Inspiration - Minivan camping in America
The story of our Land Rover began long before it's purchase. The inspiration came largely from two summers spent in the United States. What started as a medical placement morphed into a total of six months and 25,000 miles of rough camping and windsurfing around much of the western US. It was all made possible by a fifteen year old Dodge Grand Caravan called 'Lizzie'. It was so good that it made us wonder why we didn't do the same at home in the UK. Indeed Lizzie is truly worthy of a website all of her own. If you are interested, some of her adventures are recorded on Ben's windsurf blog https://ben-page.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/the-beginning.html.
Lizzie taught us a lot about what makes a good camper, and gave us confidence about how much you can do with very limited space. We spent a fair amount of time on dirt tracks and off road, one of the few things we would have changed about that car was to make it better in that environment.
One of the many things we learnt was the value of being able to sit upright on the bed without hitting your head on the ceiling. It sounds obvious but it's a flaw we see in loads of home made campers. Windsurf campers seem especially vulnerable to this error. When the vehicle is small, your bed takes up the vast majority of the interior. If you are forced to lie on it, you can't comfortably use that space for much else. You can't, for example, easily hang out or cook inside if it's raining. That's a problem, because you then won't do those things and you'll either spend much more money or just give up and go home. Both defeat the object of a camper.
We learnt that a truly comfortable bed is vital. Tent camping is terrible partly because you don't sleep properly. The whole point of a camper is that you can take a decent bed with you. The first summer in Lizzie was spent sleeping on a boardbag on the floor. That was tolerable, but rubbish. The second time round we threw the back seats away and made a proper bed. It was infinitely better. Until you sleep well, you won't be able to go away for very long.
