Van Camping in My Friend's DIY (Log Cabin Style) Van Camper Conversion - Europe Road Trip Ep 1

A few weeks ago I bought this van. I'm a man with a van and my aim is to convert it into a mini camper so I can travel the world. But before I do that I wanted to meet up with a friend of mine who actually has converted his own van and he's been living out of it for the last six months. So I basically wanted to meet up with him and check out his conversion and get some inspiration for my project. So we organised a road trip. The plan was to head up to the beautiful country of But there was one slight problem. I just woke up. I was looking at the weather for Scotland and it's looking terrible. It looks like it's gonna be raining and windy the whole time and I don't want to deal with that. Anyway went on the weather app and turns out that I found somewhere free of wind and free of rain and that is Luxembourg. Yes I know it sounds pretty random but neither of us had been to Luxembourg so why not hey? Hey Jim. Hello there. You've got a big van. Yeah. Oh boy this is your house. We're leaving the van at home and we're taking this thing. Absolutely huge beast of a vehicle. Don't laugh at my duvet. It's covered in suns but I like it. The most essential part of our road trip. Portable pizza oven. Cucumbers that I grew in my garden. Look at that. Wow. Very tasty. They're really juicy actually. So in here is the water container for our long trip. So Jim's day job is, he's a potter so he makes pots. He's just showing me some of these pots that he made last week. They look flippin awesome. Click the link in the description to buy Jim's pots. People would buy them honestly. I would buy. I would buy them. Let's go. Where are we going? Luxembourg. Is that left or right? Good point actually. This is the most sketchy turning ever. That's right. With a big van everyone stops. Yeah. It feels heavy in here. Does it feel heavy when you're driving it? A little bit. You got your passport? Yeah. Can you speak French or German? Cool. We're set then. So I should probably book a crossing into France. We're booked onto the train. We're gonna be in France in three hours. Do you always drive barefoot? Not always. I'd say 50% of the time. First mess of the day. I forgot to add Jim onto the booking so we have to do something. We're at the Channel Tunnel. We're gonna go on a train soon. Does it feel like you're home now? Yeah it does actually. So I usually put this up in London just because I don't like people looking in. Is it a magnet? Yeah and it's fairly easy to take off. And you converted this van by yourself right? You didn't get any pros to help you? Yeah pretty much. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. One of the reasons I'm here with Jim on this road trip is because I want to learn from how he did his van build because I'm going to be converting my van at some point soon and I want to know some of the mistakes he made, some of the things that he's learned and yeah get a feel for how I should convert my van. Is this going to be your first time driving in Europe? Yeah. So this scene here is going to be replaced by mountains and beautiful lakes and everything incredible and stunning that you can imagine. But for now it's a car park. I woke up this morning thinking we were going to Scotland and we are in a very different place right now and over the next week I don't even know where we're gonna end up. Did you give your van a name? Loads of people commented on my video that I put a few weeks ago saying you got to give it a name but it's just a van you know it's a yeah it's a machine it's not a pet. I just didn't feel like it deserves a name you know it was just built in a factory. We're doing something called winging it. I just looked up the definition of winging it and it says doing something with very little preparation or planning or practice. We're basically just driving a van south towards Luxembourg and that's the only plan we have currently. We're going to try and find somewhere to stop tonight and sleep and then tomorrow we'll probably head into Luxembourg and then after that I don't even know. We are winging it. Sometimes the mystery and the unknown is kind of scary you know. It's often good to have a plan, a set plan when you do things. You plan and prepare before you do something and then you do it and it should go well. But we didn't do that and I'm just going to enjoy the unknown rather than being afraid of it. I'm going to enjoy the fact that we don't have a clue where we're going. We don't know where we're going to end up but for sure we're gonna see some amazing sights and do some fun things. We just don't know what those things are yet. John Lennon said something very interesting. He said life is what happens whilst you're making other plans and our other plan is going to Luxembourg and everything else that happens is just life. Very wise wisdom words. It would be a good idea for me to press the stop button before I say anything else. Not worth putting in this video. Just got from England to France to Belgium to France again. We're going to have pasta for dinner. Why did you decide to convert a van and live in it Jim? I thought it'd be quite a fun idea to convert one to use to go on trips and stuff. So I converted it and then thought I might live in it because it's cheaper than paying for rent. What van is it? It's a VW Crafter, same as the Sprinter but cheaper. Long wheelbase, high top. It's actually big enough to call the home. And you've got like all this space to sit and chill out and a king-size bed in the back. This is so cool. It's just Jim in his natural environment. You've done an epic job. I flippin love the wooden cladding with this sort of dark colour. How did you create that? I don't know if you can see but the cracks are kind of white and that's how the the cladding came. And then I used a blowtorch to burn all the planks and then a little lick of oil to just sort of bring it all out and seal it up so it doesn't rub char off everywhere. Kind of makes me think of like a log cabin. It does feel like that doesn't it? It's like a log cabin feel which is so cool. I like these, what do you call them? Cupboard doors. Yeah it's all one bit of wood. Yeah it's certainly not your standard van conversion like a default thing that you'd buy if you got someone to convert it for you. It's very original and Jim like. So we've got the the roof lights and then we've got a little light underneath the worktop. It's fused out. Oh no. Meanwhile, pasta. Oh blimey Jim we need to add pasta to that. That's ready to roll. We are very precise chefs. We measured exactly 200 grams of pasta there. We're gonna have some basil pesto to go with it. Oh so you have fuses. Oh wow look at those led strips along there that's so cool. Every day I just get so excited at around seven o'clock in the evening when I have food. Seen that James May video. Which one? Cheese. He just puts down a block of cheese and then he just says cheese and it got like millions of views on YouTube. Cheese. You see I just can't do it. Only James May can do it. Cheese. This is cheddar cheese. Pasta cooked in a van. That's cool. I think this is the first meal I've ever, oh no I made food in my van the other week. Yeah and you had pasta here. Oh yeah. You had a boiled egg here. We went to a festival in the van didn't we? Had a lovely boiled egg. So that's all your power from the solar panel. Yeah. Jim's bed is at the top up there and then I'm gonna be sleeping underneath in the bunker. How did we end up here? We're at a lake in France and only a few hours ago we were in England wondering what to do. Pretty nice though. What's the coldest night you've spent in this van? I don't know what the temperature was but my face was numb but the rest of me was quite warm under the duvets. It is really comfortable and so spacious. That is so so good. You've really got this van life thing dialed in. We're gonna watch James Bond No Time To Die before we sleep. Before we die. Before we die. Wow what a day. This is only the start of this road trip. We've got another week ahead of us. Cheers for watching part one of this road trip in my friend's van. I'll see you soon for the next episode.