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Statement from the Chair of SCOA

Over the last 50 years, we’ve had the privilege of being welcomed into the lives of Southwold town and its people. It's been a journey filled with fun, respect, and a shared vision for the town. Together, we've tackled the challenges of commercial buyouts, lack of investment, floods and general malaise from the ruling district council.  

With the launch of East Suffolk Council’s (ESC) vision for the future of the harbour lands, we as a caravan community took some time to reflect on how our partnerships with the people of Southwold have reshaped the landscape in which we live 9 months of the year.

The Southwold Caravan Owners Association (SCOA) has worked directly over the years with council representatives from both East Suffolk Council and Southwold Town Council to ensure we support the local environment and its economy. Our regular meetings with them have paved the way to ensuring that everyone understands the sensitivity of the area and to respect the fine balance needed to keep Southwold unique. All of which has enabled us - SCOA - to lessen disruption and work in harmony with the town to minimise the environmental impact. Always with an ongoing commitment to sustainability.

Our robust commitment to the site has helped breathe new life into the general ambience of the harbour lands, which are sympathetic to the overall feel of Southwold. By working closely with experts such as AONB we were able to upgrade the planting and general environmental nature of the site which had sorely been let to run down. This approach has not only benefited the environment by reducing waste, but also provided a natural environment for flora and fauna to flourish.

As we reflect on the past 50 years of partnership with Southwold, we are extremely proud and grateful to have had the opportunity to enjoy the gift of the caravan site, generation after generation. Many of us now have firm friends and family living and working in the area. Unfortunately, now we find ourselves in a very different situation where we are being asked to accept a future which is pushing the boundaries of what's possible, fair and reasonable. No longer will we be able to care for the community or its environment or pave the way for our children’s children to enjoy the delights of a seaside environment. Now we will either have to leave the site due to rigorous and costly terms of the future development or look at systematic changes to our tenancy which demands sub-letting. This process not only adheres to the commercial interests of the sites management who are looking to include short term holiday lets, but whose marketing strategies and customer preferences of the letting market will destroy the ambience of the harbour, the caravan site and ultimately the town. 

SCOA and its members have agreed to sustainable upgrading of the site offering valuable insights into the latest trends of technology and self-sufficiency. We have helped make informed decisions about a realistic charge for the redevelopment which will give us energy, water and sewage all of which would meet rigorous quality control standards whilst maintaining a sustainable ethos. This deep understanding of the caravan site and the town has enabled us to support the local economy without question and we feel that we are custodians of the land. The promises that we have been given as caravan owners by ESC are no longer open to us, and we feel that a community will be lost. It would seem that over 50 years of loyalty counts for nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Click on the following link to view our press release:  http://www.southwoldcaravanowners.co.uk/images/SCOA%20Press%20release%20-%202024-04-09.pdf

Diane Perry-Yates

Chair of SCOA

The fact that I’ve stated in my will that my ashes to be scattered on the dunes here at Southwold, should tell you everything you need to know about my feelings for this place. 

I’ve been coming here since I was a teenager in the 1950s, when my parents had a caravan over on the dunes.  My sister and I came with them on family holidays as often as we could and loved it from the start.  

Back then, what’s now the caravan site was just an empty field, and when the council decided to allow caravans to pitch on it, there was just one row facing the river and my parents were one of the first to arrive, on site number six. 

I grew up not far away in Harleston, a small town inland from Southwold, and met David at the Young Farmers Club when were just sixteen. We did much of our courting here, regularly turning up at the caravan on David’s motorcycle. So the site has a very special place in our hearts and in our family history. 

At first, the caravans were dear little things – ours was a little blue 50s style box, with gas mantles for lighting – and the whole site had a kind of back to nature feel about it. Once we had our children Fiona and Philip, we brought them with us and they’d spend hours running around and playing on the beach.  

Our caravan was pitched next to the site manager Mr Knights, and he’d let the children in to watch It’s A Knockout on his little black and white TV. My sister and her family came a lot, too, so for us this place is full of happy family memories.  

