What’s the scariest thing about going full-time in a van?
Are you full time in your Campervan or Motorhome? Would you like to go full time, but have doubts?
Then read on because I have the article for you. This will cover some of the most common ‘fears’ that real people had before taking the plunge and how they compared once they had done it.
Prefer to watch rather than read? You can see the video of these interviews here
I also asked the same group what vanlife meant to them, click here to read that article!
Giving it all up isn’t as easy as it sounds
On the surface, leaving your house and moving into a van sounds amazing! The freedom, the simplicity, the adventure!
But if you stop to think about it, there is a fair bit to do before heading off into the sunset. And the further into the process you get, the more doubt might start to set in.
I asked a whole bunch of ‘full-timers’ what scared them most about going full-time.
What were they anxious about? What were their fears? Let's see what they had to say.
Liam The Terrible
Liam has lived full-time, in a variety of vehicles, for over 6 years. He is currently converting his next home on wheels.
‘Well, it's strange because I never planned on going full-time. I had a camper van anyway and I just happened to end up in a situation where I had nowhere to live briefly, it just happened.
The thing that I was most bothered about when I did move into it was where to park and all that kind of thing, like probably most people [worry about].
I soon got over that after a couple of months. Then, the biggest issue I've had is other people's opinions of it, but they don't really matter to me too much’
Courts and Meeks
Courts and Meeks live in their motorhome. The self confessed ‘orange couple’ are both digital nomads and enjoy 9 months of each year travelling far and wide.
Courts: ‘For me, before we moved into the van, the van getting stolen was quite a worry, and I guess it is still quite a concern. It can happen, but we've kind of settled into the rhythm now.
You can't live your life in fear, you can do everything you can to protect it and put security on it.’
Meeks: ‘We're in it all the time as well. So someone would have to kick us out to steal it! For me it was that I didn't know where people parked outside of campsites.
I thought, do people just park in motorway laybys? Until we found Park4Night and the other apps like that, I was just like, I don't know how we're going to do this.’
C: ‘It was a completely new thing for us.’
Greg Virgo
Greg and his partner Lou have been full time in their self-build van for over 4 years. They love to travel across the water, chasing the sun!
‘It's a big jump giving up your house, isn't it? I think that's the biggest thing. You've got security in your bricks and mortar, and then it's “what if your van's going to break down or what if it gets stolen”. I think it’s just a leap of faith isn’t it.
Initially, that was probably the scariest thing, but since we’ve been doing it, we've been loving it!’
Bruce Lauderdale
Bruce is a photographer and van electrician who lives in his self converted Ducato.
‘Finding an income, number one, and having a place to sleep. That was the number one thing that I did on the van was the bed, just so that I could have a comfortable sleep. If I'm tired, I'm miserable!’
Globetreka Travels
Alan has been living and travelling in a campervan for over 14 years! He loves the freedom and different experiences the lifestyle brings, he also enjoys spending winter in Morocco!
‘I have to be honest, I don't think I've ever been in that situation. I had my first camper, which was an old hippie Volkswagen when I was 19. And when you're 19, you're invincible, aren't you? You know, anything goes. So, I've never really been in that situation and 50 years later, I'm still doing it.
When you talk to people, particularly if they're just starting, it tends to be the park ups [they worry about]. You know, from a security point of view, “where do we park?”
And then it comes down to the services, the utilities, because, okay, you're saying it's safe, but then where do we get water? Where do we empty the waste? And it's those sorts of things that tend to put a lot of people into campsites.
Which is fine, but then they never really truly experience vanlife. To be honest, it's one of those situations where every day is a school day.
Every time you speak to somebody, they'll have a different point of view or a different way of looking at things. Maybe they've got a different idea or trick or whatever.
It's just building up knowledge, isn't it really?
I think particularly, once you start going abroad, maybe those fears are accentuated because then you've got language problems as well.’
Travel Trolls
Dan and Mazzy have been full-time in their Hymer Motorhome for quite a few years, enjoying travels all over the UK.
Dan: ‘The only real fear for me was the size. I'd never driven anything bigger than a metro.’
Mazzy: ‘The only fear was spending the money on that [the motorhome] and not testing it before, I could have made a massive mistake, maybe we should have got a property? But no. No regrets!’
Manchester Vanlife
Bri, known as Manchester Vanlife, lives in his converted van with his dog, Buddy.
‘Park ups [were my worry]. I watched your videos, and it made me feel a bit better. I spend lots of time in the peak district, so yeah, urban park ups were more scary.’
