Mobile Home from Home?

For some years now I have been nurturing a secret (some may say guilty) desire for a campervan or caravan.  With holiday costs at home and abroad spiralling into the unaffordable category my constant burning need to escape is becoming increasingly difficult to fund.

However, when I started to look into the costs of buying a motorhome or caravan I was shocked!  There are terrace houses near where I live that cost less, maybe a slight exaggeration … but still.  Perhaps I just have expensive tastes I thought, but even if I narrow my requirements down to include a reasonably comfy bed, room for me, my husband and the two kids and the mere basics in terms of cooking appliances and washing facilities, the costs are still out of my reach.

My husband’s argument is that for the cost of a caravan or motorhome we could have several holidays a year abroad and I have to admit he has a point.  Only if we look at this over 5 years instead of just one can I hope to use the ‘it’ll pay for itself’ argument.



But then I hit upon an idea.  What if we bought an older van or motorhome and got it renovated.  Do such companies exist?  Thankfully I found that they did.  After a bit of research I discovered that there are companies that will do an upholstery re-fit of your chosen vehicle for you, surely a more affordable and better idea.

My husband didn’t think so.  Think about the state of the van’s mechanically.  Mechanically, I thought I, must I?  It pains me to admit it, but yet again he has a point.  I guess a van that has driven all the way from ‘John O Groats to Lands End’ and back or its equivalent a few dozen times might have more than its fair share of issues but rather than plunge in to doom and gloom, I turned back into research mode.

Surely they can’t all be that bad.  A quick look in automart and on ebay and it was hard to tell.  We just don’t have the luxury of time to journey to far flung places to check out the vans in person.  Nor, to be frank, are either of us (me especially) mechanically sound enough to make a judgement call on the viability of the vehicle.  I could very easily be sold on nice curtains and a roomy fridge and have no clue whatsoever about what it is like to drive or whether or not it needs its breaks oiling … are well-oiled breaks even a good thing?

Then I stumbled across utopia!  A website offering to re-fit good old honest, down to earth work vans and transform them into Glastonbury worthy, glam motorhomes.  To buy a brand new or nearly new van and give it a motorhome makeover is significantly cheaper than buying a motorhome and, if I’m honest, the ability to just hop in and drive has way more appeal than fiddling about and hooking up a caravan … far too technical for me.

So essentially you choose your van, choose what you want to have in it, the upholstery, quality of bed, fridge, freezer, shower, windows even etc and then pay a company to kit it out from scratch!  If you are feeling particularly brave (and I’m not) you can even have a bash at doing it yourself.  Simples!

Now perhaps my dreams of venturing out into the wide blue yonder are not so far aware after all.

Best of all we could even make money by renting it out if of course I can bring myself to part with it for a weekend!