Where Did That Come From?

2

I’m sitting in our living room looking out at a huge (30 feet long HUGE) lorry based motorhome desperately trying to understand how it came to be here.

I think I mentioned in passing to Alan, around Christmas 2014, that I would love to travel. I watch travel programs and think “I’d love to see that”. Quite how that translated to the beast that’s sitting in our driveway, I’m not sure.

It started with the odd “look at this caravan/motorhome on eBay” comment, which eventually became “we could tour Europe, if we bought a motorhome when the contract is up on this house”.

As usual when I’m faced with something I’m not sure about, I kept my mouth firmly shut, hoping the notion would wear off. Until one day Alan casually mentioned he had applied for a loan, “just out of interest”.

Two days later the aforementioned loan was sitting in our bank account – no paperwork, no discussion, no nothing.

I was still a bit unsure about the whole thing but as usual got caught up in Alan’s enthusiasm and found myself thinking “we might actually be able to do this” which is how we ended up living in Spain for three years but that’s a whole other story.

eBay

Every time I looked at Alan’s computer screen, there were various pictures of motorhomes, maps of campsites, instructions for emptying cassette toilets (more on that later), grey and black water tanks etc etc etc.

We even started talking in terms of “when we are away travelling”

Then we talked about the kind of van we would need. Cheap was the first word that came to mind but it turns out cheap isn’t really a word you see in the same sentence as Motorhome.

We decided we definitely needed a proper bed – I’m not one for rearranging cushions to make a bed and crawling into a sleeping bag – I like a proper bed – memory foam mattress etc so that was first on the list.

Then we wanted  a separate toilet/shower, a decent sized and well equipped kitchen and of course a separate living area.

OK, so I gather one of these won't fit the bill?
OK, so I guess one of these won’t fit the bill then?

Sounds straightforward enough doesn’t it – it wasn’t – we looked at hundreds of vans and discounted them all for one reason or another.

Eventually though we found “the one” – a 30 foot custom built motorhome on a Mercedes lorry base listed on eBay. We were the highest bidders (lucky us) and immediately started making plans to collect our prize from Cumnock in Scotland.