I’d been planning this upgrade on The Mobi for a while, but I kept putting it off. Not because it wasn’t needed — quite the opposite — but because I wanted to be absolutely sure it was done properly and, above all, securely.
That hesitation turned out to be well-founded.
I had a chat with our neighbour recently. He and his wife travel regularly in their caravan and had been forced to postpone some trips last year after she underwent hip replacement surgery. Naturally, the first thing I asked was how she was doing. Thankfully, the operation itself had been a resounding success.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story.
On their most recent trip, she reached for a grab handle he’d fitted to their caravan several years earlier. The handle pulled clean out of the wall. She went down hard, damaging her hip again and ending up back in hospital. Later that day, I saw her heading to the shops on a mobility scooter — a sobering sight and a stark reminder of how quickly things can go wrong.
That conversation made me even more anxious about fitting the much-needed grab handle to our own caravan door.
Our van is fibreglass, but after drilling through I was relieved to confirm there’s a steel frame behind it. That knowledge, combined with careful fitting and proper fixings, finally gave me confidence that the handle is truly secure.
Having heard our neighbour’s experience, I’m not remotely sorry that I spent the extra money on the best quality handle I could find or that I took my time installing it properly. A grab handle might seem like a minor detail, but when you’re relying on it — especially on uneven ground or when mobility isn’t what it once was — it becomes critical.
Another accident like that is the very last thing we need once we finally get out on the road.
Sometimes, the smallest upgrades carry the biggest lessons.