Fiona and Philip are in their sixties now and they’re still regular visitors. Fiona has two grown-up children – and five months ago she became a grandmother. Her little grandson has already paid his first visit to the site, so that’s the fifth generation of our family to come here. 

With our first caravan, we used to tow it off the site every winter. But thirty or so years ago, we upgraded to the static we have now, on the site right next to reception. At one point, our children took over the site next door to ours’, but they came up one day to find the floor had fallen in – the only thing that was holding up was the carpet, so that had to go. 

Now our daughter has her own caravan on the centre of the site, and our son is hoping to take ours over one day, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely. It’s terribly sad that the site may be developed in the way that’s proposed. It will change the whole character of the place, and I have a horrible feeling that many of the original families will be priced out. We certainly won’t be buying a brand-new caravan at our stage in life, and our son’s not in a position to – not until we pop our clogs at least! 

It's ridiculous to bring in a rule that statics on the site have to be under 10 years old – there are many 20 or 30 year old caravans on the site that are in perfectly good condition.  

We’ve seen many changes to Southwold over the years – it used to be a much more basic, down-to-earth kind of place and there are far more people now. But we will always love it. Many of our happiest family memories have been made here – the freedom, the pub lunches, the walks to Walberswick, the ferry home. We’ve loved it all.  

This caravan site has been a haven for us and our whole family for 70 years and some of our happiest family memories have been made here. To lose it now will be sadder than I can say.

You could say our caravan saved the day when I’d lost my way as an artist.I’ve had a passion for drawing since childhood, did a degree in sculpture and – after a few grotty jobs – worked in art education for the past 30 years, most recently at University of the Arts London. 

But even calling myself an artist has taken many years. I’m the first person in my family who went on to higher education and come from a background where being an artist wasn’t considered much of an option. So even giving myself that label has not come easily. And in 2010, when we moved to Cambridge from London, I was working full time and my own work had taken a backseat – I’d lost my way in my own practice as an artist.  

But getting our own caravan in 2014 turned that around. I started drawing again, sketching what I saw through the same caravan window – not overthinking it, just doing it. I didn’t draw with charcoal, I got out the felt tips and biros - they have a character of their own that somehow seemed to fit.  And the aesthetic of the place, the ad hocness of the place, the scuttling clouds, the flimsy, transient nature of the caravans – all just made sense to me. 

The drawings themselves were quite mundane and down-to-earth, but it unlocked something. Before long I’d filled a sketchbook. 

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Southend on Sea, and something about the caravan site and seaside town culture chimes with me on a deep level. I feel very at home here, although Southwold is a much more aspirational kind o seaside than Southend. It has quite a different feel, but somehow I’m looking to hang on to the raw, authentic part of it and the caravan site is part of that.  

We first discovered the site through my sister-in-law who’d been coming for years, and we stayed in her caravan at first. Now we have our own, we’re stuck in the ghetto – right in the middle – which is great. There’s an amazing perspective of lines of caravans I can see from the window that appears repeatedly in my drawings. 

As a family, we love the self-sufficiency and simplicity of life on the site – it’s a pared down existence away from the clutter of everyday life that we really value. It’s great to just get away to something basic and simple. I love the chance to do very little. And the repetition of life here appeals to me – make a cup of tea, go for a swim, walk the dog, draw for half an hour, do the washing up, repeat.  

Now the caravan site just seeps into everything I do. My practice as an artist has developed from those early drawings in many ways, and elements of the caravan can be found in everywhere - the shadows on the floor, the spaces, shapes and forms. It’s not about representing people directly, but hints of their presence in towels hung up to dry, mugs on a counter.  

I got to the point where I thought, right I’m doing all this stuff with caravans, maybe I should take it a bit more seriously. Six years ago, I organised an exhibition in Cambridge featuring caravan themed paintings and prints. It was very successful, and the work went on to be exhibited at the Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London - I sold more work than I’ve ever sold in my life. 

Since then, I’ve moved on to work which includes bits of rubbish I found around the place – a bit of string or plastic, a Sole Bay fish and chip wrapper - which is less observational and more accumulative and humorous. I’d love to do a kind of residency at the site, just seeing the year through from when it’s desolate and empty, to crammed with people. 

