Hello again everyone. We've just recently made a big but really exciting purchase.
We've bought a camper van!
Well it's actually not a camper van just yet, it's just an empty van,
but we're going to convert it into a wheelchair-accessible campervan. So this van
is a VW T6 Transporter van long wheelbase.
Transporters have quite low roofs as you can see,
I can't stand that properly in them. We did actually want
a bigger van than this, we wanted a Mercedes Sprinter or a VW Crafter.
So for those of you that have asked and have wondered, yes, Craig can drive
however he can only drive if the gearbox is automatic.
Now here in the UK most cars and vans have manual gearboxes
and we really, really struggled trying to find a Crafter or a Sprinter
that had an automatic gearbox that also was of the right age,
and mileage and condition and everything we wanted. So because we
couldn't find that, we ended up broadening our search and we
found out that transporters are much more widely available in automatic
than any of the other vans. So we do still want a larger van,
something like a Crafter or a Sprinter, but because we can't find one second
hand we're going about ordering a new one.
But, because of the current situation with things like coronavirus
ordering a new van takes a really long time we're talking probably six months
to a year and we want something we can use now
since we can't go to New Zealand or do our other travel plans that we had.
There are a couple of benefits to having a smaller van though.
First of all it is much easier to drive and park.
Neither of us have really had much experience driving large vehicles,
so it's definitely nice to get used to a smaller vehicle that's easier to drive
before we progress onto a massive van. We can actually park
in a normal parking space with just a little bit
hanging over the edge, we wouldn't be able to do that at all in a bigger van,
we'd have to find somewhere else to park so that's really nice and also that it
is lower means that we can get underneath some height barriers which we
also wouldn't be able to do in a high roof van.
So it's definitely a nice stepping stone to sort of get used to driving a van
before we then progress onto a much bigger van that will be a
nightmare to drive. We're going to be attempting this conversion ourselves
and we have little to no DIY experience, so the other reason we chose a
transporter in particular, is because they are probably the most
common campervan in the UK, which means it's really easy to find
pre-made parts for the transporter. For example you can get pre-cut floors,
pre-cut walls, and lots of furniture which is designed
to fit exactly in a transporter, which makes the conversion a hell of a
lot easier, especially as it's our first time converting a van.
So right now I have to transfer into the van. So into the back of the van
it's not too bad the floor of the van is a similar height to my wheelchair
so it's a relatively level transfer, so that's fine.
The front however is a different story.
So if I want to transfer into the front i need to go from here
up to about here and that is a lot harder. It is possible but it puts a lot
of strain on my shoulders. We have thought about solutions to get into the
van, we've considered getting a lift, but we want to avoid that because
they're expensive, they're bulky and they are prone to
breakdowns quite often, so we want to avoid that as much as
possible. Another idea we had was putting in an underfloor ramp, but because the
ceiling height in the transporter is so low,
if we add an underfloor ramp that would raise the height of the floor
and that would mean we'd be hitting our heads on the ceiling all the time,
so that's also something we want to avoid. So
we're still thinking of another solution, if anyone has any suggestions then
please let us know, we'd really like to hear them. So we're going to be
making videos as we go along documenting our progress.
Now this isn't by any means going to be a how-to guide on how to convert a
campervan, I mean, neither of us really have any DIY
experience or really know what we're doing, we're actually
going to be watching a lot of YouTube videos along the way and learning as we
go, but we feel like this could be a good
guide to show you know that hopefully it is possible
for someone in a wheelchair and as a couple where neither of us have
DIY experience to convert a campervan. So stick with us on the journey and
hopefully we'll show you that it is possible if you were thinking about
doing it yourselves.