Before we launch into how we chose the base vehicle to use for our campervan conversion, let us tell you why we decided to take on such a crazy project!
Inspiration
It was one fine day in Portrush when the first lockdown of 2020 had been lifted, that we met an Argentinian guy who was travelling with his family in a van that he’d converted himself.
Our new found hobby since returning home from our unfinished cycling tour of Sri Lanka in March 2020, was trawling the internet, and, when permitted, walking the streets of Portrush, searching out camper vans. We had started toying with the idea of investing in a van for our next travel adventure. After getting locked down in Sri Lanka we felt so vulnerable and isolated on the bicycles. It made us think that for our next travel adventure we would be better being in our own self-contained vehicle.
Anyway little did we think that this friendly Argentinian would be the one to dissuade us from buying a ready made campervan, but he would be the one to inspire us to build our own! “It’s easy” he said, “everything you need to know is on YouTube, just watch the Greg Virgoe videos”.
Later that same day, and for many, many days, weeks and months afterwards, we spent an endless amount of hours watching YouTube videos on how to build a campervan. It looked so easy, surely we could try our hand at that!
The inspiration from our Argentinian friend was the impetus we needed to take on this new challenge. Up until this point we had not been able to find a campervan that was designed to meet our specific needs, so designing our own was the obvious choice. Plus with our bed and breakfast business decimated due to the global coronavirus pandemic, we had a lot of time on our hands and needed something to do.
We looked at lots of these types of commercially built campervans, but they didn’t meet our essential criteria.
Essential criteria
Before we could choose the vehicle to use for our self-build camper conversion, we had to consider what design features were important to us, and those that were less important. This would determine the size of vehicle we were going to need.
We were in the lucky position of having experience of living and travelling in a campervan so had a good idea of what we wanted, and what we didn’t want. Our six months driving “Spot” around Australia in 2000/01 had taught us a lot!
Our essential and non-negotiable top three criteria for our van build were:
Fixed bed
Inside storage for our bicycles
On board toilet and shower
In addition we had our list of what we would prefer to have in our base vehicle:
Enough headspace for Dave to be able to stand upright (he’s about 6ft)
A van big enough to be able to live in for extended periods of time (6-12 months) in all seasons
A van small enough to visit family and friends in cities and urban areas
A van less than six metres in length for ease of parking (and it means a cheaper tariff on ferry crossings – the prices go up if your vehicle is longer than six metres!)
A reliable, well-maintained van versatile enough to take us off the beaten track
Plus we had our list of what we knew we didn’t want from our base vehicle:
An old van with high mileage and high maintenance
A van so big that you have to get a special driving licence
A white van!
We saw lots of white panel vans that we didn’t want!
Research, research, research
It didn’t take us long to realise that there is no such thing as the perfect base vehicle for a camper van conversion. But there are definitely some vans that are more suited to converting than others, and that’s where your research is key.
As well as our endless hours of watching “how to build a campervan” YouTube videos, we started looking online at van conversion companies to see what types of van they were using as the base vehicle. The top two contenders at this stage were the Mercedes Sprinter and the Volkswagen Crafter. And that was the route we were going down until we found the very helpful online forum at Self Build Motor Caravanners Club (SBMCC).
This SBMCC forum was undoubtedly our best find during the entire research, and subsequent self-build, process. The £15 annual membership was well worth it for the valuable information and knowledge we gained. The forum was full of people who were doing, or had already done, exactly what we wanted to do.
It was on this forum that we learned that a Sevel van gives you a few extra centimetres width if you’re planning, like us, to have a fixed bed traversing the van. And you all know every inch (or centimetre) counts! We were completely ignorant as to what a Sevel van was and had to ask the question. The answer was a van from the Sevel factory in Italy which makes pretty much identical vans for Fiat, Citroen and Peugeot.
And so our mind was made up, we were going to start shopping for a good second-hand Fiat Ducato, Citroen Relay, or Peugeot Boxer van.
Shopping around
Shopping you think is the fun part, but no, it was far from it! Bearing in mind this was in the midst of the 2020 global lockdowns and the demand for vans, both old and new, was almost outstripping supply. The rise in vans needed by courier and delivery drivers during the pandemic was increasing daily. Combine that with the booming #VanLife phenomenon, and we were left with very slim pickings at very extortionate prices. On top of that we could only view vans located in Northern Ireland.
