The first half of our trip was in a campervan – we’d never used one of these before and wanted to try it out.  The upshot of our experience was that it’s good – convenient to have everything laid out, easy to stop and have a sleep, sit or eat without the need to put up a tent.  The van is a bit cumbersome to drive around, but not as much as you’d think.

We brought a tent and sleeping bags intending to camp, but the number of midges and the clumsiness of having a tent – especially in the rain – has finished off that idea.  We will use hostels/motels/bed and breakfast in the latter part of the trip.  The cost of eating out, rather than self-catering in the van, offsets the lesser cost of a car.

I’d rather have a slightly bigger van – this one has virtually no spare room when the bed is down, making it a little inconvenient.  Otherwise the whole experience was a good one.

The next bright idea was to put everything we used in the van into separate cardboard boxes to make it easier to handle in the car.  This turned out to work well.