Losing the caravan site would be a great loss – a vast network of generational roots would be ripped up.  There’s a community here; generations of families who’ve been coming for years and feel a deep connection to the place. 

It’s an incredible privilege to have been part of this community, and there would be a lot of sadness if it all disappears. It’s quite unique, and I do think that commercialising the site in a way that makes it just like every other caravan site would be a great mistake. We live in such an increasingly homogenised world, with short term profit driving every decision, and that’s just really boring and predictable.  

The proposed ideas for the site feel like such a dated, 1990s style solution, when it could be so much more forward looking – involving solar energy, sustainable water management and so on.  

The only thing that gives me a little bit of hope is that community-led, sustainable projects around the country, and those that have broken the mould in that way tend to become the jewels in the crown of their local area. But I fear our unique site might all be lost to the onward march of commercialisation.

I’ve been coming here since I was a baby and can’t remember a time I didn’t come. I grew up here and I still feel I’m growing up here in a way. I have so much more growing up here to do.  

I want to bring my friends here, to show it to my partner and have weekends away here with her for years to come. I want to bring my kids here if I have them. I want to grow old coming here.  

My mum’s a single mum and coming to stay here on the site with friends has been a lifeline over the years. We’ve been on the waiting list for 17 years, and the idea that we’d have a caravan here one day has always been a big part of our future plans. I’m worried we won’t be able to afford a caravan under the new proposals and the thought of not being able to come here after waiting patiently for so many years is heart-breaking. 

I’ve never known any caravan site like it, me and mum looked round a few near where my grandma lived and they all had new caravans and no children on bikes or families, no shared herb gardens. I don’t think any caravan site has the same spirit of community as this one and wish every family could have the opportunity and freedom it offered me as a child.  

Every time I come here it brings back the memories of me as a child making friends and mischief, then me as a teen it was such a forming part of me. Coming here keeps those memories and friendships alive, and I’d lose that if we stopped coming here and that breaks my heart.  

I come from the city but here I’d make mud pies and eat foraged leaves, try to catch bunnies, walk barefoot from the shared showers back to the caravan, and wear my crocs everywhere else. There’s just something about the way it is the opposite of luxury that gives it its character, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

Before 3G, we’d be here with no wifi at the caravan and so we’d have to get creative with entertaining ourselves. When we wanted wifi or we’d sit in Costa charging up all our devices. Of course, there was over the hills and far away, spending hours constructing bridges to get from one side of the marsh to the other. Buying as many shrimp sweets as we could with £1 at the kiosk. Allegedly some mild vandalism in the bathrooms and climbing the Big Green Box (sorry Paul). Cycling round the camp site and plucking up the courage to talk to other people our age we’d never met before. Manhunt. The water fights! Going to the pier and looking under all the arcade machines for 2p coins to immediately use. Oh and the sneaking out the caravan at night of course! We’d wait till our parents were asleep and climb out windows ever so carefully to not shake the caravan, to stay out a little longer with our friends. We’d dip our toes in the sea at moonlight, stay up chatting for hours and watch the sunrise. It’s a freedom and safety I had nowhere else.  

The lack of electric and water is the charm of the place. If everyone had water in their caravans, who would you chat to while washing up or brushing your teeth? You wouldn’t ever see the stars on your way to a midnight wee or have obligatory candlelit dinners, for lack of electricity. 

In fact, I had a little cry to my mum yesterday when talking about the idea of not coming here anymore. I just can’t imagine it really and when I do it just feels inconceivably mean that anyone would try take that away - not just me but all the children that are yet make memories here, as young families probably won’t be able to afford it here in future. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford an expensive caravan when I was little, and with the cost of living crisis, I don’t think it will be affordable for ordinary people like us.

For me, Southwold has been a beautiful constant in a world of continual change. In general, I’m quite a flexible person who’s not resistant to change at all. But we’ve enjoyed a simple, basic life here on the caravan site that’s barely changed in decades, and for me that’s the joy of it.   

This place has played a hugely important part in my life, and that of my brother and sister. So it’s always had a sense of permanence for us. But now I can see a time coming when it’s not going to be here anymore and that’s immensely sad.   

