It’s a van life … thing

I’m known to friends and others simply at “the van man”. I live full-time in a 2016 Mercedes Sprinter that I’ve been converting since late 2024 — badly, slowly, and mostly at 11pm by headtorch. This site is where I write down what actually happens, as opposed to the version you’d get if I only posted the nice bits.

Expect van build logs (wiring diagrams that were wrong the first time, solar setups that mostly work), honest reviews of gear I’ve actually used and occasionally regretted buying, and whatever van life throws at me that seems worth writing about — parking fines, festival chaos, the odd existential crisis in a layby.

If you subscribe:

You’ll get new posts straight to your inbox as they go up, rather than hoping an algorithm remembers you exist. That’s genuinely it — no gated “premium” content, no drip-fed nonsense. Just a heads-up when something new’s been written.

It also means you can read back through everything I’ve published, from the early days of gutting an ex-British Gas van to whatever disaster I’m currently in the middle of.

Thanks for being here. It helps more than you’d think.