In this show, I talk about the things to consider when buying your first campervan.
I chat about the size of the van, storage, number of seats, and what might be best for you.
This is after owning a campervan for over 5 years, and perhaps about to embark on a new purchase.
If you would like to see the Blog Post, then Click Here to read!
Transcript (Auto Generated so apologies for any mistakes)
It’s Friday, the 21st of May, this is episode 35, and welcome back to driving Horizon’s.
Hello, hello, hello and a good morning, a good afternoon and good evening to whenever or wherever you are listening to this Richard here.
And welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here than welcome and if you are a regular, then welcome back. It’s been a quiet week. This week we haven’t really been too far.
We’ve been spending some time just planning our February trip really.
And well, if you don’t know where we are heading off to the Lake District, but we are doing something a bit different. We have a camper van, as I have no doubt you are aware, but we are hiring something a little bit bigger with a view to perhaps changing our VW California in the future.
So more on that in the future, and it will all be documented over on the YouTube channel. I’m sure I’ll mention it here in February at some point as well. And that got me thinking, and you know, what we want to change are our van and what do we what we really want to make it perfect for
us.
I think it crossed my mind for about 1,000,000,000th of a second to build our own. But I have neither the time and most importantly, needs the skills, so we’re not going to do that. So we are going to look to get something as close as we want to achieve what we want to have off the off
the shelf, if you like. But it got me thinking that it can be quite an overwhelming process to, you know, to buy a motoring or camper van is a lot of money to spend how it’s going to be right?
Have you really thought of everything you’re going to do with it, how you’re going to use it, where you’re going to go, how it’s going to fit into your life, your lifestyle, your family? Your day to day comings and goings, if you like, so he could be thinking I would write down everything that we should think about
. And of course, one thing led to another and it turned into a blog post over on driving horizons dot com. Check out the website over there and you’ll see that as one of the most recent posts, and I thought that that would be a great subject for this week’s podcast.
Have a quick chat and to give you my thoughts on what we need to think about when buying a camper van for the first time. There is so much to consider. There are so many choices out there, so many different alternatives.
There’s a lot of money to spend. Choosing the right one and getting it as close to perfect, if not perfect as possible, is is going to be your main aim. So I don’t want to call it a buying guide because it is in by put together this little guy that’s that’s over on the website that I’m going
to run through quickly here. I’m going to try and again, as always, keep it to a 15 or 20 minutes, but there is so much to think about, so I’m not going to waste any more time offering I am going to crack on with it.
For anyone who’s buying a camper van, especially for the first time, this podcast is not really going to tell you what camper van is right for you. What it will do, however, is it’s going to give you something to think about and hopefully some things to consider that you may know or things to think about that you
may not have considered. And that would be an option or an issue or even crossed your mind. So as I said in previous fire podcasts and in various other places, I’m going to cover my time shows he share.
The first one is actually next weekend down in Exeter and camping down there, spending a couple of nights, first time going away on my own in the van. So that is going to be a little bit different for me.
I’m going to have a great look around that. I’m going to use everything that I have to clean together on this in this guide to to try and sort of narrow down exactly exactly what we want. So let me just start by a bit of an introduction for this buy in a camper van is not is a
totally personal experience. It depends massively on so many different things and not least why you want it and how you’re going to use it. You know, weekly daily, once a year, just for the holidays, things like that. You’re going to wild camping.
Are you going to start campsite? And are you going to be in one place for many days? Or do you want to just pick you up for a couple of nights and then can move on somewhere else, which is kind of like what we do, really, which is why we go for a.
We went for a California, one of the small vans. So it’s, you know, that’s the first thing that you need to sort of think about it. I’m going to stress it again because it’s so important. It’s impossible for me to tell you what camper van you should buy.
So everything I’m about to say is merely to give you food for thought and some ideas to consider. And perhaps you own a home first. If you go to our website and look for tips for hiring a camper van, you’ll find a decent one of the start menu.
There is a decent write up on what you should consider when you’re hiring event. And maybe that’s a good place to start to know exactly what you’re going to need or what you’re going to like. Where I am going to start real quick with the different types of vans that you can get now.
There are so many choices out there. Minivans are much bigger than a car to full size, 30 foot plus long sort of motorhome RV type vans. The minivan would be something like a VW caddy or an estate car.
You know that sort of size. Perhaps a seat fold down is a flat bed, which you know will take up all of the room in the back. Maybe some storage underneath. But that will mean that most other things like cooking, washing out the loo, things like that will need to be done outside or in a shower.
Or perhaps the next or van you can get is something similar to what we’ve got, which is the VW Transporter or Ford Nuggets, something like that. It might have a pop top. If it does, it could sleep up to four people, maybe more.
