• The longer you spend as a vanlifer, the more you'll revisit the definition of a 'clean jumper’. 
  
• You’ll become a freshwater ninja, jumping in and out of petrol stations, public toilets, and schmoozing friendly gardeners to fill your water tank. 
  
• Meteor showers and new moons will become key dates in your diary, as you talk wistfully about the passing seasons to anyone who’ll listen.
  
• You’ll acquire Level One Hobbit culinary skills as you mix incompatible foods for a meal that will never see Instagram. 
  
• You will frequently see your human waste a second time. Say goodbye to not worrying where last night’s curry went. 
  
• How much life is left in your leisure battery will become an unhealthy obsession that will make or break your entire day. 
  
• Compact or foldable gadgets will hold the same fascination to you as hair gel did in your teens. 

Overcoming the Vanlife Stereotype

Perhaps you love the idea of roaming free around the Highlands in a campervan, or maybe the thought is somewhere between a root canal treatment and taking out the bins. Either way, you'd be surprised at the diversity of free spirits who take up this lifestyle and love it.

As I ventured out more and more in my campervan, the allure of full-time van life grew. I did, however, struggle with the preconceptions that many cast upon this ‘unorthodox lifestyle’. We seem to have a choice of being either chirpy digital nomads in dazzling white wood-panelled rigs, or painted as society dropouts.

If you ask the average person ‘Who does Van life?’, they’ll likely come up with one of the two. But the label “vanlifer” tells you as much about a person as calling someone a “house-dweller” or a “car-owner.” It’s a mere descriptor, not a defining narrative.

Allsorts ...

Since COVID struck, traders' reports show that motorhome and campervan sales have continued to increase year on year, with 13% of the UK population stating that part-time or full-time vanlife is a personal goal. That's a considerable kaleidoscope of ages and backgrounds that you just can’t fit into two tiny boxes.

This diversity is mirrored within the current van life community; from those who don’t or can’t work, to vets who travel from farm to farm, and tradesmen who go where the work is. I’ve also met quite a few therapists and business consultants who work remotely, and a plethora of tech gurus, VAs and creatives, happily tip-tapping away to the world on their laptops.

Every one of them has a different story of how they came to be vanlifers. On my travels, I’ve met:

• - Widows and widowers continuing a life they once enjoyed with their partners.
• - Lone travellers, newly freed from a bad life situation, exploring their independence.
• - Part-time vanlifers, enjoying a break from the hustle and bustle of their professional lives.
• - Mavericks - who just want a life free of societal obligations and expectations.
• - Families in financial difficulty, or saving for a house deposit.
• - Retired couples who have decided to enjoy their autumn years on wheels.

…in a nutshell, people like you, like me, who just want ‘different’.

Swings and Roundabouts

But it’s not all practising Tai Chi on the beach at dawn (Although it is, sometimes :).

Often, when your pants have been drying on your indoor washing line for two days because you’ve run out of solar power for the heating, you’re low on water for your morning cuppa, and down to your last toilet roll, hours from civilisation, it’s not the most comfortable life. But it can be a rich one, with each journey as utterly unique as its driver.

Wanderjahre: The Modern Journeyman

When I lived in Germany many years ago, I witnessed the tail-end of young people taking up their Wanderjahre, or ‘Journeyman’ years. This tradition – dating back to medieval times - was a rite of passage for fresh-faced young Germans who would head out into the unknown, picking up odd jobs to earn their keep before returning home, a little older and wiser.

In the same way, vanlifers often choose this lifestyle in response to a feeling that ‘there’s got to be more’, looking to gain a greater sense of their place in the world. To be fair, it can be too easy to get so caught up in our busy lives that we quite forget to live them. Van life, I think, offers a route to remembering.

Growth is a lifetime endeavour, and at any age, it can crack open your world and rewrite your inner story. Whatever a mixed bag we may all be, most seem to share the same quiet love for the natural world: golden sunsets; the smell of the forest in the morning, and a sense of unadulterated peace, far from civilisation - or as far as you can get in Scotland, which is, admittedly, not very.

So, who does vanlife?

Anyone who chooses it. No label - or burning reason - required.