The Idea

For a long time I had considered to buy a motorhome. When I lived in the US, I was intrigued by the possibility to buy one of those gigantic "recreational vehicles", or build myself one by buying a bus. Maybe an articulated bus even, or a doubledecker bus.

Now in Europe I did scale down my plans significantly, due to petrol cost, smaller roads, and smaller parking spaces. But I never gave up the idea and kept looking.

For a while I played with the idea of buying a caravan. This has the advantage that at a camping site one can leave the caravan and drive around with the vehicle, exploring the area without that hanger. I once saw a caravan that cost just £ 500. But driving around with a caravan hanger is more limited: many roads in the mountains are off limits to caravans.

I prefer to drive just with one vehicle that has everything together in one package. If I feel, I can just stop somewhere, go to the back and have a cup of tea. Or a nap. And then get up and sit in the driver's seat and drive on. All within the confines of one box, not two separate boxes. It just feels somewhat better to me.

In summer 2010 I saw an ad for a camper van, Renault Traffic, that only cost £ 500. That caught my interest. I did not buy the vehicle then, because I realised that much would need to be fixed there, primarily because the annual MOT was coming up, and I saw that there was some rust which would require welding. But since that time I kept looking out for motorhomes or campervans. In particular I liked the small Romahome motorhomes, which had on a very small compact space all the necessary amenities. I began designing a campervan conversion, based on a regular van. One option would be the Ford Transit, large wheelbase, jumbo-size, high roof. Those 4 m cargo length would allow for quite a decent living space, with all kinds of equipment (gas-powered generator, underfloor central heating, fridge and freezer, dish washer, large shower with on-demand water heating, etc.).

But due to financial constraints I also began looking at something more reasonable. The Autotrader website is a phantastic resource to get an overview over the market of used vehicles, and their motorhome section has always a good selection of various offers.