Van life is shitSix years in a converted delivery van opened Andy's eyes to a reality that social media never did...
You’re getting bored of your office job, routine biting hard. The daily drudge is feeling like a set of chains Marley’s ghost would’ve been spooked by. There must be a way out. In the third hour of doomscrolling that evening you stumble across the infamous hashtag… vanlife.
The 100th grinning, tanned and toned millennial springs out of a van’s side door straight onto a beach/forest/meadow without a care in the world. You want that lack of worry, that sunshine, that healthy glow, that youthfulness. Who wouldn’t? If they can do it, then perhaps you can.
I did just that. Hashtag vanlife had me hook, line and sinker. I bought a decent ex-delivery van, spent ages planning the interior layout and kitted it out myself. Meanwhile, I sold 90% of my possessions, and, not long after, handed back the keys to my landlord and hit the road. A life of freedom was just beginning. Within the first year I travelled through Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England and France. I swam in the Med in Spain, witnessed stunning west-coast sunsets in Portugal, mountain biked in the Swiss Alps, hiked in the Dolomites, and visited the lakes of northern Italy.
Hairpins in Andorra
Skinny dipping in Soça Valley, Slovenia
Praia da Catedrais, Spain
I was living the dream. However, what the Instagram posts don’t tell you is that van life can also be shit.
Just a few weeks off the one-year vanlife anniversary the gods of minimalism decided my new pared-back lifestyle wasn’t quite pared-back enough. The van was broken into just outside Rome and almost everything was stolen – laptop, iPad, camera gear, mountain bike, guitar, wallet, clothes, even my bloody moustache waxes!
Memories of Rome.
It's painful to have your vehicle broken into.
The grief is compounded when it's also your home.
Despite this traumatic event, and buoyed along by the incredible generosity of my beautiful friends, I carried on living in the van full time for another six years. But, getting robbed is but a minor blip in the shitness of vanlife.
Cabin Fever
Let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of day-to-day living in a van full time. My van isn’t what you’d call small, it’s a long-wheelbase, hi-top Mercedes Sprinter – so it has a liveable space of about 4m x 2m x 2m (14ft x 6ft x 6ft). That’s pretty comfy for the odd weekend away or a mini-break in the Highlands, but try living in that space 365 days a year, for six years or more. Add to that a partner and two lurchers and it pushes the boundaries of cosiness to breaking point.
Throw in weeks, sometimes months of wet, winter weather and you’ll be wishing you’d never heard of the concept of a van, let alone living in one.
About wet weather. Unless you’re escaping to the sun for months on end then you’ll have to contend with damp. Everything starts to get damp by late October and doesn’t even begin to think about drying out until the end of March. Don’t worry though, it’ll all feel dry enough by late September (just in time for the wet weather to roll in again).
And talking about driving to warmer climates during the winter, thanks to Brexit that’s not as simple as it once was. You have only three months out of the UK and in the Schengen Zone at any one time, before having to leave it for three months. Timing that trip away means you’ll always end up with at least one month of wet weather, or more if you’re from Wales, like me. You’d better get used to that musty smell. Think of it as a VIP pass into a club you didn’t want to join.
UK vanlife is the grimmest version of this whole shit show. Height barriers and ‘no overnight parking’ signs are everywhere nowadays. And when you do find a rare park-up spot it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll be woken several times during the early hours by people beeping their horns as they drive slowly by. You are now a scourge to society and hated by ‘locals’ everywhere. There’s no hashtag for that on social media.
Depending on how big your water tanks are, you’ll need to source H2O at least once a week. Forget the luxury of just turning on a tap and expecting it to be free-flowing non-stop. And good luck in finding public water taps in the UK. I can’t remember the last time I found one. I’ve had to rely on family and friends, or even buying water from supermarkets. But then you’re stuck with the plastic bottles from filling up the 100l tanks. Just take them to the recycling centre, I hear you cry. If it was only that simple. Have you tried taking a van into a recycling centre recently? No, of course you haven’t, you all live in flats or houses like normal, sensible people.
Now, depending on how squeamish you are, you may want to skip this next section. One of the first questions people have asked me when they find out I live in a van is, ‘Where do you go to the toilet?’ I usually pass this off with a jovial ‘public loos or venture off into a private spot in the woods’. In the interests of transparency, I’ll let you in on the scoop.
Poos with a view in the wild are quite liberating, but that takes a bit of planning and usually means a bit of a hike.
That’s great if you want a hike, but not if you have a delicate stomach from overdoing it on last night’s lentil dhal. Add to that the often wet UK nights and you’ll quickly find yourself jogging up a forest trail in the rain with clenched buttocks, while simultaneously unfastening your trousers and trying to keep your loo roll dry.
You can of course have a toilet in your van. But they take up loads of room and you’ll be driving around with a box of your own waste and chemicals until you find can find a place to dump it safely (another service you’ll have to pay for).
That leaves one other option, and one that every van-lifer knows about but rarely admits to: you’ll be shitting in bags. Sometimes while your partner is in the same ‘room’. How’s that #vanlife dream looking now, eh?
Turd Polishing
Don’t get me wrong, despite the damp, the constant hunt for a park-up, the lack of access to fresh water, getting robbed of everything I owned, and carrying out toilet duties in front of another person, I still had some fun. I saw some beautiful parts of Europe and met some great people. I did all the those fun (and Instagram-friendly) things, such as biking, hiking, surfing and more. And, in fact, I’m writing this very article from my van right now, but in the process of planning my imminent escape back into the normal world of a warm, dry, comfortable dwelling with a letterbox.
It’s said you can’t polish a turd, but social media does a good job of filtering this particular stool until it’s palatable and even desirable. Don’t be fooled, it’s still a turd, it’s just van-shaped. But don’t let me put you off. Does anyone want to buy a converted long-wheelbase Sprinter?
First published in Issue 1 of Bother Magazine, August 2024.
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