Make Your Own Microcamper: Part 1 - Car Free
How running helped me face my fear of driving...and how to make a family "micro-campervan" on a budget
I’m sorry for the lack of newsletter last week. The weather forecast was so nice, and I had an offer of extra childcare for the solstice, so I took myself off to the Yorkshire Dales for a couple of days running. My friend Ryk Downes, one of the directors of the Punk Panther Endurance Events company, had decided to run the whole of Wainwright’s ‘Pennine Journey’: a 247-mile loop from Settle up via the eastern side of the Pennines to Hadrian’s Wall, and back down to Settle via the Pennines’ western side, through the Eden Valley and round the Howgills. What an incredible adventure!
I drove over to the Dales after dropping the kids at school, met Ryk in Warcop and ran with him down towards Kirkby Stephen; then camped for the night in Sedbergh. It was utterly glorious! The following day, I ran on my own, taking a fabulous 10-mile route from Sedbergh up Arant Haw, Bram Rigg Top and The Calf (the highest peak in the Howgill Fells), and then back via Winder and a really cool, fast descent down the ridge back into Sedbergh. It was close to 30 degrees, but luckily I love running in the heat, and I cooled off in the River Dent, where I wished Ryk good luck for his final thirty-odd miles of his adventure (which he completed to perfection – despite those final miles containing the Yorkshire Peaks of Whernside and Inglebrough). Amid all of this excitement, I’m afraid I forgot my newsletter. If it’s any consolation, I also forgot to do Wordle – thereby ending a 130-day streak 😡
It was wonderful to be able to do something so spontaneous. Now that I’m a widow with 3 children, and no family members to help out, it’s usually extremely hard to get a night away on my own, and it requires much advance planning. But last week, everything fell into place relatively effortlessly. I’ve missed that freedom more than I can say.
Childcare aside, it’s become easier to be spontaneous since I’ve transformed my car into a “micro-campervan” – and this is the subject of this week’s newsletter.
Car Free: How running helped me face my fear of driving
Cars haven’t always meant freedom to me. I didn’t learn to drive until my thirties. This was partly because I couldn’t afford lessons; partly because I lived in cities with excellent public transport and cycle routes, and a car – and the costs of upkeep, insurance and tax – seemed like an unnecessary (and polluting) burden which would prevent me from having a drink; and partly because the thought of moving faster than 20 mph terrified me. When, finally, I did decide to take driving lessons, it was because I was pregnant with my first child and I worried that, instead of a car being a constriction, now my inability to drive might itself become constricting; that I’d be facing a future of struggling with a buggy and shopping bags on rammed buses.
I passed my test, but I rarely drove for years afterwards. It turned out that I preferred to struggle with a buggy and shopping bags on rammed buses than to contend either with finding parking spaces or with the petrifying fear I felt whenever I got behind the wheel. I remember reading a statistic about how, if you ask British drivers, around 80% of them will say that they’re an “above average driver” – which is, of course, impossible – but I was acutely conscious of being, not just a “below average” driver, but a totally shit one. My racing heart and shaking hands dulled my response times, and I often had anxiety-drenched moments – usually on the approach to roundabouts – when I completely blanked about which pedal did what, or which way had priority, and came to an abrupt halt. So I gave up, bought a bike trailer, and then, after my twins were born, we got a cargo bike, which was much easier to take around York’s congested medieval streets than the car. Compared to public transport – on which I could read and write – driving seemed to be a waste of potentially productive time. And anyway, my husband preferred to drive rather than be a passenger (which made him car-sick) and I preferred to map-read, so, even on longer journeys, there was little need for me to drive .
What finally made me face my fear and get to grips with driving was, somewhat ironically, running. But not at first. I started trail-running in earnest in 2017, and for the first four years, I resolutely refused to drive in pursuit of my new hobby. I planned training runs in the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors around complicated combinations of bus and train timetables. When I was going to events or races, I either travelled up by public transport the night before and stayed in a hostel, or I asked on running forums if I could lift-share with other competitors. There were some tight moments – in one particular race, I realised I would have to run faster than I’d ever done before in order to make my train home (and I placed 4th female because of it!) – but generally it worked OK. I even organised one-to-one camping weekends away with each of my daughters, which were entirely facilitated by rural buses, with my ultralight tent, camping mats, sleeping bags, clothes, cooking equipment and waterproofs stuffed into my backpack.
