Our last few weeks could have been described with one word: logistics. Neither of us has ever prepared for a trip of this magnitude or prepared the cat for her biggest adventure yet! We learnt one thing: Allow twice as much time to pack and organise than you think you need.

We started with listing everything we could think of in a separate categories, assigned owners and put due dates…sounds familiar?! Whilst we tried to keep to our planned schedule with plenty of spare time, we didn’t avoid doing things last minute. This included updating Sylwia’s passport with her married name, driver’s license and van re-registration papers…

Preparing the vehicle

We bought the van last summer with a view of converting it into a campervan for little surfing and kite-surfing trips out of London. Rupert has done his last van conversion himself but with a full time job – this would have proven a challenge so we asked a company in Brighton to help us design our camper of dreams.

Here’s a posey photo taken when we first got it….August 2015.

Murphy, as we affectionally called it, is a short-wheel based Ford Transit Custom. It fits in a regular parking space so there’s limited space to play with when it comes to conversion. We needed a bed, a kitchenette, some cupboards and, of course – windows at the back & rear. The conversion took a few weeks more than we anticipated (can you sense a theme here?) but we were very pleased with the result. Picture below doesn’t really do it justice but it does feel like a second home and we’re absolutely elated to be able to spend our summer in it.

Next was organising our clothes and other belongings… I am not sure if it warrants a whole load of narrative around but let’s just say it took a few fair goes to whittle the shoes and clothes down to bare minimum (not an easy challenge, especially for a woman!).

All in all the prep was a logistical challenge, as you may imagine but it taught us a few lessons that will sure come useful along the way.