It was sailing that first brought my family here in the 1950s, when I was just four years old. Dad was part of a sailing club in Northants, along with a group of his business friends, and they heard the sailing was good down here – it was the start of a relationship between my family and Southwold that’s lasted ever since.  

At first, we came as part of a large group of friends – the men would bring the wives and children, dump them for the summer holidays and visit at weekends for the sailing. We stayed in big canvas bell tents on campsite – there were lots of children and we just ran wild.  

For us, those visits meant complete freedom.  We’d run about on the beach, our legs red from the perishing cold, while the mothers sat behind windbreaks in sheepskin jackets drinking from flasks. Heaven knows what was in the flasks, but everyone was very happy! 

We knew how to swim, were taught about the tides and told on pain of death not to go anywhere near the harbour. So long as we stayed clear of that danger – and the Neptune, as the amusement arcade was then known, which was considered unsuitable – we were free to explore. We’d build camps on the common, sail toy boats and muck about on the beach beyond the pier, an area we called ‘the coloured sands’ because of the layers of differently coloured sediment forming the cliffs.  

Eventually, my parents bought a little touring caravan which we’d park on the caravan site, then we graduated to a larger static. We’d come for the whole summer holidays, and for Easter, when snow sometimes lay on the ground.  

As a teenager, I got to know a few of the boys in town – I was quite fond of one of them, and often wonder what happened to him – and in my early twenties, I started coming with friends as well as family. I married Peter in my thirties, and he had children, so we started bringing them whenever my parents didn’t want to use the van. 

Over time, dad’s health started to fail, and they moved to a more comfortable caravan with electricity. He was very poorly but still came to Southwold whenever he could, because he was so attached to the place. And when dad died, coming to the caravan played a huge part in mum’s healing from bereavement. By then she’d made a group of friends in Reydon and they had a lovely time, going swimming every day, attending Reydon church and being a member of the local WI. 

Ten years ago, the caravan became too much responsibility for mum, so she handed it over to me, my sister who also comes here regularly with her family, and my brother. 

There are so many things I’ve loved over the years – the light, bird life, fish and chips, meals at the Harbour Inn, popping into Mumford’s. the sound of halyards clanging as you walk up the harbour, services at St Edmunds. But the best thing of all has been the unchanging nature of the place. Over the years, the sights and sounds kind of seep into you – the place becomes part of you, and you become part of the place. 

We’ve got to know other people on the caravan site, too. This place is very levelling. In the outside world, some people have big houses and cars, others don’t. We caravan owners are from all walks of life, but it doesn’t matter what you do for a living or how much money you have, when you’re standing next to someone and having a chat in the washing up block. I think that’s a very healthy thing. 

In a quiet way, there’s a real community here. But the best thing of all has been the unchanging nature of the place. Southwold is still lovely, but it’s grown much more aspirational over the years and this place provides a contrast – it’s very real and authentic. The thing is, when you have people who care about the place and come back year after year, they treat it with respect – it’s always felt very safe and people leave their possessions outside with no fear that it’s going to be stolen. 

And although the rent’s very high for what we actually get on the site, it’s remained relatively affordable, unlike the rest of town, where the cost of everything is so high that places are short of staff because no one can afford to live here. I like the idea of having a home from home in a beautiful place, that isn’t depriving a local person of a home in the way a second property does. 

And I do wonder about the wisdom of spending a lot of public money to redevelop a site that’s predicted to be under water in 30 years or so. Nobody will be able to insure their caravan or want to pay out huge sums of money for something at increasing risk from the changing weather. 

I stayed with a girlfriend in a rented caravan on a commercial site just down the coast and it was rows of identical caravans crammed into together, and it was just awful. There was a lot of rowdiness, and the chap in the caravan next to ours’ spent the whole time shouting at his poor dog. It was horrible. 

If that’s the direction of travel here, then we’re out. It will be extremely sad, but in some ways we’re resigned - it feels as though this commercialisation has been advancing for years, and we will be trodden under its march.

