Swift's new Moselle holiday home at Holgates Caravan Park, Cumbria
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We’re here to experience the park holiday home lifestyle, both from the viewpoint of hiring a park holiday home for holidays, and buying a home-from-home of your own.
Our stay in Swift’s Moselle came about by chance. We were at the Swift factory, engrossed in a guided tour of the vast touring caravan manufacturing complex. Our guide, Marketing Manager Tom Anderton, led us away from the touring caravan production lines into the area where holiday homes are constructed, just to ensure we gained a complete picture of every element of Swift’s caravan offering. After all, in the dawn decades of caravan evolution, caravans were caravans, regardless of whether they were of towable dimensions or designed to be permanently sited. Then the great divide happened. Tourers and statics (as they were then known) went their separate ways, and both strands of the burgeoning holiday-on-wheels concept flourished and expanded rapidly…
Conversation on the factory tour turned to the home-from-home character of Swift’s holiday homes and Tom decided the Caravan tourer test editor needed to experience the holiday home lifestyle. He invited the Chapman family to be guests of Swift, staying at the Moselle, sited at Holgates Caravan Park at Silverdale, on the south tip of Cumbria.
Holgates is a member of our Premier parks group. It has a swimming pool complex and restaurant, crazy golf and lots more, nestled in the
Holgates Caravan Park’s steeply undulating topography enables holiday homes to be sited at wildly differing levels and angles from each other. Typically, “our” Moselle was not overlooked by any other holiday homes and our view from the windows and wooden decking and balustrade (with table, chairs and sun/rain umbrella) was of trees and rooftops of holiday homes.
The Swift Moselle is an example of just about the best th
Unsurprisingly, we found there were similarities in décor with Swift’s new Elegance touring caravan range and we were reminded of our factory tour when we saw furniture for both tourers and their bigger cousins being assembled.
Woodwork, curtains and wood-effect flooring all have a look of Swift’s tourers. White drawer and cabinet fronts follow current Swift tourer trends, too. And the bedroom curtains hang in the delightful, chunky steel-loop-and-pole style that we sometimes see in tourers.
Décor similarities, though, are where the comparison between tourers and the Moselle should end. Because the Moselle, and other Swift holiday homes, are the size of a small house. It has a kitchen-dining room, a lounge with feature flame-effect electric heater with white “coals”; it instantly pumps out warm air when you turn it on. A large television hangs on the wall
The kitchen is equipped with a dishwasher. The cooker is larger than many you find in domestic kitchens. (There is a similarity with tourers here; the cooker is made by Spinflo.) And there’s a cowl-style extractor with light that shines down on the hob.
And the washing and showering arrangements? There are two bathrooms. In domestic parlance the one with just a shower would be called the family bathroom. The other, ensuite to the master bedroom, has a bath and overhead shower.
As owners of a touring caravan, and immersed in the whole business of tourers and towing in the course of Caravan magazine work, the long weekend in the Moselle was a new experience and we couldn’t help drawing comparisons. Would we miss a bath and a dishwasher and all this space when we next go away in a tourer? Well, no. We love the nomadic holiday decision opportunities that touring caravanning offers. Yet the Swift Moselle experience demonstrated the reasons why having, or hiring, a home-from-home holiday home in a favourite location does have its strong merits.
A major factor about the holiday home concept is that the oppor
Not that we’d ever consider swapping our tourer for a static caravan … Although this weekend has demonstrated to us that there is a case for getting a static holiday home caravan for weekends and keep a tourer for main family holidays.
10 years of holiday home manufacture
Swift celebrates 50 years of manufacture in 2014. And it’s 10 years since the company began making holiday homes.The first Swift touring caravan was made in a garage near Hull, a region that is now regarded as the centre of the UK caravan manufacturing industry. From an original workforce of two, Swift expanded through an era lean-to extensions as demand for its caravans rose. The company moved to its present premises at Cottingham in 1970. Today, Swift employs more than 870 staff.
Holiday home manufacture began in 2004; 3000 are build per year, which represents 20% of the holiday home market.
Swift’s holiday home range
There are 11 ranges in Swift’s holiday homes portfolio, all named after regions of France, and all offering a selection of layouts and sizes. The two-bedroomed Moselle with a bath, for example (the model we reviewed here) costs £33,705.Prices of holiday homes in the rest of the range start at £17,995 for the two-bedroomed Soleil model, to £43,775 for the two-bedroomed Chamonix. Lodge models are £64,275 for the Champagne lodge and £43,785 for the Moselle lodge.
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