The Van Life

Technically we are now on our 3rd Van with the current VW Crafter conversion, we’ve come to call the beast. Our van life started with a beat up, slightly leaky Citroen Dispatch panel van that my parents happened upon after me saying I really fancied having a van. The conversion on that was no more than a nice floor and some simple storage, we occasionally slept in it when we needed a quick stop over, but were still using Tents for the bigger trips. It was enough to give me the campervan bug however! 

We then had a gap between vans for a few years after we swapped the Citroen for a more reliable VW Passat estate that became a work horse for our active and adventurous life style. The passion and desire for the campervan life never left me, and for those few van-less years I regularly dreamt of a dream van build, much to the annoyance of my better half and certainly a test of her patience listening to me plan it.

The nail in the coffin for us finally committing to a proper van build was one exceptionally wet and windy Lake District camp. We were camped in the Langdale valley,  following another fantastic day hiking the hills and enjoying the local watering hole we were back at our tent on a very full campsite. At the time the weather was calm and sunny, and I will always remember looking across the campsite to see a family enjoying their campervan build. That night a big storm hit and our tent started bellowing in on us, which seen me in my pyjamas at 2am in side ways rain manoeuvring the car to shelter the tent and give me something to tie it to. The following morning we awoke to a near empty campsite, where most had packed up and gone home overnight. Not that campervan I’d seen the afternoon before, they were getting up and on with their day as if nothing had happened.  Soon after this our campervan plans were in action!

At the time the VW California was the van to have, this was way out of our budget and so we opted for building our very own version using a LWB VW Transporter panel van as a base. Dan at Simply Surf Bus was the best discovery we have made to date, not only helping us source the van, but also helping with installing a pop top roof and windows to get us started. With the help of Pete at Majestic Wood who helped design and cut our perfect ply kitchen units we had our very own Campervan. 

Seven fantastic years and many many adventures later, including having a baby we were ready for our next campervan and something with a bit more space. Like how the California had inspired our current van, the Grand California was the inspiration for the next project. Like before we wanted to build it custom and to our specification, so began the hunt for a base VW Crafter MWB van.  We cannot thank Dan & Ben at Simply Surf Bus or Pete at Majectic Wood Design enough for again helping us to create the ultimate campervan. 

We are now 1 year into having the Crafter, which we completed the build on approximately 6 months ago. With 54 nights already spent on adventures in the Crafter across the UK and Europe, I think we can say this is our best and favourite campervan so far! 

What’s next ? We’ve got lots planned alongside all the usual local and European trips, including a trip to Norway in the coming years and possibly even a trip further East maybe as far as Turkey!