Nikki says:  
Six years ago, we moved from London to Norwich to be closer to our caravan – that’s how much we love it. It is very much treasured by all of us. 

My aunt had a caravan on the site since the 60s, but when she invited us to come, I resisted. I had a snobby attitude towards caravans, thinking that every site would be like Butlin’s. But it was nothing like that, and never has been. I finally went at the age of 16, and for me, it was love at first sight.  

From that moment on, I couldn’t get enough of the place and came every time I had the opportunity. I loved everything about it – the skies, the sounds, the birds, sunsets, big moons and stars. The peace. I loved walking by the water, that certain light that happens when the sun breaks through the clouds. So many moments that made me feel I just didn’t want to be anywhere else on earth. 

Southwold was quite different back then, much more like a working small town with normal shops, funny closing times and ordinary people. There was an old-school Chinese restaurant on the High Street, a quirky old shop called the Crooked House and the pubs stopped serving bang on 2pm. It was all very different to how it is now, which is all holiday lets and expensive delis, but I still love it nevertheless. 

I started coming with friends and different family members, and to get to know other people who had caravans here. A little community began to build. We were living on an estate in London and there were always people around. Here, it was much more peaceful. But over time, so many of our friends fell in love with the place too, that they put their names on the list and got caravans of their own or stayed on the campsite.

After many years on the waiting list visiting my aunt’s caravan, a plot finally came up for us 24 years ago and we shared it with my brother and sister, as a three-way family deal.  

By then, we had our daughters - Freya was about three at the time, and Rhiannon was just a baby  – they’ve both spent their whole lives coming here. It’s been the perfect place to have kids – they’ve enjoyed freedom they don’t get in London, and to experience a much simpler way of life. We don’t even have a telly. 

They made friends with other kids on the site and became part of whole band of girls on bikes, terrorising the neighbourhood. And they’ve maintained those relationships over the years – now they’re in their twenties and they still hang out on the site with their old friends. 

I can’t even bear to think about what the loss of our caravan would mean to us. But the threat to our own future isn’t the only reason the proposals are a terrible idea - investing public money on developing a flood plain, the change of character to the site and the town, with hordes of traffic going up and down the Ferry Road and serviceable caravans ending up in landfill all seem like the worse possible way forward. We’re hanging on to hope that a more creative solution can be found. 

Colette says: 
It must have only been my second date with Nikki when she suggested a visit to her aunt’s caravan in Southwold – like her, I was reluctant at first. I thought caravan sites were ugly and there was probably some class snobbery in there carried from my 70s childhood. I imagined this whole Hi De Hi vibe and a lot of rules about how to behave. I didn’t let Nikki know that, though!   

I still can’t pretend the caravan site is aesthetically pleasing.  But beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, and when you look at it with your caravan love eyes, all you see is the good stuff – the daffs coming up, your bikes promising many happy bike rides propped up by the side. 

I love the fact that it’s not right in town. It has a wildness to it that’s just lovely. We do the same things every time we come, but they feel different every time. One visit, the blackthorn will be in bloom, another time the gorse. The light and weather change, sometimes from hour to hour. And the sounds are wonderful – birds on the roof, or rain pattering on the windows. One of my favourite sounds in the world is the kettle boiling in our caravan. It’s all so familiar and comforting.  

We have many family traditions around the caravan. For example, every Easter we make a simnel cake, the girls decorate it and we share it around with people on the site. Our eldest is 27 now and she still comes for Easter, bringing her bunny ears with her.   

Losing our caravan now would be a very big thing for us. We’ve moved from Norwich to London mostly to be nearer to it, and very much feel like part of the local community. Nikki works in Reydon two days a week and stays at the caravan when she’s working there and I’ve just applied for a local job, too. I’ve been out with the Walberswick bird walkers and we’ve both taken part in other local activities. 

I think there are many reasons that the proposals the council have come up with are problematic. I don’t think they appreciate that the community here is based on people who love and respect the area – that wouldn’t necessarily be the case if we were all replaced with people with more money, but no real connection to the area. It would be a sad thing for us, but sad for Southwold, too. 

