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Read our story for the good, the bad & the reality of selling up to live in a motorhome
Selling everything to live in a motorhome or campervan is a bold, life-changing move. It’s more than just ditching the mortgage and packing up your stuff – it’s about embracing freedom, chasing adventure, and diving headfirst into the unknown.
But even if you’ve been dreaming about it for ages, making that final leap is anything but easy. We know because we did it. We sold up, quit the rat race, and hit the road to explore Europe one mile at a time. It was exhilarating, challenging, and nothing like we expected.
In this post, we’re spilling the beans on the highs, the lows, and the lessons learned. Ready to find out if you’ve got what it takes to live life on the road? Let’s get into it!
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Our Story
Back in 2015, life was pretty good. Heading towards our fifties, we were halfway through a house renovation in southern England, the third we had tackled.
Phil had been out of the Army for three years after a 25-year military career and was working as a building inspector for the local authority.
I was climbing my way up the corporate ladder, working as a senior operations director for a large care home company.
We were earning good money, took fantastic holidays and drove good cars.
The house renovations were going well, but then I was made redundant. It was a real blow, but I was soon in a similar but wider-ranging ops role for a start-up, buying and developing land for new care homes.
Probably a year or so in, I realised I’d made a big mistake. The people I was working for had different values to me, and I didn’t actually like them very much.
To cut a long story short, in 2018, we decided, after a random conversation in the bath and one of those real aha moments, to quit work and travel Europe in a motorhome for a few years.
That day, it had just clicked. If we didn’t have the house, the cars and the lifestyle, we didn’t need jobs to pay for them. It took a while to process and accept that realisation – that the model most people, including us, base their lives on, is flawed.
With that clarity, we could see we were running and running, just to keep still, and it was exhausting. The more we earned, the more we spent, and the more we thought we needed.
Having a job, a house and possessions are all things society says we should do. But what if all that stuff doesn’t make you happy? What if all that stuff traps you instead?
With the decision made, we realised the only feasible way to achieve our new dream was to sell the house we had completed renovating, and though we’d live in for at least 20 years.
We had no savings; all our money had gone into the house, and we didn’t want to rent it. We wanted to leave all our responsibilities behind.
Reading these first few paragraphs makes it sound like it was an easy decision. Believe me, there were many sleepless nights about whether we were doing the right thing.
But what we did realise was that we wanted to look back and know that we had lived life – instead of wondering “what if”.
We’d grown up in the Thatcher years when unemployment was part of the landscape – could we really head off into the sunset for two years and then pick ‘normal’ life up again?
We decided the only way to move forward was to own the decision and make it happen. Within a couple of weeks, the house was on the market.
Within a couple of months, we had bought a motorhome, and in a few more months, the house was sold. One sunny July morning, we stepped out of the door for the last time, and into our new motorhome life.
What did we love about motorhome life?
The feeling of freedom was indescribable. We had both started working in our teens and never stopped. As well as having jobs, we also renovated houses, so life really was a bit of a treadmill.
Not having to get up and go to work was an amazing feeling, and six years on still is.
The opportunity to try new things with no time constraints has been fantastic. We’ve kayaked our way around France, Phil has learnt to kite surf, we made our first forays into social media, and we started this motorhome blog.
We’ve climbed in Morocco, hiked volcanoes, learnt to stand up paddle and wild swum in fjords in Norway.
We’ve met amazing, incredible and fascinating people on the road and made friends for life. Our social life pre-travel was limited, to say the least!
We were always busy, they were always busy, and friendships just seemed to fizzle out. Now, everyone we meet is on our wavelength and gets our mindset, and we get theirs.
We’ve changed for the better – we are still the same, just slightly better versions of us. Stripped of the stress and intensity of work, which I often felt defined us, we are more relaxed. With that comes time to look around and see the wonder and diversity of our world and patience to understand what before was just different and misunderstood.
And of course, the places and destinations we have visited that we never would have travelled to before have wowed us. We feel so lucky to have visited so many diverse locations in a rapidly changing world.
What did we find challenging?
Van life can be tough. Once you remove the feelings of escape and freedom, which become pretty everyday feelings after a while, the daily routine can feel boring and a bit lacklustre. A bit like ‘normal life’, but with less space!
With that comes the inevitable “Did we make the right decision?” type of question.
