Turning the Dream into Reality
It’s finally happened.
After years of dreaming about it, I’ve finally bought a caravan, and I’ve started to renovate it.
I’ve dreamed of the freedom of hitching a van to the car and just taking off whenever I want. Okay, maybe not whenever I want; after all, I have a child who still has to go to school. But you get the idea.
I started an Instagram account for the van before we had even decided on one. And it was through Instagram that a fellow caravanner (Stan the Caravan, to be exact) contacted me to say she was selling her first caravan renovation project, and was I interested?
She sent me a video of the interior, and I fell in love! We agreed on a price, and several weeks later (just as they announced the third lockdown in England!), we travelled the 137 miles down to the seaside town of Scarborough to collect it.
In the days leading up to the collection, I came across a YouTube video called “Caravan disasters.” Top tip. Don’t watch a video of caravans being smashed to pieces on the motorway a few days before towing a caravan for the first time.
I felt sick. And it dawned on me that caravans are just plywood and aluminum, with a bit of insulation thrown in for good measure. Of course, that makes total sense. You can’t pull and bricks and mortar house behind you. Caravans have to be lightweight and durable.
Except when they get smashed up on the motorway, they are definitely not durable then.
So, feeling sick, I turned up at the campsite where the van had been stored for the past few months. And there she was… all gleaming and sparkling in the sunshine. That’s a lie… she needed a ruddy good clean, but to me, she was sparkling.
The current owner had painted the inside, and she looked great. It didn’t bother me that some of the curtains looked a bit shabby, and the paint was chipped in places as I would be doing her up anyway.
We hitched up, and off we went. The first stop was Kwick Fit for some new tyres. Oh, did I mention that I’d also been winding myself up about Caravan tyres bursting?
They didn’t have any caravan tyres, so after a charming Kwick Fit team member checked the lights, we were back on the road again.
It’s fair to say I was grinding my teeth the entire way back home and watching the caravan intently in the side mirror.
The journey back went like a dream, and then, there she was, looking resplendent on our driveway.
And now the hard work begins — rennovation time.
You can find out more about how the rennovation is going by following my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/dri.vingmissdaisy/
