Purchasing the van of dreams

VW T5 Badge
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

We spent ages weighing up which vehicle to buy, the standard debate for this kind of trip being Land Rover versus Toyota Land Cruiser (have they all forgotten about Hectar the 1970s VW combi as a "reliable" companion?) and looked at lots of options at the NEC. We eventually opted for an updated version of the van which we had test driven during our first Highland Combi Adventure: the VW T5.

Romantic old school van (as per our original plan) it is not. Rugged four wheel drive Land Rover (as per everyone else's advice) it is not. So it is probably a rubbish choice. Nonethless, we convinced ourselves that it is better to have something newer and (hopefully) more reliable than Hectar if we are to make it much further than the UK and that we can justify sacrificing the Land Rover for a proper bed (as opposed to a roof tent), heating, a fridge and a bit of home-from-home comfort (I say a bit - everything is relative). Whether this is revealed to be a really, really poor decision, only time will tell - ask us again when we get stuck in the middle of nowhere with no four wheel drive, and / or we break down with no parts readily available, and/ or the van gets stolen because it just doesn't look decrepit enough....

We plumped for an off road grey VW T5 converted into a "Celex" model by Bilbos (http://www.bilbos.com/). We made a few changes to the standard spec (really exciting stuff like losing the grill in favour of an extra drawer, given that storage is at a premium, and adding diesel air heating for the cold months in Scandinavia and Russia etc) and then ordered our van. No technical modifications at this stage - quite frankly we don't know enough about any vehicle, let alone the T5, to know what is necessary for a trip like ours. Given the number of techie sounding changes which other people on long overland trips have made to their already more rugged Land Rovers, this feels more than a little worrying.

The fact that the T5 is about the size of a builder's van and we are supposed to live in it for a year made no difference to our enthusiasm. We took delivery; played around with the various features of the van for a bit; wondered where on earth we are going to keep everything; and then got so over excited about spending our first night in the van that we set off on a test drive to....... Southend-on-Sea. Why wouldn't you? Where could be more romantic???