We were trying to find vans that were 2-3 years old with low mileage and the average price was coming in at around £14,000 +VAT. A lot of money for a second-hand vehicle with no guarantees.
A price comparison with brand new vans proved if we could stretch our budget to £16,495 +VAT we could get a brand new, pre-registered van and a clean slate from which to start our build. And that is what we did.
We chose a Citroen Relay 35 L3H2 2.2 Diesel Euro 6 panel van in Cumulus Grey metallic paint from Vans Direct. It was not a buying process we’d want to repeat, but maybe more on that another time!
We took ownership in early December 2020 and the build got underway.
This is our first blog post in a very, very long time! And the first on our revamped Schindlers on Tour self-built website! We’ll tell you more about that process later, but meanwhile a bit of background about our travel blogging journey.
Our days of travel blogging started with blogspot – anyone else remember that?? That was way back in the year 2000 when the world didn’t end with Y2K. We made the decision to pack up our careers and our life in London into a couple of rucksacks and a tent, and set off on our first big overseas trip together.
Our travel blog was a way for our family and friends to keep track of our travelling tales. Plus it was a way for us to keep a record of places we’d visited. Without the blog, communicating and connecting was via expensive long distance phone calls from phone boxes (remember them?), snail mail letters, and e-mailing from internet cafes (when you could find one!).
The early days
Back then there was no such thing as WiFi, Zoom, WhatsApp or social media platforms. And not a mobile phone in sight! Skype was the first real game-changer for us in terms of communicating. When it first launched we could call long-distance for free from our new found home in New Zealand.
Getting access to the internet was a time-consuming and often expensive challenge in those earlier halcyon days of our travels. No doubt that is incomprehensible to today’s generation of travel bloggers who have grown up completely at ease with technology.
Over the years we have tried and tested more blogging platforms and travel journal apps than we care to remember. In our experience Everlater and Weebly spring to mind as the best and worst respectively. Some of the platforms we used are still around, and others have long since gone. The result is us having a complete mish-mash of memories stored all over the web. Plus we have a stack of good old fashioned paper diaries from almost every trip we’ve ever taken together.
Here and now
And so in March 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic abruptly called a halt to our cycling tour of Sri Lanka we decided it was time to bring all our travel and adventure blogs and diaries together in one place. You’d think that with the world ground to a halt, no business to speak of, and plenty of time on our hands we’d have gotten right onto it, but the motivation and inspiration to build a new travel and adventure blog was not there during those strange times.
Instead we got busy in lockdown with building a campervan, shutting down our bed and breakfast business, selling our home and getting rid of most of our worldly possessions! The blog building got put on the back burner.
Now here we are nearing the end of 2022 attempting to collate 20+ years worth of travelling tales and life adventures to post as a collection of blogs on our Schindlers on Tour website.
Wish us luck!
Why we blog
First up we are not writing our travel and adventure blog in an effort to make a six figure income that so many travel bloggers rave about (although wouldn’t that be a fine thing!). Rather we’re doing it so that in years to come when our memories have faded, and we are old and demented, we will have one big memory bank that will hopefully trigger links to some of the happiest days of our lives.
We blog primarily to document our own personal travelling experiences and life’s adventures. It’s a hobby for us, and not a business venture. We’re not prepared to make the full-time commitment it requires to make an income from a blog, but if it ever generated enough to splash out on the occasional bottle of wine then happy days!
Secondly we have been asked by so many friends and family, and contacted by folks who we don’t know, to write more about our ever-changing travel and adventure lifestyle. And if sharing our stories on this blog inspires or motivates even one person to follow and realise their dreams, then our mission here will be accomplished!
What you’ll find in our blog
The plan is to have this new and revamped Schindlers on Tour website full of all our travelling and lifestyle adventures. There’ll be backdated posts from when we started travelling together, and right up to date posts from wherever we are now. It’s all about our own personal experiences and all blog posts are written by us.
You’ll find all the old posts from our previous travel blogging platforms, and excerpts from our old travel diaries. (As much as many of them make us cringe now, they are all part of our blogging history and we can’t change that!). The process of populating the blog with the old stuff is going to take a bit of time, so if you’re interested in that, check back another day!
There will be tales from our more recent travels, and maybe even some stories from our years as bed and breakfast hosts. We’ll do our best to add regular new posts and stories about van life and house sitting.
