A couple embark on a world tour after converting an old £16,000 van

A COUPLE have spent £16,000 converting an old van into their dream home – and have traveled the world with it.

Cazzy Magennis and boyfriend Bradley Williams, both 28, bought their van for £6,500 in June 2020 and spent three months fixing it.

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The two are full-time travelers and run a blog dreambigtravelfar.combut when Covid hit two years ago they couldn’t go abroad so they moved in with Bradley’s parents in Kent.

Over time, they decided to buy and convert a campervan that would allow them to travel around the world when restrictions were lifted.

After doing some research, the couple bought a Peugeot Boxer and stripped it down to the empty shell.

Then they turned the van, which they affectionately named Helen, into their dream home with two double beds, a kitchen, a shower, a toilet and air conditioning.

Cazy, from Belfastsaid: “We’ve been wanting to spruce up a van for a while so lockdown gave us some time to do that.

“We had never done anything like this before, so before we started we built a dresser just to see if we could do it. Once we did that, we thought we were ready to take on a van.

“We bought Helen for £6,500 and spent around £10,000 on the conversion – which is quite expensive to upgrade a van.

“We kitted it out to drive around the world so we didn’t buy any of the tech stuff second hand as we would be living in it all the time and didn’t want anything to break, so we were happy to spend it on a small one.” a bit more.”

Determined to fit as much as possible in the van, the couple used space-saving techniques to maximize space.

Cazzy said, “We watched a lot of YouTube tutorials as well as some Van conversion guides to learn how to do it all.

“Brad and I designed the van before we did anything else, so we knew what we wanted it to look like.

“We decided to have two double beds, so we opted for a fixed bed and a fold-away bed to give us more space.

“There is also a small kitchen and a bathroom with toilet and shower. We even added air conditioning which feels very luxurious.

“We also cut a window in the side of the van and redid the entire floor and then put solar panels on the roof.

“Working with the van consumed everything we were doing – we spent all day every day getting the job done, but we wanted to do it right.”

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The couple completed the conversion in September 2020 and left a month later for a six-week test trip to Scotland to see if everything worked.

Cazzy said: “Our heating system broke in the first week so in the dead of winter in Scotland we had no heating which was tough.”

They came home for Christmas and had planned to ship the van to France in late 2020, but France closed its borders so they spent three more months in Kent.

In March 2021, France reopened, so the couple shipped the van and began their world tour, which crossed 27 European countries between March and December 2021.

Then Omicron struck and the pair returned home, but now they are back on the road to complete their world tour mission.

The van was shipped to Canada and Cazzy and Bradley plan to drive it as far as South America before being shipped from Argentina to South Korea.

They hope to complete their world tour within three years.

Cazzy added, “I’m really proud of what we’ve created. Even the imperfections are nice because it doesn’t feel like store-bought. We built it from scratch and I can’t believe it was just a van once.”

Another couple converted an old DHL van into a mini house for just £2,000 with table tennis tables and climbing walls – and now it’s worth £15,000.

And a third couple spent lockdown a battered old van into a dream vacation home – with full kitchen, laundry room and king size bed.

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