One year ending and another beginning is a natural time to reflect on the previous 12 months and look forward to those on the horizon.

It was the seventh year for our Tow Car Awards and 46 cars were in the running, including the Kia Rio 1.4 CRDi that won the new for 2013 Best Ultra-light Tow Car category. Visit our dedicated Tow Car Awards website for the full rundown of 2013’s winners – and be sure to return later this year as we put the class of 2014 through their paces. Which models would you like to see get recognition this year? 

Also popular in 2013 was our news story about Sterling’s range of 2014 caravans featuring a revamped Eccles line up. In addition, a piece on the Eccles Sport from August and one spilling the beans on Bailey’s new for 2014 entry-level Pursuit also ended the year as some of the most read news pages. And let’s not forget our Top 100 regional winners reveal, another popular post of 2013 – and it won’t be long until the 2014 results are out.

As we move onto the reviews section of Practical Caravan, it is very interesting to see that tow car reviews came out on top, more people visiting this section than any other and pushing caravan reviews into second place, awnings in third. And the top tow car review? It’s the Kia Sorento 2.2 CRDi KX-2 – and you can watch our test on our YouTube channel.

The second most viewed tow car blog was the snappily named Honda CR-V 2.2 iDTEC EX. We described it as “about as sensible as tow cars get” and a car that “does just about everything else you might ask of a five-seat SUV”. Third was our Mitsubishi Outlander 2.2 DI-D GX5 auto review, which you can also enjoy on YouTube.

Your most viewed caravan review of last year was the 2013 Swift Conqueror 645 which we thought was both imposing and stylish, and we were fans of its island bed. This was followed closely by the Bailey Unicorn II Barcelona, while Swift was there again with the third most viewed caravan test of 2013 on this website with the Challenger Sport 586 – but we must be fair here, as it was very close between this and the fourth placed review, which was the Bailey Pegasus GT65 Rimini. 

Next it’s blogs – what was the biggest blog on Practical Caravan in 2013? By quite some margin, the most read blog was Nigel Donnelly’s Top 5 twin-axle caravans of 2013 post from March. Need to refresh your memory? Click here.

Our ever popular advice pages attracted a lot of visitors in 2013. The top hit was Doug King’s article from last January about how to erect a full awning. We hope his handy 14-step guide helped you if you’ve been having problems. Got a porch awning? We’ve got a guide to putting this up, too.

So those were Practical Caravan’s top hits of 2013 – and with lots to come as 2014 unfolds, there’s plenty to look forward to in the next 12 months. And we look forward to sharing it with you. Don’t forget to keep in touch on here, on our Twitter and Facebook pages, and also on our forum.