The first year, when the clocks changed we were in Portugal, and I had a massive slump. Maybe a bit of seasonal affective disorder took hold at a time when the thrall of travel was starting to wane a bit and the light was changing.
When it gets dark at 5pm what do you do in a motorhome? I wanted to lie on my sofa in front of my wood-burning stove and watch my big TV before going to sleep in my large kingsize bed, and of course, not forgetting the warm bubble bath beforehand – all things camper vans don’t have 🙁
I sound like a right spoiled brat, and at time,s I felt like one! I seriously started to think we’d got it wrong when we left the motorhome in storage near Malaga Airport and flew back to the UK for Christmas with family.
In fact, we realised after two weeks in a house in the UK that we missed life on the road and couldn’t wait to get back.
We had set a budget before heading off but really struggled to stay within it. Living in a van cost more than we thought it would., especially when you add all those annual costs like servicing, insurance and flying home to see family and friends.
We probably could get by within budget if we lived really frugally and ate soup (homemade, of course!) for lunch every day.
But, if you’re having a rubbish day, going out for a pizza and a glass of wine can help you put the world to rights. Or if you’re in an amazing destination and want to take a guided tour, or a river cruise or visit a museum, but are worried about the cost it can spoil the experience.
We had some real humdinger arguments, which is hard in an enclosed space. Not having doors to slam, or a car to escape in when things overheat can make the frustrations of being cooped up on wet or cold days even harder.
On one occasion, we were staying in an aire in France, and I decided to take a long walk during a row. I ended up having to ring Phil because I got lost, and he had to come and rescue me! That’s one way to resolve a fall out!
Helpful Resources for Motorhome Life
What would we do differently?
To be honest, not that much! I wrote this several years ago, and since then, after 6 years on the road, our views have changed a little.
We tend to chuck ourselves at whatever we are doing, and I think because we owned the decision and gave it 100%, we overcame the initial hard times.
After about nine months, we realised that our plan of travelling for two years wouldn’t work. We loved being van lifers and wanted to keep going, keep exploring and never go back to work. I use the word “work”, but in reality, I mean the lifestyle that our soul-sucking jobs paid for.
We built The Gap Decaders website and a YouTube channel and have funded our life on the road through the business. I never even knew when we started that you could make money online – in fact, I’d never even used any social media, so it was a steep learning curve. But through sheer accident, we’ve found a job we love that we can do as digital nomads and that also pays the bills. We feel very fortunate.
We wish we had taken longer to plan and prepare between making the decision and going full-time. I think that maybe the regrets we have would be different if we’d have said, “ok, we’re doing this, but we’re going to keep working for another one to two years and really prepare for when we leave so we’re in the best possible position.”
We do wish that we’d taken longer to get the right van to live in. We both grew up in and around campervans, tents, caravans and motorhomes and thought we knew what we wanted, but ended up with an expensive van full of stuff to go wrong – gizmos and gadgets we just didn’t need.
A year in, we swapped that beautiful and shiny van for a much older motorhome that we were a lot less worried about damaging as we went off-grid wild camping. And within 4 years, we bought an overland truck so we could go further afield!
Our primary regret, though, is that we sold our house and didn’t buy another UK property. We invested the equity from our property and then, after a couple of years, bought a small off-grid house in Spain. We love it there, but as non-residents, we are limited to 183 days a year before we become fiscal residents.
Our life is now a hybrid of travel in our overland truck (which we built last year), motorbike travel and spending time at the house. But we are very conscious that at some point, we’ll want to buy a home in the UK, and prices have sky-rocketed since we sold up.
If we were having a beer together…
This is what we would say:
Still unsure?
We get that. This is a big step to take …a leap of faith. The key here is to research, research and then research some more.
Talk to your family and friends and make a list of pros and cons. Be really honest when you do this and think beyond the excitement of setting off, to the reality of full-time van life.
Perhaps talk to your employer and ask for a sabbatical for three or six months so you can dip a toe in the water and see how it feels.
Don’t take any significant steps that cannot be undone, such as selling your house or quitting your job, until you are sure that you are making the right decision and that you’re ready to own it 100%.
Check out the experiences of others who have shared their stories in The Gap Years Travel Series; you may find just the inspiration you need!
Good luck if you decide to go ahead – we’re always happy to answer questions, just drop us an email and tell us your plans!