Starting Down A Whole New Road
A new chapter of my travels — in a bright orange camper van
There are times when I think I’m crossing off items on a midlife crisis bingo card: running a marathon, walking the Camino to go find myself, getting a tattoo and now, going out and buying myself a camper van. (Still unchecked: much younger girlfriend, over-tight jeans and expensive shirts, industrial quantities of Just For Men to hide the grey)
Those of you who’ve been reading me here or following me elsewhere might have noticed that I never expressed any huge desire to go full #vanlife. I’d never gazed wistfully at a motorhome or caravan as I passed it on the motorway, never dug deep into social media and forums to work out what the best van is and what I’d need to get, I’d never even been that jealous of my brother and sister-in-law of their van.
But then when he said they were downsizing their house and upsizing their an to a brand new one, I found myself asking how much he’d been selling it before, mentioning to friends that I was thinking about buying a van, and then about a week ago travelling up to my old hometown so I could drive back home in this:
Say hello to Jaffa, my 1995 Volkswagen Transporter Caravelle. It began life as a minibus, then got transformed into a camper van a long time ago, and had a…
