8 things nobody tells you about caravanning

By admin On Aug 6, 2021

Let me make it clear: I love the VanLife.

I have a small warehouse that I share with a friend, where we renovate old retro caravans for fun. There’s also nothing better than jumping in the converted HiAce and heading out on the road, setting up camp, and then eating something cooked on a campfire as the sun goes down.

And of course, I take pictures from obscure angles, with the right filters, and post them on my Insta page to show how beautiful escaping in a van can be.

The things I rarely take pictures of, are the times when VanLife becomes an absolute punish – moments when I’d willingly pay a thousand bucks for a grotty motel room at 3am. Or when I’m temporarily bandaging my finger with tissues and duct tape after another slip with the drill, swearing that I’m going to take up stamp collecting or bridge as my next hobby instead.

Here are a few of those times that VanLife becomes VanStrife…

1. Do you even tow, bro?

Towing a caravan is a fine art. Picture: Getty

Have you ever towed a caravan? The first time is incredibly stressful. Every time after that is just stressful. You never really relax when you’re towing a van – you constantly glance in your wing mirrors, like you’re a private detective checking out gangsters on your tail. Even towing the smallest vans make you really think about every manoeuvre; and needing to hit the brakes brings on a cold sweat. A camper van is much easier to tow than a 4-bed caravan if you’re going to be on the road a lot – but it’s pretty tricky to get a family in the back of a HiAce.

2. Cross your legs in the small hours

Unless you have a big, schmick van, then you’re unlikely to have a toilet. I NEVER seem to need the toilet in the middle of the night when I’m home in my warm, private unit… but at 2.30am, when it’s 6 degrees and pitch black outside, and I’m laying in the back of a van, my bladder just seems to know. I swear I have held on for 3 hours some nights just to avoid heading out into the cold for a wee. And let’s hope it’s only a wee you need at that time of night…

3. Pack it up, pack it in

There is nothing like setting up camp to make you feel self-sufficient and on an adventure – taming the elements with your array of folding canvas gadgets. And there’s nothing like packing it all up again on a cold, wet morning to make you wish you were in a hotel bed with a coffee. Even on warm and dry mornings, everything seems to have a dew on it – then when you lay things out in the sun to dry out, the dust sticks like sugar on a doughnut. I try and think of packing up like a form of yoga – early morning bending and stretching in a van salutation.

4. There’s always a catch

Renovating a van always seems like a cinch when you look at the golden-hued photos. But there's often a long frustrating story behind it. Picture: Getty

This is for anyone who has ever renovated a van. You can paint the whole of a van’s outside in around a morning and feel utter satisfaction at such an achievement; but you can sometimes spend five hours trying to fiddle with the smallest of window catches. When you’ve gone through 17 different tools – including kitchen knives – and have resorted to actually trying to make a new window catch yourself, you know you need to breathe and take a break. Maybe even take a small holiday – just not in a van…

5. The chips are down

The other scourge of renovators is chipboard. Once it gets wet and crumbly, it stays wet and crumbly. FOREVER. It will continue to fall apart everywhere, like trying to eat a servo pie while driving. Filling or painting over flaky chipboard makes no difference, it’ll just flake off in bigger, stickier lumps. Just bite the bullet, rip the chipboard out and replace with new wood. And curse the fact that chipboard was ever invented as you try to get it off your clothes, out of your hair and out of the van.

6. No flies on you

The good thing about flyscreens is that they stop flies – and other insects, especially mozzies – from getting into the van. The bad thing is they make everything look daggy, grey and old. They get dusty and stop the sun shining through in an Insta-friendly way. Every picture you take looks like it was taken at your grandma’s house in the 1970s. And really, what’s the point enjoying a VanLife adventure if you can’t post about it.

7. Too hot, too cold

It's often easier to warm up in winter. Picture: Getty

Get a fan. And get a heater. Unless you get the insulation right, some vans can become too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Dealing with the cold is easy enough, just rug up and take plenty of bedding. Heat is harder to deal with – just get all of the windows open, so that a breeze blows through. But expect mozzies unless you have flyscreens (see above!)

8. A utilitarian approach

You might not have thought about this one, but unless you have solar or a generator, then you won’t have any electricity – unless you stay at a campsite which has power you can connect up to with a lead. And you know those beautiful brass sink taps you see on Insta? Well they only work if you have a hose running into the bottom of the van from a working tap. If you want to have electricity and water on the road in some beautiful deserted paradise, then you need a boring, functional pump tap that attaches to a water tank, and you need a 12v set-up with solar and a battery. Otherwise stock up on batteries and bottled water.

With all of these irritations solved though, then get yourself some abs and a stunning partner, park up in front of the ocean, and wait for Golden Hour for your Hashtag Blessed moment. But make sure you do a wee before bedtime.