Ready...steady...BLOG!

Hello!

Thanks for taking time out of your day to read my blog. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful and informative. 

Some of you may already know me from Twitter or YouTube. If you don't, I'll start from the beginning of how I became a campervan blogger.

For as long as I remember, I've holidayed in caravans. I remember staying in Bridlington in the late 80's with my parents and younger brother in a four berth Thomson Glen. With the added awning we managed to sleep eight, with the addition of Grandma, Grandad and Uncle Ian and Aunty Caroline.

After the Thomson, we started travelling further afield in a Monza 1400s. An upgrade on the old gas lit caravan, I found it cosy, but it didn't age well with its faux wicker wall coverings and it's orange/brown upholstery. 

We went up in the world when my parents bought a Bailey Maestro Corsair. 'Top of the range' as my late Grandad would say.

I loved caravanning, and I do now. I still occasionally head off to the North York Moors to stay in our family seasonal sited 2017 Swift Challenger Hi-Style.

So, where does the love for campervans start? At the same time as I was caravanning with my parents. After all, all the best cartoons had vans. Scooby Doo had the Mystery Machine and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had their Party Van.

As a youngster, I spent most of my 'big holidays' in Cornwall and Devon. The UK surfing scene is strong in these southern counties, and where you find surfers, you find campervans. I loved seeing the two tone VW Splitscreens and the colourful Bays, both the epitome of cool.  

The VW Camper scene was strong in the 90's but it was nowhere near as expensive to buy one as it is now. Although, at 18 years old I had to turn down an absolutely stunning VW Bay, that a friend was selling. £5000 was a little out of my price range back then but just think what it would've been worth now.

Becoming bored of the Electrical Engineering career I first chose for myself, I decided that building cars for my hobby of Autograss Racing was more enjoyable, and I decided to go into vehicle body work with a view to build racing cars. I opened a bodyshop with a specialism on racing cars, but the VW Camper urge was strong, and I decided that is what I wanted to do. Not as many people were into VW converting back then and it looked like it could be the making of something beautiful.

A few unforseen curcumstances led to the closing down of A-Dub V-Dub and I went back into Engineering.

Never getting the chance to convert a van for myself, it was time to start looking for a van of my own. The vans that were new around the age of my youth were the T25 and T4. I loved the styling of both but decided I wanted the 1.9TD or TDi diesel engine. T4 

it would be, then.  

Due to the reliability of the 1.9TD engines and because of how much of a well-known workhorse the T4 was, there is still thousands of the model on the road, but it's difficult to find an original engine with less than 300,000 miles on. Imagine my luck when I found one with a genuine 80,000 miles.

It was a fully converted two berth van. Finished with a high specification, I'd be daft to not buy it for the price it was posted for. The guy selling the van was moving to the USA, so he needed rid of the van and luckily for me, I was the first person to see the ad and look at the van.

But wait, I hear you say, 'Don't you have two children? How do you fit in a two berth?

Pop top bunk!

Apart from an electrical system upgrade, the pop top bunk is the only extra work I've had done on the van. 

Some purist campervanners go by the 'built, not bought' philosophy, but out of most, I'm sure I can justify buying the majority of my van, rather than building it from scratch.

The first time I even thought about vlogging or social media was when I was at a Volkswagen Camper meet up. There 

were beautiful vans everywhere, and I started taking photographs. I didn't do any social media at the time, so didn't really know what to do with all the photos I'd taken. I did, however, have a YouTube account I'd never done anything with. So I made a short, uploaded it and the rest is history. People seemed to like the videos I started uploading, so I made more. Days out, campsites, festivals. I vlogged it all. I've never had a great deal of subscribers on YouTube but plenty of people do watch my videos.

Noting that a few of the other YouTubers I subscribe to also used Twitter, I got on board and started Tweeting about my YouTube channel. My Twitter account now has it's own little community going on, independent from my YouTube channel.

Not long in to my Twitter life, I received the chance to join in with a group of likeminded campervanners, motor homers and caravanners to vlog about joint subjects. This eclectic crew are known as Vanother Collective, and have been going strong since 2022.

So now we are here, blogging. It's something new for me, but it's just another arm of the Volkswagen Camper Adventures brand. I believe blogging will give me chance to get more information out in the world. It'll be a little more in depth than my vlogs and can be an extension on some of our Twitter subjects.

Do look for us on YouTube and Twitter and keep an eye on our blog for news, reviews and 'how to' information. 

I'll be blogging again soon!

Thanks for reading,

Andy