Intro
As seen in my motorhome page, I want to make my own motorhome.
Before buying the van, I wanted to test the concept by actually going on the road with a rented van.
Since the main piece (the couch/bed) was finished, I figured I'd take a couple of days off and hit the road (early March 2021).
Here are the lessons learned.
The stuff
First it started badly - my reservation was lost. I still had the van I wanted, but it was an old one. As we'll see, this had big repercussions down the line.
The van was a fiat Doblo, credited with a back area length of 182 by the brand and on my list of potential candidates for a van. My bed being 160, there would be no problem.
This is where I found that fiat took some liberty with the length of the van...
Yes, it is probably 182 on the floor, but what they fail to mention that the back of the driver seat comes back, and shaves quite a lot of space:
so even though on paper the van was 20 cm longer than my bed, in reality the bed was poking out...
So first lesson learned: don't trust the constructor, measure yourself.
I decided to keep the bed, but without putting the legs, as the wood would be an insulating layer from the floor anyway.
However, since I could no longer store anything under the bed, most of the space was taken by my stuff.
The back of the van was a sleeping and storage room only...
Armed with the app a fellow camper pointed out to me (Merci P. !), I left for the north.
Called Park4Night, the app is a must, as it will save you hours of searching for a place to stop.
This is how I found my first place for the night. Since I could no longer cook in the van, it had to be outside. Did I mention it was raining ?
The period being the beginning of March had other consequences: all campsites were closed, as they don't open until 1st April.
Also, it was cold: -3 °C. The fact that I had to cook outside meant that all the heat from the cooking was lost for warming up the bedroom.
It also validated my poor man's heater
as a lifesaver.This cold had also consequences on my hardware; batteries don't like the cold, so my kobo reader was soon asking for a break.
I turned to the tablet for a movie instead, but it bailed out quickly too.
Luckily I had a power pack to recharge them. Ooops. come to think of it, no, killed by the cold too.
So I thought I would charge them while driving.
Did I mention I got an old vehicle ? Well so old infact it didn't have a usb socket...
Luckily I had my charger
; It was intended at first for my laptop, but it had a usb socket, so that was good enough.The second night was almost perfect. Having learned from my mistake, I started the heater about an hour earlier to make sure by the time the real cold came it was nice and warm inside. Also the bed was properly placed and I could extend my legs.
I stopped near the weiswampach lake
, which is a beautiful place.Almost perfect, because at 6.30am I was woken up by a huge noise.
Wondering what was happening, I quickly got dressed and jumped outside in the strange whirling lights.
A huge truck was delivering something in the lost place where I was (of all places), and it just dropped its cargo and left...
I didn't really feel like going back to bed, so I packed and left !
Conclusion
Now is a good time to say that in fact, there are now so many external ressources available that the van as sleeping and storage place was actually a very viable solution.
It was not exactly what I wanted/expected, in the sense that instead of eating at a table at the back (in those covid days you may not eat out, it is all takeaway), I had to eat most of the time in the cabin.
Also obviously you depend much more on the outside if you can't cook inside.
But for the rest, between big shopping centers and gas station, I could stop and get free wifi (also at any train station in Luxemburg), use the phone boxes in shopping centers to recharge the phone while doing the shopping, etc.
The same shopping center have toilets, and as they are usually empty in the morning, you can easily have a wash and a shave without being too conspicuous (that made up forcamping sites being closed).
The main problem was the weather - cold and rain, which made it difficult to use the cooker without a shelter.
Also, being a rented van it didn't have windows, so if I wanted natural light I had to leave a door open...
Other than that, the system worked perfectly and validated the design.
The main change is going to be a bigger van to make sure the bed fits, so I'll ditch the Dokker and will probably go for the opel Combo L2, which is 30 cm longer.
If you want to rent, have a look here.
In the US, have a look here.