We’ll include travel tips when we can, plus honest, practical advice. You can be sure anything we recommend in a blog post has been tried and tested, or tasted, by us.
As we said, it is a memory bank for us, but we would love it if any of it inspires you to make memories of your own.
Subscribe here to our blog and never miss a post!
How we rebuilt our travel and adventure blog
Let’s start by saying it has not been easy! It’s been all fits and starts for the past 18 months, and there’s still a long way to go. It’s a constant work in progress.
Inspiration and motivation waned at the best of times. We were either too busy out exploring new places and adapting to van life. Or we were too comfortable cuddling pets on our latest housesitting gigs.
Frustration took over at the worst of times, especially when we couldn’t access reliable internet for weeks at a time, not helped by our hard drive packing up while we were on a remote Greek Island!
There were plenty of days when we were ready to give up on the idea of re-building our travel blog completely.
But here we are, still trying – it’s an ongoing process with a very steep learning curve.
If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.
Starting from scratch
Our previous and most recent Schindlers on Tour website we built using Weebly. This was the same platform we used to build a very functional website for our successful Shola Coach House bed & breakfast business. But we were never happy with Weebly as a travel blogging platform. The hassle of transferring all our old Schindlers on Tour content to a new platform was not worth the effort.
We made the decision to rebuild our website from scratch and take on the challenge of learning a whole new platform! As they say you’re never too old to learn something new, or is it you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?! Either way, we’re giving it a go. We opted for WordPress, the free open source software which has a global reputation as the best blogging platform.
We have no special website building expertise or technical skills. We’re completely self-taught when it comes to computers, and technology. We learn as we go from trial and error. And thank heavens for YouTube!
Free resources
We’re grateful for the many free blogging resources and community forums that are available online for help and support. A few free resources that were of particular help to us were:
And we wouldn’t have a funky little logo if it wasn’t for the kindness of a very special and talented friend!
But we thought we needed more than the free resources.
At this point we should make it clear that we are not currently planning a strategy to monetise our travel and adventure blog. However, we do want to try and build it so that we have that option in the future.
The costs of building our travel and adventure blog
Building a blog that has the functionality to potentially generate an income, however small, doesn’t come without some financial investment. On top of that there’s the time and effort we’re putting into the building process.
Our costs included:
Domain Ownership & Renewal Costs
We registered Schindlers on Tour as our domain name many years ago with GoDaddy at a cost of about £10 per year. We have since transferred it to Host Gator with renewal costs of around £16 per year.
Hosting Costs
Our web hosting provider is also Host Gator at a cost of approx £3-5 per month.
Design Theme Costs
We could’ve gone with a free theme from WordPress.org, but a paid theme offers us more flexibility and functionality if we ever do decide to go down the route of trying to make money from our blog. We chose Divi from Elegant Themes for a one-off cost of £75 which includes support. Another steep learning curve!
Email Costs
We use Google Workspace for our website emails which costs us approx £4 per month.
Coaching Costs
By far our biggest investment was £600 for online coaching from Johnny Ward of the One Step 4Ward blog. The course was six one-to-one video calls on how the blogging industry works. In hindsight we may have received much the same information from any one of the hundreds of bloggers offering free online courses, or by doing more of our own desktop research, but as they say you live and learn.
What we’ve learned so far…
We quickly learned that we are not prepared to make the full-time commitment nor put in the tremendous effort required to become “successful” full-time travel bloggers. We want to retain the pure joy we get from our travelling lifestyle without feeling like a slave to the blog and being tied to technology.
Success for us at this stage in our lives is not about making a six figure income from our travel blog, or ranking high on Google. It is about proving to ourselves that we can learn new skills and build an honest travel blog of our personal experiences. And if by any remote chance you are reading this and feel inspired or motivated by our adventures to take on your own new challenges, then to us that is success.
If you have read this far, thank you! We’re delighted to have you join us on our return to the world of travel and adventure blogging.
It is the end of our first ever bicycling tour, and the last days of our summer in New Zealand.
Arriving in Auckland last night felt far from summer with the wind howling and gusting as we rode the short distance from the Strand station to our friends, Tracy & Paul in Grey Lynn, where we were spoiled with a delicious meal out in a Russian/Kiwi fusion restaurant.