Archie says:
So many of my childhood memories are tied to our wonderful caravan - thinking that what we called “the meadow” – the small swampy area over the bank - was vast and scary and exciting; doing laps on our bike and using the speed bumps as jumps; being able to see the Milky Way, walking back from the Harbour Inn and seeing a meteor light up the pitch black and unlit harbour sky and witnessing the winning crab at the crabbing championships. It was very big! 

Some memories relate to activities that probably weren’t advisable - standing at the harbour’s mouth being battered by the spray from the waves, for example!  And some of the wonderment exists to this day – I’m still fascinated by the house next to the Harbour Inn for example – who lives there? Who built it?

Although I understand nothing stays static (boom boom) and progress is inevitable, I believe that the caravan site offers a fantastic opportunity for East Suffolk Council to come up with a plan that’s a beacon of sustainable planning and believe that not ensuring a sound physical and economic proposal is a reputational, planning and therefore financial risk for them.  

There isn’t much detail in the proposals so far, but possible dangers for the council include the fact that public opposition on sustainability grounds is becoming more frequent and more effective - it’s important that East Suffolk Council's 2030 net zero pledge and Climate Action Framework is adhered to, including the decarbonisation of the Council's assets.  

Any proposal that requires a high level of carbon (both embodied and operational) will not meet the council's own standards. And recently established policy points - Biodiversity Net Gain chief amongst them - may make any significant development of the site financially unviable due to offsite mitigation and trading rules. All of which sounds very technical – put simply, when I look at the council’s proposals for the site, I reckon they could do a lot better. 

Edward says: 
To me, Southwold means happiness. I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember and the excitement of getting our first caravan – I must have been about four at the time - is one of my happiest childhood memories. 

Before that, we been staying in our friend’s caravan since I was very little – it was a really old-style caravan, and I can just about the remember the proper wooden door and gas mantles for light. 

Most of my memories involve just pottering around the site or heading out for long bike rides as a family – we’d head off for Walberswick across the bridge and stop by the cricket ground to play on the swings. I remember going to Covehithe and walking along the cliffs and going to the arcade and the boating lake as a treat. 

As teenagers, Archie and I could just head off on our bike and do our own thing. Life just felt very free. 

I still come often, sometimes with my mum and brother, who love the place as much as I do, sometimes with my girlfriend, Jayde. It’s been lovely to show her all the things that mean so much to me from my childhood. 

Our lovely caravan has always been there and the thought of losing it is devastating.  Not only would we be priced out, but what is being proposed would completely change the character, not just of the caravan site, but Southwold, too. Surely there must be a better way forward. 

Getting our caravan was a big moment after waiting so many years on the waiting list. Before this we had always come lots to Southwold. Many times we’d hired cottages with friends - since our children and theirs were toddling naked together in and out of the foamy Southwold beach waves.  

Once we got the caravan, nearly 20 years ago now, we could come much more often and for more of the year. Our daughter was nine at the time, and immediately wanted to share it with her friends and classmates. And children from around the site used to play together - the open space on the other side of the grassy bank next to our caravan was especially popular and we saw them playing out there from our window. That area was widely known as ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ among the children on the site, and childhood memories and imaginations were cultivated there. It was fertile ground.  

The weekends with school children-friends always seemed to be the rainiest ones. One evening we opened the oven door to try to dry out several pairs of children’s trainers. -’Yum yum’ texted one of their mothers from home. ‘Roast trainers tonight’.

One friend of our daughters soon came with us for every school holiday visit. Her parents had a lot on their plate and as well as two younger brothers, there was a new baby at home. The caravan became as much a second home for her and her brothers as it was for us. Hours were spent drawing and playing games in the caravan, whilst eating toast and butter. The best second-hand board games came from the Sue Ryder shop in town and our favourite was ‘Don’t Rock the Boat’. We’ve mended its  battered cardboard box many times to preserve its charm. 

We still have many of the children’s pictures, now laminated, on our caravan walls. Our favourites are the ‘map of caravan’ pictures drawn in the very early days - we still call one of the tiny bedrooms ‘Keith’s room’, though Keith has long out-grown it. 

