Week 2
WEEK 2 - Van Life
and further budget deficits
WHEN
12.10.2019 - 18.10.2019
WHERE
Northern England, UK
Surrey, UK
Brighton, UK
WHAT
We did it. We bought a Camper van. We’ve named it Ziggy (read: David Bowie in 1972). He is a 2002 Renault Master. After almost 18 months of diligently scrolling through Autotrader, Gumtree UK and Ebay and saving ads for Sprinters, Boxers, Ducatos, Crafters, LT’s and Relays, we finally got a van, and for a price we can both sit with.
It is the most exciting and terrifying thing we have every done. Fully self contained, can cruise on the UK highway at 70 mph and we now know gets around 600 - 700 miles on a tank (around 1000 km). Saturday we hired a car from Gatwick and headed to stay with family friends in Surrey, an absolute blessing as it saved us a tonne of money while we drove here there and everywhere to look at vans. Many thanks to Mark and Luana for having our homeless souls for this week, we can never express how much it meant that we had a home base to come back to. Especially one that had such an excellent espresso machine and biscotti readily available.
Sunday was our first viewing for campervans in a quaint little village called Northallerton (an 8 hour return trip to Surrey) to view a vehicle that I had contacted the owner about 4 weeks prior on gumtree. On the drive north Pat ensured that we listed to what must have been every Smiths record in circulation - it was quite a time. The next day, Monday, we cruised down to Brighton to view another van, repeating this pattern on Tuesday. As it went, the first one we viewed, in the most inconvenient location, was the one we wanted. So after playing phone and email tag due to our terrible reception, we haggled and haggled until finally we got what we wanted. Insurance and tax was an added financial blow on top of our price but we walked away knowing we had an absolutely sound vehicle. So by Wednesday we were catching a VERY expensive but very fast train back to the Vale of York to get our new home. It drove back down with ease at 70 mph and we parked it back up at our home base in Surrey late Wednesday night. On that note, read our defense of Surrey here.
Wanna read our guide to pubs in the UK - click here.
Thursday and Friday was spent doing errands for the van like getting crockery and bedding and Saturday morning we were ready to choof off on our own. Also, read our guide to Surrey here.
Buying a camper was not an easy thing to do; it took a LOT of research, reading blogs and messaging random vanlifers on instagram for help. I have to say that we are completely pleased with our new home and are looking forward to giving him a trail run on Scotlands Northern 500 and the Isle of Skye before heading to Europe. More next week!
PIT
Having to do the 8 hour round trip to the North…twice.
PEAK
We are now full-time #vanlife