Quote Originally Posted by wheezing donkey View Post
I'm 60 this year and the SO is 62. We've done 15 consecutive nights sleeping in the van ( island hopping the full length of the Outer Hebrides & visiting the highest point of every accessible island ) and Daz h will tell you that it's not a fancy, umpteen thousand pound, professionally converted van - just a set of luggage crates with inflatable mattresses over them and a hinge-down stove on the back door. Only two of those 15 nights were on official campsites! Had a similar 9 day trip to the Orkneys plus a full tour of the Brittany coastline!
I think ZHR's post above fully outlines the basic weakness - too many people are 'comfort driven'.
Boil up a kettle of water on the stove and use it to take the chill of a builder's bucket half full of cold water?? Wonderfully versatile piece of kit is a builder's bucket!!
One very successful lady fell runner lived in her VW campervan for 3 months, in a layby just outside of Kendal, when her first marriage broke down - read "Feet in the Clouds".
I was talking about weeks and months at a time - living in the thing, not just a couple of weeks here and there.

Do you want to live on a mattress and some pallets for a year WD? Come back and tell us about it afterwards.

Now having a tent in the back of a van to camp with qualifies as some sort of namby-pamby comfort-driven lifestyle ... perhaps I'll just find myself a cave, eh?