“Oh my goodness I’m locked in. How silly, I never looked at how to open the van from the inside – am I going to have to shout for help?”
Luckily, before I made a complete fool of myself, I opened a window and could open the side door from the outside. Then I went to say good morning to my new neighbours in the campsite and casually brought up the topic of how to open the doors! In fact I was doing the right thing with the tailgate – it was just much heavier than I’d realised and needed quite a lot of strength to push open, especially as we were angled slightly downhill. And the side door – well, you just need to learn where the right knob is!
Thus began my first day in a campervan, my newly converted VW campervan, in what I hoped was the beginning of a new stage in my life. Recently retired from about fourteen years working round the world as a humanitarian aid nurse with the fantastic organisation Medecins sans Frontieres, I was finding that being at home in one place, month after month, year after year, was proving pretty restrictive. And the idea of getting a camper van popped into my head.
I’d camped quite a bit in the past with my husband and children, and loved it – the feeling of freedom, being out in nature, in wild and beautiful places. And I’d had some campervan experience in the 70s, in my hippy days, when I got a lift from some Swedish guys from a campsite in Delhi to Kathmandu.
But that’s another story, and a very different type of campervan. This one had been converted to a high spec so that I could literally live in it: shower, loo, induction hob, microwave, a comfortable bed in the pop-top. I was all set to go.
And now that I’d managed to get out of the van that first morning,. I was ready to head to the hills with Toby, my Border collie/Patterdale cross. This first campsite, carefully researched with the help of Google, was in the Yorkshire Dales, near Bolton Priory. And having been a bit – well, snooty – about campsites beforehand, I’m now sold on them. Or at least sold on ones like this one. What’s not to like about spotlessly clean, hot water showers and other facilities a few minutes’ walk from your van – and just as important, a barista coffee and hot croissant ready for the time you want it in the morning? Not to mention all the friendly other camper-vanners, only too ready to help a first-timer when she needed it. Like when the straps that hold down the pop-top frayed and no way could I thread them through the little buckle – till someone came up with some black tape and fixed them. Another thing for the camper-van shopping list! I’m learning day by day.
There was something else I was missing. “Where’s your cable?” the friendly camp-site receptionist asked me, when she’d kindly come with me to help me hook up to the electrics. I looked at her blankly. “I didn’t know I needed to bring one,” I replied uselessly. But they produced one that I could borrow, with a deposit. Phew! But add to the shopping list.
Now that we should have electricity, it seemed a good idea to make sure all was working by boiling a kettle for a cup of tea.
This was something I hadn’t tried out before I left home. Turned on the tap – and no water! So out came my carefully typed-out instructions from my 3 ½ hour handover from the VW conversion guy: make sure 12v switched on, then find right button for the pump – and then yet another control panel for the hot water! But great satisfaction when actually got piping hot water, and could fill the kettle for that much-needed cup of tea.
When I’d finally got my beautiful campervan back home after about a year of waiting for its conversion by the brilliant Jon Knight of Spalding, the first week was spent making sure I could work everything, before I headed off anywhere. Except for trying out the taps, obviously…..
Day One – could I get the roof up and down? “There’s a lot of material sticking out of the side,” my neighbour informed me. Well, that was another lesson – make sure the soft roof fabric is all pulled well inside the van before you close the van roof. Day one I actually ticked off two essentials: the other one was how to fill the water tank. First, find a hose with the right attachment. Then how do I know when it’s full ? It was all pretty easy in the end. Just needed a normal hoselock fitting for the attachment on the van; and I found a picture of what looked as if it was a water level, on one of the panels – very satisfying when I pressed it, as water was going in, and watched the % moving up! What I didn’t realise, until much later at a campsite, is that the tank was pretty tiny – 27L – and that got used up very quickly. How to refill the tank when I’m out and about is now on my agenda….
Day two was the Day of the Loo. A lot of learning here. I’d said a proper sit-down loo was essential for my comfort in the van, my elderly joints not good at squatting. So I had to learn the correct fluids to add, and where to put them, and how to remove and empty the cassette! You Tube has the answer for everything; I found a very handy video showing me exactly how to remove the cassette, and how to empty it.
And so it went on. The induction hob , the microwave (no turntable, another check on You Tube to find this was fine), the fridge which had to be turned on….. it all seemed good to go. All this stuff might seem nothing to worry about – but for someone not remotely a handyman, it was all a bit of a challenge. I just needed to make sure I could work everything once Toby and I were on our own!
What is still undecided is what to call my new Black Beauty. As the number plate reads FKF, sadly I can’t at the moment see any options. Any suggestions?!
Sounds as complicated as sailing round the Channel Islands and you haven’t even got to parking yet! Lovely to meet you on your Norfolk leg
Nancy Parker
Hope Toby is good at map reading, and perhaps instruction manuals as well - he must be on Cloud 9 travelling with his best pal. Hurrah, Ali, so happy you two are finally on the road.