Cycling around the site and adjacent campsite was an important activity for children on the site. They’d collect friends from other caravans to play and cycle together. It was safe and easy-going. All the various parents could keep an eye from their respective caravans. 

Our daughter especially relished the first morning wake-up after an often late arrival the night before. She knew Dani the ferry woman from many summers spent in Southwold and would go straight down to the harbour bursting with new-found nine-year-old independence to say hello. Dani always greeted her warmly and often took her on a couple of trips in the rowing boat to Walberswick and back while they exchanged news. 

When we first got to the top of the caravan waiting list, the manager was dubious when he showed us the far corner position on the other side of the toilet block. ‘I don’t think anyone will want this site’, he said, perusing the menacing, shoulder high nettles covering the entire area and frowning at the proximity to the toilets. But I knew I wanted it. I knew I already loved it.  

My partner didn’t dare come the first time our van was in place, for fear of being overshadowed and lost in the dark sea of nettles. But when I stared out at the open view across the glorious reed beds to Southwold Lighthouse and water tower, I rang everyone to say how wonderful it was. I knew we could conquer the nettles. It took many seasons of digging but we managed it and planted handfuls of daffodils all over the bank instead. We knew from other caravan owners’ advice that this was the only flower that the rabbits would not eat. Daffodils are poisonous to rabbits.  

And there were always many rabbits. One day the children got together and devised their own rabbit-catching scheme. There were no plans for rabbit pie. Instead, these were children’s fantasies of adopted and adoring pets. We tried to explain that they were wild rabbits, but one child from our group was determined. Sometime after we thought the play had moved on, we couldn’t find her and started to get worried. But we found her, hiding motionless and entirely concealed under a large pile of grass cuttings. She then moved on to a Heath Robinson-like invention using a pulley system through the caravan window to a hinged-lidded shoe box concealed in the long grass outside. To our horror, her willingness to sit very still at the window holding the end of the string for however long it took to persuade a baby rabbit into the box, very nearly paid off. 

Perhaps it was the many hours spent at Tim Hunkin’s Under The Pier Show that inspired these contraptions.  

For me the caravan has always been a retreat. After a week of teaching in the city, I need to escape here. It’s also where I make music. I keep a £30 guitar from Sue Ryder at the caravan and can sit outside on our bank, spending many a happy hour practising classic guitar pieces, or could sling it over my back before heading off somewhere for a day of playing, wherever my bike took me.  

One year I’d set myself a challenge to play something to a different person every day for 100 days – sometimes I’d seek out a surprised camper or beach visitor to serenade with some Bach, or cycle over the Bailey bridge - by moonlight if I was lucky – in search of campers sitting round a glowing barbecue on the campsite. They’d look bemused when I  approached and politely ask if they minded listening to a very short bit of Fernando Sor or Villa Lobos on my guitar. 

I also play accordion and people coming in and out of the washing up room or toilet block seem to enjoy this when I am playing from outside my caravan. In 2022 I busked for Ukraine several times outside the Sailors Reading Room and visitors danced to the music and gave generously. 

I also learned to sail dinghies at a sailing course at Oulton Broad and bought a dilapidated Mirror Dinghy. We almost came unstuck on one occasion while sailing up the river and my foot went through the bottom of it. We were rescued by sailing club people and I upgraded to a newer boat, which I keep  on the harbour in the summer season and regularly sail upriver with friends. It’s like Swallows and Amazons.  

For my 50th birthday lots of family and friends stayed either in the caravan or camped on the campsite and I booked a room at the Blyth Hotel for my elderly parents. My daughter made a huge champagne cake and we ate it on the harbour between taking people for mini sailing jollies back and forth across the river. 

I’ve loved everything about our time in Southwold – rain on the roof, sunsets over the harbour, cycling by moonlight, the many visitor to the bird feeders outside my window, murmurating starlings and evening swims and sometimes the rare shock of bioluminescence like magical trails of fairy dust in the water. 

But most of all I love my caravan and I will miss it dearly if I lose it. When we first got our caravan, my mum congratulated me on the phone, saying  ‘It will give you many years of happiness’. But I didn’t realise quite how dead-right she was when she said it.