If the children are smaller, it normally has four or five in a few of the wider vans or the few the fans of the smaller kitchen’s inside seats, sorry belted seats and generally you get a cooker, fridge and sink less likely to have a toilet, although some do, and it’s easy to drive and park and you can
use it daily. After that, you go up to the larger vans now, which are a real popular with the van lifers, particularly the ones that do move from a full time point of view because there is more space like a VW Crafter or a Mercedes Sprinter.
And it has everything generally that the medium sized van does, but with more living space may have a shower, more of a toilet. But there is a compromise there bigger, maybe harder to drive out its park and not quite as easy to use as a daily van.
And then next, you have motorhomes. There is obviously tons of benefits to a motor homes, lots of storage, a garage you can get to from outside. It has a cooker, a microwave, you have a fixed bed, has a shower and a toilet.
Has a bigger fridge potentially than your camper van, a smaller camper van a bigger cooker. But on the downside, it’s impossible to use is a daily run around. It’s hard to park and you know, it’s more suited, probably to spending a few days or a week as sites where you don’t have to go into towns or venture
out to many car parks in case you hit a high restricting. Or you know what I mean, come across a height restriction. And if all of the above, perhaps with the exception of motor homes, when you’re thinking about buying a camper van, you can decide if you want one that’s come off the manufacturer’s production line like a
VW California that we have. Or do you want to buy a book standard shell of a van and convert it or have a company convert it? There are so many companies out there that will do it for you, either to your spec or to one of their standard specification, so you might find that they’re a little bit
more flexible than buying one that’s rolled off the production line. Again, all depends on what you want. And the other thing that you need to think about really is the bigger picture, your personal circumstances, and where can you keep it?
You know, if you live in a block of flats and you’ve got one allocated parking space, then you’ve got to want to buy a motorhome or a massive van. Then where are you going to park it when you’re not using it for your trips?
And how often are you going to use it? How many of you, how many of you are there that are going to be using the van, sleeping in there, eating in there? And what are your trips going to be like?
You’re going to use it to take you to the beach as well? Or are you going to stay and live around the campsite? In the bigger the van, the harder it is to to get down those narrow country lanes.
We’ve been we’ve had some tight scrapes even in our VW California, so it’s it’s well worth that you give that some thought as well. What is your ideal holiday? What is your ideal camping trip that might tell you would be a great place to start or personal, but it’s definitely worth thinking about and to choose the right
camper van. What else have we got here? We could? Perhaps, for example, just from thinking out loud here, perhaps you want to fix bed in the back of the van. If you do, if you don’t make it up every night and you want a fixed bed, then perhaps a smaller van is good for you because you want
to be. I have somewhere to eat and maybe sit around in the daytime because you have a little transport van or California like we’ve got. You can’t do that. Your sitting area is your bed, so it won’t be a fixed bed.
You have to do keep changing it all these little things that you may not think about. Hopefully, you are finding useful also. What do you do when you’re not camping your lifestyle? Do you need to replace a car with a?
We had two cars as a family. We’ve now got a car and a camper van. I use a camper van to go to Tesco’s to take my son to his football training, to go see my mom when she needs bread.
You know, things like that. And he can do that because you can park in Tesco’s. You can park in a car park if it’s in a normal car parking space. A motor home. It won’t do that. You may have to have two cars and a motor home, which may not is even less practical then than that anything
, really. You know, you need those two vehicles that a motor home is not going to be for you unless you want three vehicles. Now all of those things I mentioned and we haven’t even scratched the surface, by the way, may have narrowed your choice down dramatically already, but there are loads of other things to consider with comes
to a few more details. Now you’ll be pleased to know, but I’m going to have a quick drink of water and I’ll be back in the five seconds. Sorry about that, I needed to get a bit of a dry mouth, so I needed to get a quick glass of water father detail.
Yeah, what I was saying before that short break was. There’s more detail that you can think about that will narrow it down even further, apart from how you’re going to use it and why and what type of what it is you’re going to take.
For example, even if you do want a smaller transporter, you can have a short wheelbase or a long wheelbase. And there are pros and cons for both. Obviously, a longer wheelbase would have more room inside, clearly more storage space, things like that.
It will have potentially more, you know, maybe a slightly bigger fridge or bigger table, things like that that you can you can enjoy. But will it get into a car parking space? What if you put bikes on the back that makes it even longer again?
So don’t just because it’s a yeah, there will be pros for a long wheelbase van, obviously, but there’s some downsides as well. Like, say, our little California fits into normal car parking space. We’ve managed to get into a multistory car park with it as long as it’s under 2.1 meters.
