A Van Called Dignity

We actually did it – we bought a van and we’ve set off around the country for three months. Join us on our blog for some hopefully entertaining stories accompanied by terrible photography.

Setting off

Campsite on the first night – too chicken to use our own plumbing

Like Tetris, only less fun

Snuggletron 3000

You can just make out Postman Pat in the distance

Tea time

Beans a la croutons

Writing this post

This spring, with my PhD coming to an end and plans to move out of London starting to draw closer, we thought “what better time to blow a large portion of our savings on the trip of a lifetime?”. But why be predictable? Why go backpacking round Asia when you can buy a campervan and sit in the rain and/or snow?!

The search for a van began several months ago with some in-depth homework on the pros and cons of various fuel types. Since we’re both extremely anal, this process went on for many many weeks before we decided on an early 90s petrol-fuelled high top Volkswagen T25.

Then at the start of September Tom’s parents told us they’d seen a van near them in Norfolk that looked perfect. It was a Citroen Romahome Dimension. It was diesel. It was over budget. My hopes weren’t high. But then we saw it, in all its middle-aged glory, with its clever use of space managing to squeeze in plenty of storage, an oven, and a bathroom! It even had yellow and green decals, perfect for Norwich City fan Hawesy. SOLD. With the addition of a TV and a solar panel, she was to be ours. We decided to call her Dignity, after the Deacon Blue song.

So we set about moving all our stuff from our tiny flat in London. Word of advice… never try to move out of a part-furnished flat that you’ve been in for four years in a Peugeot 107. This process took about a decade off each of our lives, but I did acquire a large number of bruises in return. Not a great trade-off, but it’s something.

Finally, on Sunday 7th October, we moved a selection of our belongings into the van. Once we’d managed to extract the last few members of my family from the wheel arches and glove box, we made for the Peak District for a taster night in familiar surroundings (Hardhurst Farm, thoroughly recommended), picking up a couple of essentials on the way out of Nottingham.

We arrived at the campsite at around 10pm and spent a good two hours sorting out the electrical hookup and pulling various levers and handles to get the bed set up. Eventually we managed to get everything up and running to our satisfaction, and spent a wonderful first night with blue lights shining in our eyes and an ominous buzzing sound coming from behind a panel.

In the morning, mostly refreshed, we fired up the stove for the first time and discovered that the milk we’d bought the night before went off a week earlier. Mmm nothing like a steaming hot cup of curds and whey to get the day off to a good start (thanks Tesco!). We gave up on cooking breakfast and popped to the cafe at Outside in Hathersage, another trusty favourite, to fuel ourselves for the day ahead.

We were planning to set off to Oban, and from there to the Outer Hebrides, when the senior Haweses called from their hired campervan to say that the weather on the west coast was terrible – yellow warnings of wind and rain for several days – so they were going to head to the eastern side of Scotland first. We thought that was probably prudent, so plotted a course to join them at a campsite near Blair Athol. After the disappointment of milkgate, we decided to treat ourselves to some groceries from Marks and Spencer in Penrith.

We cooked up a lovely dinner of some old stew left over from Saturday with new potatoes and veg and a couple of cups of tea. We hadn’t yet braved using any of our van’s plumbing yet, so washed up in the campsite sinks.

Night number two was much better, as we found a way to make the buzzing stop by sacrificing the lights, and I slipped a chopping board in front of the blue LED that had been boring into my retinas the previous night. It was bliss. We had beans on toast for breakfast – or rather we had beans a la croutons as we only had bowls to eat out of. We popped to House of Bruar with the senior Haweses and beloved Basset hound Rhubarb to drool over the food, toy with the tartan, and nuzzle the knitwear. After that we had a wander round Pitlochry and picked up yet more groceries before heading back to the car park, where a friendly couple told us we were lucky not to have been in Oban, which was (and probably still is) under several feet of water.

Therefore I’m sitting writing this back on the campsite, with a pizza in our little oven, trying to decide where to go next…

Troughton out.