Camper Vibe
Camper vibe are Emily and Louise, an adventure couple who travel with their Cat and Dog in their converted relay. They are not full-time but do spend the majority of the year travelling all over Europe.
Louise: ‘Definitely travelling with pets 100%. When I'm going to the lesser known countries, with our dog and our cat, because we travel with both of them.
Any kind of trouble or situation or paperwork issue that I can't get would definitely scare me about full time travelling the van.’
What about travelling as a couple?
I asked Emily, the other half of Camper Vibe, the same question separately and her answer did not disappoint,
Emily: ‘Living with Louise that whole time, and that's the truth! Genuinely.
Obviously I love her to pieces and I love her dearly, but we are very different people. We do like to have our own space.
So to be in this tiny van together for that long, I think it's gonna be hard. I'm not worried about that [park ups] at all. Not at all. It's the space for sure.’
Pack the Van and Go
Rob moved into his self-build campervan a couple of years with his dog Archie and enjoys the peace and solitude it brings.
‘There's nothing that intimidated or scared me. You know with my [military] background, I've always been quite a recluse in a way.
I've always been very happy with my own company. I've always gone backpacking, travelling all around the world and all that sort of stuff so going full-time, selling the house, was never an issue.
I loved being away by myself. Just me and the dog parked up, and I think when I first got to invite you to a meet up, where I met a lot of people, it was pretty intimidating.
But when I arrived and then actually met everybody, it was like, yay. Why was I worrying?
The person that invited me then came up to me and she goes, “you know, the reason why we got you there is literally to make you realise that selling the house going full-time was the best decision you could possibly make”
And since that day, the 16th April, every time I meet that person, I say thank you. It's been the best thing I've ever done and I've had an amazing experience.’
Life Beyond Bricks
Tash, Jon and their 3 cats make up Life Beyond Bricks. They sold their house in March 2019 to travel full-time in a Motorhome and have never looked back!
Tash: ‘Parking up and being disturbed [was my fear]. And, I'm being completely honest, the toilet! Like a non-flushing toilet and running out of resources [was also another fear].'
Mali Mish
Mali Mish are a Family of 5 who have been living on the road since 2008! They have travelled 49 U.S. states and 41 countries across 4 continents.
Dan: ‘Okay so in 2008 there wasn’t a lot of information online to find out what this lifestyle is like. So it wasn't necessarily about being scared back then, it was just there was a lot of unknowns.
Like, we don't know if people are doing this, let alone are families doing this. And even to this day, there's not very many families that do this.
You know, there's a lot of families that will go on holiday for a couple months here and there, but there's not a lot of families, relatively speaking, that full-time.
Especially going international, travelling like we do. It was just the difficulty of gathering the knowledge that we needed. Over time, that's obviously gotten easier.’
Marlene: ‘As a new parent, I think for me though, I was scared to not have grandparents around to help out. Like Dan's working and I have a baby and he's busy working and I have no back up. Then we got used to that. We got used to giving each other breaks.’
Philip Tomlinson
Phil spends anywhere from 3 to 6 months on the road exploring in his Motorhome. He also runs the successful Motorhomer.com forum and spends time marshalling and attending rallies.
‘Well, I was full-time when I was 18, so, okay. I was made homeless, so I didn't really have one [a fear]. I was thrown into doing it because I didn't have anywhere to live.
The biggest fear on the road, I suppose, is your vulnerability when you're sleeping, you know, when you're, when you're in bed of a night in a layby or somewhere like that.
I can tell you, what I've found is that it's an unfounded fear. In all the years, it's 30 years now that I've been wild camping in a van and parking in laybys and other places, I've only ever been woken up twice.
Both times was by the police and both times was because it was below minus 10 and they thought that we might be dead.
With running the wild camping forum, which is the largest wild camping forum in the world, I can tell you now that even over the 18 years that we've been running it for, there have been very, very few instances.
The other thing is, listen to your inner voice. If you pull up and you think, I don't like this, just move on. And so the second rule that goes with that is don't arrive late.
Try and get somewhere at the end of the afternoon if you can before everybody turns up. So if you have gotta move on, you've got time to do it and find somewhere else to park.’
She is the Lost Girl
Beth and her partner Jake moved into their self converted van after many years of backpacking. For them, moving into a campervan was the opposite of most people’s experience.
Beth: ‘Nothing really scared us. I've been travelling full-time for almost seven years, six years, two months, and before we moved into the van, we were both backpacking and that's how we met. So Van Life was actually the complete opposite.
It was kind of like finding a base and it was an easier option than keeping doing what we were already doing.’