Great for going around towns and cities, if that’s what you want to do while you’re traveling less convenient in a bigger van or a or higher longer van. But I probably won’t have or definitely not. Definitely that’s not fair.
But it probably won’t have a shower or a fixed toilet in there. What’s your priority? Get into a get into a car parking space or being able to gauge toilet when you like, you know some decisions that you need to think about, really?
And again, I think Steve really briefly briefly there. If he’s got a high roof carparks, height restrictions, you know, you go to a beach or to some sort of national parks and place car parks in the parks and things like that, they may have high restrictions in place.
Don’t forget that that will stop you parking there, and if it’s one place you want to see, it could be that one that’s got the high restriction and you’re going to have to find somewhere else to park. Stealth campaign as well out a smaller van might be a little bit less and less conspicuous, but if you’re going
to be in there for a couple of hours and you want to move around, you’re going to be hunched over. A tall van is pulling out all vans on the road now. They look like just normal courier vans or something.
If you’re in that, you can stand up, walk around and have a lot more space, you know, above your head and you won’t have to get out or paper top or anything proper. You know, pop up roofs for your head high and you’re less likely to be disturbed by someone tapping on you in the middle of the
night wondering what you’re doing. And also, if you want to just stop at the side of the road, stretch your legs. It’s pouring down with rain, make some lunge with a cup of coffee and a cup of tea.
You can stand up and walk around quite easily in a high van, less comfortable doing it in a low van or low top van. So couple of things to think about now. one of the major things that probably deserve to be higher up the list than it is already is how many of you are there and how
many seatbelts do you need? How many get to sleep in the van? Obviously, these are all things you probably think of. first of all, with our loads of vans or motorhomes, more than vans or sort of custom custom built boats of the production line, motorhomes and campervans that can sleep for, but they’re go to belt.
It seems very, very common in the older motor homes where the front area is a lounge with the seats down either side, the newer ones tend to have a contraption underneath the underneath those bench seats that pop up into a into a C that you can sit on facing forward.
But they’re that sort of occasional seats, and I can’t imagine they’d be too comfortable for long journeys, but it’s worth considering that as well if there’s four of you. You must have four belted seats. What, for example, this is something that we’ve we’ve got to think about heavily.
I tend to get up earlier than my wife. She likes to be a lion, and if I try and get up and do something, it might disturb her. But in the slightly bigger fans we’re looking at. They could have a lounge or a dinette area at the front behind the driver’s seat and a lounge at the back
that converts into a bed so I can sneak forward to the front of the van, sit at the dinner, comfortably, read, Write, Go on the computer, do whatever I like without disturbing anyone else. So again, another thing to consider how your lifestyle is and if you do those separate things and if you want, if you wants to
get up early and make a cup of tea while the other is still catching up on some sleep, here’s another one some of the smaller VW campervans they may have for seatbelts for people, but only one of the seats spins round, so that spins around to your dining table in the bank seating for three.
But there’s four of you as a fourth person save if one of the seats doesn’t turn around, consider that as well. Otherwise, you can have three people squeezed up on that bench seat in the back or someone’s going to miss out.
And it’s just little things like that that perhaps until you’ve used a camper van or a van of some kind, you don’t really realize that until it’s possibly too late. And another obvious one. But again, think how you’re going to use the van, which should help you answer this question is storage is one of the biggest things
to consider. It’s easy to take a lot of stuff. The van fills up so quickly with all the the closed, the kids toys, the skateboard, the the scooter barbecue table and chairs, you know, deck chair for outside awning pop up.
ten. All the other stuff you need to go the pegs to hammer a warning down. And all these things that you take as a as a camping family, he’s got to go somewhere. So if you live in a minimally, minimally safe city, many minimal storage won’t be a problem.
But if you want a few creature comforts, if you want to take your camping stuff, you buy your big stuff in tables and chairs, then consider storage. If you have a lot of gear and you are going to be spending a lot of time in one site and you’re going to take those walks to the beach or
just hang around the campsite playing games, and you’re going to take all that gear with you, then maybe a larger motor home. Is the one for you because it would have a dedicated garage at the back? But obviously we’ve discussed the the pros and cons about having a larger van as well.
So there are vans that may sacrifice the lounge area at the back of the van for raised beds. So you’ve got a permanent bed and there will be storage sort of a garage underneath the bed where you can access from the rear doors, which might solve your problem.
Or for our final California, that rear seat slides forward so that the passengers in the back can come right up to behind the driver’s seat, almost like a car, giving you a huge boot at the back to throw everything in.
