It Started with a Van: 'We turned an old carpenter's van into a camper, drove to Lake Como and changed our lives'

“He gets lots of ideas from nowhere really,” she explains, with a gentle laugh in her husband’s direction. “Campervanning isn’t something I’d really considered. We'd never talked about it before. It wasn't something we'd ever done... But I didn't really think too much of it at the very beginning, I thought I'd leave Andrew to it.”

Three years later, the Barnsley couple are out on the road at two different campsites every week, juggling working life in IT (Claire) and as a guitar teacher (Andy) with exploring new places all over the country. “And we're still discovering more,” reflects Andy, speaking from a campsite in the Peak District. “England and Scotland and Wales, these places that we've been to, they're so beautiful and places I think a lot of the time you just fly over and don't get into.

“When you first start doing that, it's exciting. You see all these different places. Then when you're out every week, it's like, oh yeah, we're back at the seaside or in the countryside. But now after three years of doing it, you can really appreciate each different area of the UK and how the landscape is different and the culture is different and the food is different. You get to have a real appreciation of where you live.”

Andy and Claire, both 48, have recently released a book documenting the start of their journey. It Started with a Van: A true story of a home on wheels built on hope, carpet glue and decent brews tells the tale of how a faulty Mercedes, a bolt that took two weeks and an angle grinder to remove, and a YouTube channel that started with five views led the pair on an adventure they never planned.

Described as part travel memoir, part comedy of errors and part story of reinvention, the book taps into the nation’s enduring fascination with campervans, escapism and the dream of starting over. It’s also a warm account of marriage, midlife change and taking risks. “The main thing we hope is that readers have a little giggle to themselves because it's light-hearted,” Andy says. “We don't take ourselves seriously and we're not scared of doing things that go wrong.”

"I think it also shows that if you’ve got an idea about whatever it might be, you should try it, because it might change your life,” adds Claire.

Their story, told in the book in their alternating voices (Andy's optimism is offset by Claire's reality checks as they navigate catastrophic sealant disasters, sandwich-fuelled arguments and questionable engineering decisions), began during the covid pandemic when Andy’s beloved Mercedes developed a fault and they struggled to get a replacement part or find anyone to fix it. “When I later looked around for another car, I couldn't find anything that really excited me,” he explains. “If I'm honest, I was a bit miffed about it. So, I thought, well, I'll just do something totally different. I got this idea that if I bought a van, I could do a professional conversion.”

In 2022, a secondhand, a slightly battered carpenter’s van caught his eye. The vision? A campervan – a diesel heater, carpeted walls and a coffee machine on the worktop. “I wasn’t entirely convinced by Andrew’s latest idea,” admits Claire. “He has lots of ideas, we have lots of the rooms of the house that are half done. But Andrew had already bought the van so I just went along with it.”

There were a fair few hiccups that came with the conversion. But after a few months, the van was on the road and the couple made their first day trip in March 2023. “I thought, because he was doing it all the time, Andrew would get fed up of (converting) it like I've had enough of this now, I'll think of another idea to do instead,” Claire chuckles. “But that never happened. Andrew was very focused on we are going out in this van, visions of travelling the world. He was very committed to it.”

Their first overnight trip was to Filey and before long the couple found themselves driving all the way to Lake Como in Italy, passing through countries including France, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. After a year on the road, with their love for campervanning firmly cemented, they upgraded the makeshift van for a new motorhome. Now, they are about to upsize to another to provide more space for their two four-legged travel companions.

Somewhere along the way, Andy and Claire started documenting their experience on YouTube. What began as a personal visual diary grew into an online community of more than 60,000 followers, who not only watch their adventures, but also share tips on van life and where to go.

“It was a really hard slog as far as getting any success from it, but we just enjoyed it,” Andy says. “We were just having fun and then it snowballed. We started to get an audience...I think people just want to see real life. So the more real that we leave it, then the more people respond to it.”

The van and YouTube journey, both agree, has changed their lives. They’ve made new friends, visited places they would never have done before, and have found a new sense of empowerment to be bold and take risks.

“We're coming up to 50 and you wouldn't normally think that you can change things around at that age. It’s a common preconception that you're too old for it,” Andy reflects. “But you can change direction and change your life. And there's all that adventure to be had.”

- It Started with a Van, by Andy and Claire Stocks, is out July 16, published by Swift Press.