Brief(ish) history of the Roaming Radfords

Steve has always been quite… impulsive… but in 2007, I had no idea that one of his impulse purchases would lead to our greatest shared passion; Motorhoming.

I was at home with our tiny son Eddie, when Steve arrived home from work one lunchtime.

He burst through the door; “I’ve had an idea, come outside and see it!”

And there, on the driveway was the 1989 Pilote R470 Motorhome he’d bought from friends who were upgrading to a newer motorhome. The van itself was a little bit damp, and a little bit smelly, but we all immediately fell in love with it. In that first year we spent many weekends exploring the UK with friends, visiting theme parks and enjoying evenings around the campfire.

After a couple of years we wanted to upgrade to something newer. AND Steve also wanted to buy a new car. Rather than  compromise and buy another older motorhome and an OK car, we decided to try a Caravan and a Range Rover.

The interesting thing about the caravan is that we didn’t really enjoy towing it. But this didn’t matter so much, as it coincided with us changing how we holidayed. We spent 6 weeks that summer parked up at a local caravan park, surrounded by friends who also had caravans. Steve would head off to work each day, and I and the other Mums would open the doors and release the children into the fields to play together. It was a great time for our boys, they developed excellent social skills playing with children that were both older and younger than them, experienced their first taste of freedom (overseen by other adults and older children), and went to bed each night tired and happy.

Our next trade up was into a Swift Lifestyle 630L. This was our first motorhome with a rear lounge, and has pretty much been the layout we have stuck with ever since. Most people either love or hate a rear lounge. The benefit is that it provides two living areas during the day. So if we are “enjoying” a Great British summer, we can hide from the rain and have two areas for  different activities. The downside of the rear lounge is that the large bed needs to be made up every single night. We have always believed that the extra living space is worth the bed making inconvenience.

It was this Swift Lifestyle that really gave us the bug for traveling. In this van we started to take longer andlonger road trips and really came to love the journey as much as the final destination.

Since then we have upgraded and renewed our motorhome several times. Our current van is a 2022 Swift Kon-tiki 874. We love this van! In just over 2 years we have travelled over 30,000 miles covering much of Europe. It's taken us as far North as  Norway, as far East as Turkey and as far South as Morocco.