Tracy & Paul
We had a last quick catch up with Candice on the North Shore, this time getting to meet little Lucas as well as seeing Emilia again, and meeting her parents who very kindly invited us for lunch.
A quick train trip and a final short bike ride and we are back at Debbie’s place in Pukekohe, from whence we started way back in November! Its time to pack the bicycles away, but not before enjoying one more glass of wine until we meet again.
The last leg to PukekoheBack where we started!One more glass of wine with Debbie
Thank you New Zealand, and one and all of our old, and new friends, for making this a fantastic trip. We’re hoping this will be the first of many bicycle tours.
Subscribe to our blog below, or follow us on social media to see where we end up next year!
Reflections on board Dora, the Northern Explorer Train: Wellington – Auckland
Today we hopped aboard Dora, the Northern Explorer Train, for one of the great train journeys of New Zealand from Wellington to Auckland. It was a day to sit back, relax, enjoy the scenery, and watch the world go by as the train wound its way north, stopping just occasionally to let passengers on or off.
Time to board Dora the Northern Explorer TrainWindswept on board Dora the Northern Explorer TrainPassing through Tongariro National Park on board Dora the Northern Explorer TrainViews of rural New Zealand from on board Dora the Northern Explorer Train
To do this route by bicycle would have been a lot, lot longer than the 11 hours today’s train trip took, especially considering the pace we keep! The rail journey was 648km, and it cost us NZ$385. The bicycle route would be around 700-800kms which would have taken us at least 10-20 days of riding.
Reflecting on our first ever bicycle tour
With our first ever bicycle tour practically complete now (bar a few kilometres in Auckland this evening to Tracy’s house, and a few tomorrow to Debbie’s house in Pukekohe) we can reflect on what a fantastic adventure this has been.
We have racked up a little more than 1,000 kilometres of cycling during the past seven weeks. Our average distance was around 45kms per day on the days we did ride. We were mere novices enjoying the slow pace of bicycle touring by riding one day, stopping for two days, or maybe more. This was compared to a couple of hard core riders we met who rode every single day, and who, in our humble opinion, experienced next to nothing of a local place or its people. Slow travel is definitely our preferred way to go.
We’ve taken buses and boats, tied the bikes on trailers and trains, gotten the occasional lift from friends, slept the odd night in beds and bunks, were flat out in Olive the tent for 40 nights, and now we can safely say it has been, without doubt, one of the best holidays we’ve ever taken.
It has been exhilarating, and at times hard work, particularly with a heavy load on those uphill climbs when you just wish you could find another gear, but oh so rewarding. The slow pace of travel, despite the time and distance apparently passing so quickly, made us notice and appreciate everything around us, and provided the perfect opportunity to stop and meet the local people.
The sense of accomplishment we felt each day as we would look back and see how far we’d come is both real and humbling. The views and vistas from the saddle, not to mention the heightened awareness of our senses, are incomparable to that of speeding along in a car. From noticing every hedgerow, hearing every birdsong, smelling every rose (and roadkill!), to tasting the salt as we sweated it out on the uphill slogs, and feeling the tar seal blistering and popping like bubble wrap on the road beneath us – every aspect made us feel a new and real connection with the land around us.
We have made more special memories in this beautiful country that we will always hold dear to our hearts.
We missed them on our last visit to Wellington so this time it was all about catching up with the Coyles. Bob is an old school friend of mine from Omagh, and now lives in Wellington with his wife Liz, son AJ, and daughter Maddy.
We couldn’t have wished for better Wellington weather this time around. Wall to wall sunshine and barely a breath of wind – so rare for this city! Added to that, having our very own local tour guides and super hosts (the Coyle family now trading as “WBWT – Wee Bobby’s Wellington Tours”!), meant we had the makings of a great couple of days sightseeing, singing, eating and drinking.
360 degree views from Mt Victoria, swimming at Scorching Bay, and a dip in Days Bay just a few of the must-do’s.
Wellington from Mt VictoriaScorching Bay WellingtonDays Bay Wellington
We had time too for a quick catch up with Joanne, another friend from our VSA volunteer days in South Africa. Sadly just not enough time to catch up with more of our Kiwi friends. Hopefully there’ll be a next time.
Hi, we're Sharon & Dave an active and adventurous Irish & English couple who've been travelling together for more than 20 years. These posts are our travel stories and personal journeys. Follow our adventures to see where we've been and where we're going next!
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