Young couple sell everything to buy van and travel around Europe with their daughter

Family of three sold their house and all their furniture to go travel around Europe!

Meg and Josh sold all of their possession to buy a van and travel around Europe with their four-year-old daughter, Marlowe.

It was just months ago when she and her partner Josh sold their house and furniture. We are essentially living in a bathroom” says Meg Ward.

They packed up ‘13 years of family life’ into storage and headed off to tick off a bucket list dream. 

Attracted to the sense of freedom that van life provides – Meg says it was also an opportunity to give daughter Marlowe new experiences.

“It’s quite daunting, selling all your things. But it’s exhilarating, the sense of freedom you get from it, it’s brilliant.”

Already huge in the USA and Australia, the trend has become increasingly popular in the UK, the pandemic possibly provided a boost!

According to Auto Trader the demand for commercial vehicles is up 57% year on year. In its recent survey, the advertising website found more than half of new van buyers said they wanted a van for personal use such as hobbies, traveling and converting.

The hashtag #vanlife on Instagram brings up more than 8 million posts, showcasing some of the trendiest, luxurious converted vans parked up in some breath-taking locations.

“There are two main customer bases,” says Emily Cotgrove, who runs Vanlife Conversions in Essex with her partner Oli, an Army veteran.

Present the couple with a commercial van and they will convert it for you for upwards of £28,000.

“One [market] is like the 25 to 35s, maybe they work remotely and want to travel while they work. They might see they can now work from anywhere. And the other target market are the older generation who
would have looked at motorhomes in the past.”

Emily believes that coronavirus has had a huge impact on the demand for recent van conversions as staycations and remote working boom. She says “Before Covid we had a 6-8 month waiting list, now we are fully booked up for 18 months.”

For many people paying for a conversion is simply unaffordable. Loads of people are choosing taking up the project themselves and convert them on a low budget.

As the UK prepares to face a winter of being cooped up indoors amid lockdown restrictions, the thought of spending any time in a even smaller space might not sound too attractive.

But on the flip side, perhaps van life chimes well with that shift to simpler living that many saw during the national lockdown? “It’s a nice exercise to live in a van and live with less,” says Meg. “I would definitely recommend it.”