So how did our journey as fulltime vanlifers begin?
To be honest, it wasn’t one of my goals to live in a converted van… a bit like it wasn’t one of my goals to become a Reflexologist! I had a habit of changing jobs and moving around – I think at last count I’d moved over 30 times and lived in Guildford (where I was born), Winchester, Leicester (where my family all live), Plymouth, Luton, St Neots, Cheltenham, Bristol and Leamington (my other ‘main’ home).
When I first met James in 2019, I’d moved back to Leicester the previous year and was living with my parents for a bit... yes I’m one of those people that regularly bounces back to their parents home! He’d lived in his 'little green van' previously for a few months and it was his dream to become a fulltime vanlifer – although in a bigger van this time!
Initially I was a bit ‘really’? especially with the size of the green van (as you can see above!) However, the more we talked about it and the longer we spent together, the more it became 'our' dream. Neither of us wanted to settle down anywhere or be tied with a mortgage and we’d both never really wanted kids. But we both loved the idea of living in a van and the absolute freedom that came with it.
The plan was to save up and buy a van in the summer of 2020 but then we all know what happened in March. Although I was training as a therapist, I was still working in the charity sector so immediately went into full-time furlough. James works in a construction (on those massive diggers) so obviously he was out of work for the first few months of lockdown. After months of saving and looking for the right van (we found plenty of wrong ones first), we found our Dwayne below!
I think we knew Dwayne was ‘the one’ from the beginning… possibly because his license plate ends in WWF and I’m a MASSIVE Dwayne Johnson fan! But more importantly, he was a long-wheel base, Volkswagen Crafter, not too much mileage and in very good condition – so exactly what we were looking for. We travelled over to see him at 12noon on 12th December (if you are into angel numbers, the number 12 has a lot of spiritual significance) and the rest as they say is history!
Check out part 2 for the next instalment of our Dwayne story - measuring up (with rulers as well as me!), the beginnings of the build and moving in half-finished!