In 2017, I decided I could save some luggage space and maybe some money by, instead of hiring a car and taking a tent, hiring a campervan. I knew approximately what it was going to look like before I picked it up but people at home didn’t and my grandmother was adamant – told my mother repeatedly, in fact – that it was a proper motorhome with a proper bathroom.
It wasn’t. It was a panel van based on the same platform as the Renault Clio and Nissan Micra. It had two seats in the front, a mattress in the back and a shelf/storage box that made sure you couldn’t lie with your knees up. It was a great little campervan for one. In theory it can take two but I think it would get pretty claustrophobic pretty quickly.
Small and somewhat cramped it may have been, but it was quite an upgrade from a one-man tent. For a start, I had a solid roof over my head. It made the rain sound a lot heavier than it ever really was – rain on a tent is a pit-pat noise but rain on a van roof sounds like… well, water falling at terminal velocity onto a hollow metal surface. A bit like being shot by a BB gun all night.
And it’s no more insulated than the tent is. I had a sleeping bag and the van company had provided a couple of light blankets but I spent my first nights too cold to sleep before it finally occurred to me to put on my thermals. Dry yes, warm no. But I had a thickish soft mattress rather than a 2.5mm self-inflating mat that was always next to me rather than under me, I was raised off the cold ground. I just needed to realise that this was a mobile tent rather than a mobile hotel room.
I know a lot of people – my grandmother, for a start – would prefer an on-board bathroom. In theory I would too. But I know that in a home on wheels, I’d have to empty it out at some point. So given that I’d be crawling out of a tent and walking across the campsite to the real drains and perpetual hot water anyway, I’m not complaining that I still have to do this, especially as getting out of a van involves less bending and crawling and damp shoes.
I liked that I didn’t have to pack up in the morning. When I’m driving around Iceland, I get in the habit of pulling out my tent pegs and stuffing the tent itself in the back seat – spread it out if it’s wet, maybe. But the campervan – all I had to do was get out of the side door and into the front door and I was ready to go. If I wanted to sit in the back later on, I could shove my stuff aside or down to the end.
And I did want to sit in the back. That trip was on the drizzly side and I got into the habit of finding a parking place around lunchtime and hopping into the back with food and a book, sleeping bag over my legs. My other options were staying in the driving seat, with a steering wheel and pedals in my way, or going outside in the rain. Of course I jumped in the back.
I liked that I didn’t have to set up of an evening. Didn’t have to argue with stony soil about putting pegs in, didn’t have to get heartburn bending over all the time, didn’t have to decide which loose junk I wanted to retrieve from the car and bring into the tent. Just park at the campsite, go and pay for a night or two and then jump in the back. Pull the sleeping bag out from wherever I’d shoved it at lunchtime, change into pyjamas without hitting my knees on the storage unit and lie down.
I did have a problem one night. Someone, who deserves a far stronger epithet than someone, one I might have to spell with stars on this non-sweary blog, parked next to me and left their lights on and engine running all night. By 3am I was fantasising about pouring sugar into the fuel tank or simply taking the heaviest object I had in my van and smashing theirs. I think I even went as far as to imagine the joy of blowing up the van, although I’m not sure I had anything with me I could improvise that with. Block up the exhaust with the hamburger bread? Well, I didn’t have any sugar either, actually. Eventually I climbed into the front, with no glasses on, in a blind fury, turned on every light the campervan possessed and drove as loudly and as disruptively as I could, to the other end of the field, hoping I’d made my point. I hadn’t. One of the occupants went into the bathroom block the next morning and rather than lock the cubicle they were in, locked the entire building for three quarters of an hour. I left that campsite – which had been a joy up until they arrived – in a sodden exhausted rage without brushing my teeth and I still have that rage, just pushed a little deeper down than it was that morning.
If it’s safe, I’m going to spend three whole weeks next year driving a campervan around the Ring Road. I debated it vs a car and tent but you know, I haven’t been anywhere this year and probably won’t. Having not had much to spend it on in 2020, my bank account is looking lovelier than I’ve ever seen it and I can splash out on a van for a few weeks next year. None of this is to say that I’m a convert to van life. I wouldn’t even consider buying my own and I definitely won’t be getting a caravan. Judging by the people at work, it’s an extraordinarily expensive way of not going very far. But if you’re already hiring transport, it’s really not much extra to add your accommodation in the same vehicle and it gives you all the benefits of camping – campsites are cheap, plentiful and always have spaces and even if they don’t, there’s another within a fifteen minute drive. I like the feel of evening air and the sky turning interesting colours and the point of view of seeing the landscape getting dark as I scurry across a field to brush my teeth before bed and I’ll always like the cool damp feeling of getting up in the morning. When I was a kid, we used to go to the campsite shop for fresh rolls and although that’s one place in which Iceland fails, that early morning fresh feeling is still in my DNA.
(If you want to read what I actually did in 2017 with my campervan, the posts are here)
But it’s nice to not get rained on.
