Close encounters of the caravan kind…
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250 hours of metal bending and welding later, an out-of-this-world caravan was born in a Northants garden
Also read: Craziest caravans Got Airstream dreams? Caravan reviews
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You’re looking at the only Roswell caravan in the UK. In actual fact, as far as anyone knows, it’s only the second one that’s ever been made anywhere. It’s a project that required massive dollops of talent, persistence and enthusiasm. Luckily, Daniel Gregory possesses all three.
The history of this mystery
For more than 70 years, this unique style of caravan existed only as a rough sketch based on a mythical spacecraft in the States. Then, a few years ago, a design engineer from Newcastle called Andrew Gibbons decided to draw a fully dimensional layout of the Roswell from that 70-year-old drawing. Andrew’s aim? To see if anyone might actually take up the challenge of making it.Daniel, a member of The Teardrops 'n' Tiny Travel Trailers Club in America, as well as The Teardrop Club of Great Britain, found out about the existence of the fully finished plans of this mythical machine and decided pick up the space-inspired gauntlet. Along the way he might have wished that he hadn’t – a sentiment quite possibly shared by his wife, Jo.
Phenomenal dedication
Daniel was working 15-hour days as the project really began to take shape, with Jo contributing “loads of tea and sarnies” as well as a wise decision to steer clear.Predictably, when Caravan asked him if he came across any problems during the full-scale build, his answer was immediate: “Yes!” It turns out that the Perspex windows don’t quite follow the contours of the outer aluminium skin, which Daniel aims to rectify. He also thinks that the towing weight is a bit heavy, so he may bring the wheels forward by about six inches or so.
With a host of cool little touches (check out the 1950s jet indicator lights on top of the wheelarches that he bought from eBay), the Roswell caravan predictably receives lots attention out on the road.
Extra terrestrial curricular activities
“My four-year-old daughter Victoria was doing a project at school recently called ‘Space’, and she asked me if I’d bring the caravan down to the school,” laughs Dan. “They were so excited. I don’t think they’d ever seen anything like it.“To be honest, it even gets attention when it’s just sitting on the front garden. People knock on the door all the time asking if it’s for sale or where they can buy one. I’ve even been asked by someone in America if I’d go over there and make one for them. I’m not into that – I’ve got too much going on here.”
So far only Daniel has been away with the caravan (“It tows like a dream – you’d hardly know you had anything on the back”), but he’s getting it ready to take Jo and Victoria away in it as well.
“Space is limited and it can only take a double bed and a few under-bed lockers – I’ll be sleeping under the awning!” he laughs. That’s when he’s not buffing the exterior with his electric polisher.
“It takes over six hours to get it looking this shiny, and the shine disappears quite quickly,” he says.
Bikes: the final frontier...
You’d think that Daniel would step back a bit and just enjoy driving trains and using the Roswell at weekends, but you’d be wrong. Not content with building a caravan from outer space, he’s busy developing a diesel motorbike, as well as tarting up a ’70s Raleigh Chipper and an ’80s Raleigh Bomber that he bought online. Somehow he’s also found time to take up taekwondo.How he manages all this, we’ll never know. Unless he’s actually an extra-terrestrial being, of course.
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