Five Go Off In A Caravan is a tongue in cheek title taken from the Enid Blyton book of the same name. The five in this case are Marion and Kristoph, Li and Lily with baby Rodan. The caravan is the TARDIS in disguise. Three Oldblood Gallifreyans are experiencing a working class northern holiday – caravanning in North Wales. It is the holiday Marion wants Rodan to have – the sort she remembers from her childhood.

It is the sort of holiday I remember vividly from childhood, crossing under the Mersey in the Tunnel, through Port Sunlight and the industrial Wirral, which is really quite spectacular in its way and looks amazing at night with all the refineries lit up like giant Christmas trees. Chester is very nice, though I got a bit bored with it in later years when we had too many school trips there. Unlike Amy Pond, I never really liked Roman history.

I wanted to emphasise the huge difference between Gallifrey and Earth in that there is one government for the whole planet on Gallifrey whereas on Earth even a small island like Britain has divisions. Of course, even Gallifrey would have cultural differences. Kristoph illustrates one of them with his nightshirt story.

Passing from England to Wales on that northern coast is a simple thing, of course. There is a roadside sign that welcomes you in Welsh and after that all the signs are bi-lingual. That is the only obvious difference when driving. It is only when you stop and get out of the car that you feel you are in a different place.

Flint Castle was always a stop on our trips. Every year we would visit. Really, I don’t know why. It never actually changed. But I quite liked it. It was a genuine ruined medieval castle like the ones I read about in books. When I think of ruined castles I generally think of Flint.

The visions of Flint as a working Castle were the one attempt to make this a real science fiction story. Apart from that it is mostly a romance about two couples on holiday.

From Flint they moved on to Talacre Bay. It was always either Talacre or Tywyn when I was a child. In my memory it is hard to remember which was which excerpt that Tywyn is bound by the railway. In both cases I know very little about the towns themselves. My memory is dominated by caravan parks. These are probably the ugliest things about the North Wales coast – whole acres of caravans parked in geometric lines with the toilet blocks and shower cubicles and some kind of shopping and entertainment facility if you’re lucky rather spoil the coastline. But since they are the very lifeline of the tourist industry of North Wales they’re a necessary evil.

Talacre Bay is one of those places with the acres of caravan parks. It isn’t one we visited often. We usually went as far as Tywyn or Prestatyn, but I do remember the beach and the lighthouse on a few occasions. Talacre is best known for being the butt of jokes by the Liverpudlian drag comedian, Lily Savage and her alter ego Paul O’Grady who reminisces about cut price holidays on the North Wales coast.

It is also infamous among Marion and Kristoph fans as the place where Li sat with Marion and declared his love for her. I had in mind a scene of that sort sooner or later, but where to fit it into the narrative was a problem. An early morning scene on the beach fitted perfectly. Of course, no impropriety is intended. Marion is married to Kristoph, Li and Lily are a secret item. It is an exploration of what might have been.

http://www.enidblyton.net/famous-five/five-go-off-in-a-caravan.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersey_Tunnels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_Castle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talacre