Jake: ‘The most fearing, like the most worrying thing was having the van stolen. But then we found out that most vans were stolen at nighttime and since we’re full-time, we were always going to be in the van.
The Offgrid Nomad
The Offgrid Nomad, A.K.A Paul, lives in his overlander vehicle, custom built to his specification.
‘Nothing really [worried me], I was pretty lucky. The only thing I did notice, and I still get it now, the only thing that freaks me out sometimes is when you go to too quiet of a place.
See, I live on an industrial estate while I'm at work and then when I've, and it's just noise all around me. Then I travel from there, my first night away, wherever I park is always quiet. So the one little noise I'm like, oh, I've woken up, what's that?
I've only had one bad experience in all my time and that was in Thetford Forest where I had a whole group of cars pull around me. It was a famous dogging spot, I knew it was because I found all the evidence, they must have thought I was entertainment!
Apart from that, I've never [had a problem]. I think with this truck it's more intimidating to people because it's so high as well.
But I've never had a knock on a door. I've been pretty lucky. I've heard some horror stories before but no, I've been lucky.
I encourage people to go to places where there's other campers. Go next to somebody and just get used to it.’
CLR Travels
Callum and Tash travel in their converted van with their cat Rosie
Tash: ‘For me, I don't think I had any fears at all. It was just excitement.’
Callum: ‘Yeah. It's just a new journey, isn't it? We are super spontaneous and we wing it, like we winged the build. We had no experience when we did it. We had no plans, no design.
Tash: ‘Even when we're travelling places, we don't really set out where we are going. Not We're literally just day on day. We're not worried about where we're gonna park. It's gonna be okay. We literally don't worry about it, we're in no rush.
Callum: ‘If we find out that a place isn't good, we'll just move on to the next spot. Touch wood, we haven't had to do that yet.’
The Rucks
The Rucks are a family of 5 who travel in their motorhome.
Stu: ‘[I’m] definitely better than you because I'm more relaxed. So that's one for you to answer.
Charlie: ‘Okay so, wild camping, everyone knows how much I hate it. I've freaked out. I definitely lost sleep over that one.
Stu: ‘You struggle to relax, don't you?’
Charlie: ‘I really, really struggle. I'm alright till about eight o'clock and then bedtime comes and then I think, oh no. What if I'm gonna get moved on? I've got my pjs on, my hair's a mess.
Or the other thing is washing. It's not just the washing, it's the toilet as well. Because what if the toilet gets really full and I can't take a poo when I need to? That is actually a big one!
Stu: ‘Priorities!’
Charlie: ‘We've been campsite people so far. We've done like the odd wild night in the week. or a couple of offgrid nights. We'll be like, its alright, you can empty the toilet in a few days time. No bother.
Stu: ‘There's a couple of things here then isn’t there.’
Charlie: ‘There's a lot actually. Sorry Daz!’
No Noise Allowed
Scott was full-time for a while in his converted sprinter with his rescue dog Turco.
‘I think for me, quite honestly, it's whether the dog would adapt to it. I've had him for about five years now. So the more daunting thing [was] how would he deal with travelling and being on the road and being left in the van? At the very rare times I do leave him in the van.
Obviously there's the other ones about where do you park up and the obvious answers, but I think that was my main concern.’
Terry and Lisa
Terry and Lisa moved into their A Class Frankia full time a couple of years ago. Currently, they have switched it up and have a caravan on the campsite they are minding and a small campervan for adventures.
Terry: ‘I suppose, being so used to having a base, having that security, you know. That's your King's castle kind of thing. Your security, your safety net. Yeah.
Lisa: ‘But we are glad we done it.
T: ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’
Conclusion - Is it worth it?
There you go! There were quite a range of answers.
I think the most popular responses were park ups, sleeping, and the van getting broken into or stolen. I had the same worry before I went full time. But I know I can go back to every single one of them full-timers and they are all loving vanlife.
They all absolutely adore it and I don't think any of them would change it.
I've been doing Van Life now for over 6 years and I've never had a problem parking up or sleeping.
I've got hours of free videos for you to watch on how to find park ups, how to empty your toilet, where to empty toilet, where to get water etc. Click here for the playlist. I've also got posts on here where I share tips like my essential gadgets, how to find water when you live in a van and how to stay warm in winter.
I will also be transcribing those videos in to articles for the readers out there.
Don’t be shy, ask away
That's just me, if you look at all the other creators in this video, you'll find so much information if you are just staring or want to start vanlife.
If you’ve still got questions, leave them in the comments below. I’m always happy to answer any queries or questions!