What on earth led to us converting a Horse lorry into a camper van?
Rachel and I love camping and being outdoors. Rachel has always been in Horticulture and I was an Ostrich Farmer for 15 years (long story and possibly another post in the future)! We first bought a tiny tent from a well known outdoor retailer and headed off to North Devon on August Bank Holiday weekend. We soon realised that crawling past the dog to go to the loo really wasn't for us but the dog thought it was an amazing game.
We soon realised that we needed a tent that I could stand up in (I am 6'4" so needed to be a beast). Once again a trip to the famous outdoor retailer at the end of the season. Over the next 4 years our camping stuff grew and grew until we had a long wheelbase Land Rover Defender and a trailer. Although we eventually had the most amazing Airbeam tent that took 20 minutes to put up it was taking us 2 hours to strike and break camp!
So we were already thinking about what to do next when disaster struck. Unfortunately Rachel was diagnosed with breast Cancer that turned our life upside down. It certainly made us think about our priorities in life. Mainly we have now decided what is all this stuff we have around us so have decided a cleanse is in order! Also stop procrastinating as none of us know how long we have on the Earth. As Richard Branson says we have all turned into human doings not human beings!
We still wanted to be in the great outdoors but couldn't face 2 hours each side of the holiday sorting out camp. So what could we do to keep us outdoors?
First we looked at building a teardrop caravan, there are some amazing instructions on Instructables but we realised we had nowhere to store it and once again the whole 6'4" spectre raised its head. Also where the hell were the dogs going to sleep! Definitely not with us on the bed!
So thinking caps back on. We then thought about the whole #vanlife movement and went quite a way to planning out various vehicles. But ultimately the thought of packing the bed away every day filled me with dread. We are not the tidiest of people so a small van, 6'4" bloke and 2 dogs was a recipe for disaster.
Onward to the next idea, we saw an article online about a guy who converted an ex prison lorry into an amazing camper. We started looking really seriously at this option but soon realised we really needed a workshop with electricity for this project. We would still be grinding out the cells now and there is always the thought of how well are they maintained!
Our thoughts finally turned to removals lorries and Horse lorries. We had initially discounted the Horse lorry after reading some horror stories on ukhippy.com about the effects of horse wee on wood! But the more we thought about it the more it made sense for us, plenty of room, square walls and a Mercedes or DAF. Eventually we wanted to take it abroad so a make that is recognised and more importantly fixable wherever we are was important. Rachel years ago did overland truck driving across Africa in converted Mercedes lorries so really liked the idea of Mercedes. The obvious choice for the Horse lorry is usually the Bedford TK, the beautiful curved lines but we were scared of trying to keep one on the road.
So we started looking for Horse lorries on all the usual sites. We saw some amazing examples and even some converted ones. We happened to see a really well proportioned one that happened to be 5 miles from St Michael's mount in Cornwall, lets just go and have a look we said.....we aren't going to buy anything yet we said. Fast forward 2 hours later and we are driving back to Devon with a 24' long 7.5 ton Mercedes 814 Horse lorry thinking 'Bloody Hell where are we going to park it!'
That night we parked it in the carpark of a lovely local pub The Trout Inn that are very Campervan friendly while we went home to panic slightly and decide what to do next!
Rachel came up with the idea of posting on Facebook to see if anyone we knew had space to park a massive blue beast for a month while we sorted something out. Not more than 20 minutes later one of Rachel's friends on Facebook came to our rescue and said we could park it on their farm! The power for good that social media can be. Now all we had to do was come up with a plan...................