this high you are totally at the mercy of the wind. Driving around 100 km per hour went fine, but as soon as I went up to 110 or one hundred twenty I immediately had to sway and work against the wind. I started to break a sweat and went down to the safe speed level again.

Fuel, fuel and more fuel

The third revelation that hit me was the amount of fuel we used. Due to the strong winds we had two fuel two times on the sixhundred kilometers and with a quick guestimation I think we used very close to 2 liters per 10 kilometers.

After about half the distance the wind settled and I tried to get my wife driving again. We had almost no traffic and I thought this was an excellent opportunity for her to try under very convenient circumstances. But again she stubbornly refused.

All in all it was a very nice drive and I love my new Motorhome. We also had a lot of fun waiving at all the other Motorhome people we saw on the way down. They smiled and waived back. I am pretty sure they said to each other: “there’s a new owner”, and they were of course right.

Until next time
Malcolm