Chasing freedom on the open road | Our van story begins

Van conversions seem to have become a trend over the last 5 years and it looks like we’re jumping on the bandwagon (but not the Volkswagen).

The inklings of something more

The idea took hold at the start of our relationship. That is, the idea of embracing a lifestyle that offered freedom, convenience, and simplicity. For years, that manifested itself in our minds as a narrowboat on the British canals (and maybe rivers if we were brave enough).

But in the last year (perhaps longer for David), we’ve been thinking that a van might suit our current circumstances a little better. Dave could have a boat near his work in the East Midlands, but having a house in the middle of Norfolk means the majority of the time we aren’t near the national canal network.

The closest mooring to us is in Brandon – believe us, we’ve scoured the region! And on the Norfolk Broads the steel beasts are feared, and for good reason. If you put a narrowboat up against a fiberglass or wooden boat, there’s no contest.

But a van… there are some possibilities there.

What our campervan needed to have

There are dreams and there are practicalities and in the end, we want to find the perfect balance.

Dreams

• Fits all the necessities (bed, small kitchen, bit of storage)
• A space we can work in (writing and editing photos)
• Small enough for the B roads
• Big enough for 2 adults and a medium mongrel
• Not difficult to take to Europe
• Euro 6 compliant

Practicalities

• An automatic (neither of us have a manual license)
• Meets our council car park restrictions (<5m in length)
• Can fit in a standard UK car parking space (2.4 meters wide, 4.8 meters long)
• Can go in a multi-storey car park (<2m in height)
• Can be used as a commuting vehicle
• Reasonable gas mileage
• Ideally under 80k miles
• Budget friendly (for us, that’s as close to £10,000 as possible)
• Not too rusty

The search for the perfect campervan

We spent months considering our wish list, browsing used car websites, and decisively hopping between microcampers of a Caddy Maxi size and small campers like a Ford Transit.

In the meantime, our little old (and much-loved) car was slowly heading towards a creaky demise thanks to a worn-out suspension. Each squeaky drive gave us a renewed sense of urgency to find a van. But the UK car and van market in 2023 is INSANE. Patience and an open mind were key.

We decided we either had to take the plunge and accept that no van would be perfect, or just give up on the idea entirely.

Finding the right campervan for us

We doubled down and started seriously looking. After viewing new-ish, shiny, expensive vans from a dealership, being pulled in by a couple of scams that went sideways (thankfully no harm done), and taking a couple of test drives in vans that just weren’t for us… we found the one.

But… we called to secure the van 30 minutes too late – a deposit had already been placed!

After vague promises of a call back if the finance fell through, we were deflated and had to take a moment to consider our emotional fortitude for continuing the search.

Incredibly, and unexpectedly, late the next day THEY CALLED BACK – the finance fell through!

We swiftly put down our own deposit and arranged a pickup date.

Our van

The van we landed on in the end was a 2015 Peugeot Expert panel van. This model was the same from 2007-2016.

At time of purchase, it’s 7 years old and has 53,000 miles racked up.

It’s currently fitted out with ply lining. The metal which is exposed has quite a few scratches, but generally looks well taken care of – fingers crossed there are no rusty surprises underneath the floor!

This van didn’t tick all the boxes, but it covered most of them and we are excited about the possibilities!

The biggest compromise was not meeting Euro 6 compliance. We did a bit of research to decide whether this was a deal breaker. With all the planning needed to travel to Europe in a van these days we couldn’t look at the requirements for EVERY European country, but we did look through  a few more likely destinations.

Anyways, we saw that Euro 6 was already being grouped with Euro 5, at least in the countries we looked at. And figured that pretty soon Euro 6 would be overshadowed by other eco-friendly vehicles. You know, electric, hydrogen, etc. With so many unknowns, and no other vehicles of this size in our price range, we decided it was a sacrifice we would need to make. Hopefully we don’t regret it in the future!

Dimensions of the Peugeot Expert 2007-2016

For those of you converting or thinking of converting your own vans, here are the dimensions of our van.

Interior dimensions of the Peugeot Expert cargo space:

The interior length is 2254mm
The interior width is 1600mm
The interior height is 1449mm (H1)
The wheelbase lengths are 3000mm (Short Wheel Base)
The width between wheel arches is 1245mm

The exterior dimensions of the Peugeot Expert 2007-2016

The exterior length is 4805 mm
The exterior width is 2194 mm
The exterior height is 1942 mm

I’ll be documenting our van build here so you can follow along. But I must admit, neither of us have converted a van before, so it won’t be a how to, more of a how we’ve done it, so be sure to do your own research if you’re converting a van.

See you in the next update!