And it can stay there till you get to where you’re going. But that does then block off cupboards. The table one slide out, you know, you can’t get to the fridge as easily. And you know, it’s these things that you don’t realize until you’ve done a two week trip around France and you’ve loaded given up and realize
you can’t get your tea mugs out because you said thisif too far forward and. So, yeah, another couple of things to consider. The next thing is food and cooking. Now storage will have very cupboards where you can put quite a bit of food.
It’s amazing how much food you can fit into a small covered in a small fridge. You know you don’t stockpile like you would at home. You don’t take big boxes of cereal, you sort of take what you want.
We do anyway. We know we’re going for five nights. We might take a little bit for a little bit of planning and toast cereal. Just take enough cereal for what you want to eat unless you’ve got a massive cupboard and then just throw in what you want.
And if that’s how you want to do it, do not get a small camper van because you will not be able to throw in four boxes of cereal and then bring home three boxes of cereal because you didn’t eat.
You only get one of them, that kind of thing. If you go for a basic daven, then it may not have the difference between a VW California ocean and a beach. one has a kitchen, the cooker, the fridge, the other one is just white seeds, and it’s used for maybe going to the beach surfing furniture beach stuff
in. You still sleep in it, but it may not have all those creature comforts that you’d perhaps worn inside. And I know that I’m talking a lot about the VW California because that is what we’ve got. And that’s how I’m sort of relating my my thoughts for our next fan.
I’m comparing it to what I have now or what we have now and how, you know, what do we want to change? What would we change? And is that change going to be better for us overall? You know, for example, yes, we would love a fixed bed.
Yes, we would love a shower, for example. But that would mean a much bigger van potentially and ice to use a day van. So there the pros and cons we’re having to think about, and that’s what everyone else is going to think about when they’re considering spending thousands of pounds on.
This is a brilliant purchase, by the way, as you know, otherwise you put in presents in the first place. Most campgrounds would include some sort of food and cooking options, a fridge to bring gas and a small sink.
They’re the most common ones. Larger vans will have a bigger fridge and perhaps an and even microwave. And again, personal preference will dictate this. We don’t need an oven. We don’t need a microwave. two rings on the hobby generally sufficient.
If we need a third, we’ll get the barbecue out and we don’t need a lot of space inside at the moment, but we can pull we around. So we want the heater. You know, these things are things that are all worth considering.
And I think I have been waffling on for God over 20 minutes, so I didn’t want it to take this long. But there’s so much to think about. There’s so many considerations to take into account. Not least of all, of course, is the the amount you’re going to spend on it, which is probably, you know, bioterrorism is
most people second largest thing behind our house, for example. And so, you know, you can go and buy the first house. You you see it, look at a few, you decide whether it would work for you, for your family.
And it’s the same thing with a motorhomes or camper van, as far as I’m concerned, 100 grand 5060 zero. We now have a box you’re going to spend, even if it’s only 2530 grand. It’s still a lot of money to get wrong, to throw away, to waste.
So. So there we are. I’m going to leave you there now, but it sure, because I don’t want to bore you any more than I already have. But then my suggestions and tips for buying a camper van a lot to take in.
And it’s like I say Lowe’s that I probably haven’t even mentioned, but then the things that we’re going to consider to make sure we get it right when we choose the next van. So if you look, perhaps if you’ve already just bought a van or you’ve you’ve just bought a boat home or camper van and you’ve got
it spot on or you’ve got it wrong, let me know. Contact me on the website! Driving Horizon’s dot com, there’s a contact page there. Leave a note down here to add a review to the podcast. That would be great, but sorry, jumping ahead there.
And yeah, so, you know, send me a message and tell me what you got right? What you got wrong, what you wish you did differently, but also what was the main factor for you choosing what you did? And in hindsight, was it the right choice?
Would you do anything differently? So that’s a thank you for listening. Next week, when I release the next podcast, I. Will be walking around the motor home shows that is really exciting. The one thing that I’d love you to do for me, please leave me a review on whatever platform you are listening to this on.
Tell me if there’s anything that you’d like to hear or would like to know about, and I’m sure I’ll do my best to cover that. And Head had to the website. We’ve got a newsletter there that you can sign up for, where you’ll get direct links to my blog post, my videos and this podcast.
Obviously, it comes out once or twice a week, so don’t forget to sign up for that. And then driving horizons dot com forward slash YouTube will take you to my YouTube channel, where you can see loads and loads and loads of content about the motorhome shows about our trip to the Lake District and loads of other campground
and travel related bits and pieces, so I find it useful. Whatever you decide. Good luck with your choice. I hope you make the right one. Thanks for listening and I will see you next time. Happy travels!