Then I transitioned from marathon-distance races (which tend to start around 9am, and could be reached by the first bus or train of the day) to ultra-distance events (which started before public transport had got going). I moved house and my sources of lifts dried up, and I finally accepted that I was going to have to drive myself to races. But soon afterwards I did a very painful 60-mile ultra-marathon, on which I seriously struggled, and finished, exhausted and disheartened, in torrential rain and darkness – and I had to drive 2 hours home in the middle of the night. I had to keep pulling over for caffeine to stop myself from falling asleep and to help myself focus on the lights that quavered and bent in the rain. I did get home in one piece, but it had been scary, and I felt stuck. How could I do such long events, which I loved, but which often ended at unpredictable and ungodly hours in remote locations with no accommodation, when I wasn’t safe to drive afterwards? How could I facilitate the freedom I found in running long distances?
And then it struck me: I needed a campervan. Genius. Sorted.
Or not.
Because I searched on AutoTrader, and could not believe what I was seeing. I thought I must have entered the wrong search terms. These things seemed to cost the same as a small flat in my area. How could a car – sorry, van – cost so much money? Admittedly my requirements were quite specific. If this was going to replace our car, then I needed something that could accommodate 3 children, all in high-backed booster seats, as well as 2 adults. But still – no way was I spending over £50,000 on a second-hand lump of metal which would still evoke fear every time I sat in it. And I realised that I didn’t really want to be driving around – and trying to park – something so massive.
Then a friend mentioned that she knew someone who came along to camping trips in a “micro-camper”. She described how it was a normal-sized (and normal-priced) car, which could fit 3 children in car seats on the back row during regular day-to-day use, and could be converted into a camper-van for holidays, for relatively little cost. A-ha! THIS is what I wanted!
I joined numerous micro-camper Facebook groups, and I obsessively read and noted members’ posts. And in November 2021, after much research, I bought a second-hand Citroen Berlingo. It is not a sexy car. It is a car that Jeremy Clarkson described as “emphatically not a car for enthusiasts”, which takes so long to accelerate to 60mph that the driver will “have died from old age” first. But, these things aside, he concluded that the Berlingo was “more in tune with the needs of more people than just about any other car out there” and “easily the most comfortable car any money can buy this side of a Rolls-Royce Phantom.” You can pick one up on Auto-Trader for £1000 upwards (and sometimes less, although obvs I can’t vouch for the quality!). And guess what? from the off, I’ve loved driving my Berlingo. It is solid and dependable, like a tractor. It definitely feels like driving a car, rather than a van; it’s incredibly light and airy, with massive windscreen and windows; and the boot space is enormous – you can easily wheel multiple bikes into it. Perhaps it’s the Berlingo – or perhaps it’s the SSRIs I’ve been taking since my husband’s death – but my driving anxiety has all-but-disappeared, and I’ve become a much better, more focused, aware, responsive driver because of it. Which is lucky, because now I do a helluva lot of ferrying children to clubs and classes.
Since November 2021, I’ve been converting and tweaking our Berlingo into a fully-functional micro-camper. My aim, when I first bought it, was to create a camper that would facilitate my own solitary running trips. But my husband died just 2 months after I bought the car. At first, I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever have the energy or desire to do something as dynamic (and exhausting) as family camping ever again. But I’ve written on here before about the meanings that camping holds for many women, and the pleasures I found in it after Pete died. So, once I felt strong enough to contemplate taking the kids on outdoor adventures again, the goal regarding the Berlingo changed: now it was to create a micro-camper with which I could achieve a full family camping set-up (including loading the car at home; unloading it at our destination; and setting up sleeping and eating arrangements for 3 kids and 1 adult) on my own in under an hour.
Last weekend, I achieved that goal.
My Berlingo is my personal geeky foible. I’m not knowledgeable or interested in driving in general, or in car mechanics, or in “normal” cars - and I’d never expected that I’d be writing about one, ffs. But a car that does something extra, a car that converts into a mini-hotel, seems to me to be a very different and much cooler story, and it taps into my predilections for problem-solving, interior design and making stuff.
Recently, quite a few people – at running events; at campsites; friends; passers by – have been intrigued and impressed by our microcamper: at its storage, and the speed and ease of our set-up. So it occurs to me that some of you might be interested in the research I’ve done, and in the products I’ve bought and made and fitted, which have created us a family micro-camper for a helluva LOT less money than a second-hand “proper” camper-van.
So over the coming days, I’ll be writing a “how to” guide - with photos, links, and instructions - about making your own micro-camper.