The History.

    It was in 1959 that this web weaver was introduced to a tiny-engined VW Kombi, one of the first in the UK, so we're told.

    On trips to Wales and Scotland child 1 slept over the engine and child 2 somewhat precariously on the front benchseat. The other seats were taken out so that the parents could sleep on an airbed on the floor.

	An early memory is of waking up at Abersoch (or was it Sanna?), peering around the curtain and seeing a baby rabbit running across the sand dunes.     In the overnight condensation on the unlined roof I drew pictures of the rabbit as the drips fell onto my ex-WD sleeping bag.
Be sure to click that van.

    From those far off and innocent pre-seatbelt days I still have a scar inside my bottom lip, an injury incurred when under sudden harsh braking I'd bashed into the windscreen while sitting on my mother's lap.

    It was on a night time journey in the Kombi that my dad discovered clutch-less gear changing. He'd accidentally depressed the floor-mounted dipswitch instead of the clutch and, having got the revs right anyway, sailed smoothly into the next gear with ill-suppressed chuckles.

    About four years later the family progressed to a Devon Caravette in moss green and white, XFH 651. (Oh, if only he could remember the stuff he needs to remember). Anyway, it looked very much like this one:

 

The Devon had an ordinary roof, (but lined of course), beds!, interior gas lighting and a cooker. And there was what is even now a memorable smell inside the Devon. It was probably caused by leaking gas.

    Our 1989 "modern" camper van had a similar smell. I say "modern", but we're told that these diesel engines were designed in the 60's. And in case you retro-obsessives had forgotten, the 60's were 40yrs ago.

    I recall that in 1965 (while returning home from a day's work with the Gloucestershire Trust for Nature Conservation, as it was then known), I was a front seat passenger in the Caravette as we drove cautiously along a very deeply flooded main road near Slimbridge (Glos., UK), where the Severn had burst its banks.

    We manoeuvred around several abandoned cars, but a lorry coming towards us was pushing a bow-wave so high that when it hit the front of the Caravette the wave just kept right on going, right over the top With what must be have been a particularly well sealed engine compartment we just kept chugging on, no harm done. Hmm, unless....

    By mid-1966 we'd moved to Wales. One afternoon after major gearbox repairs we walked down to Libanus near Brecon to collect the Caravette from a non-VW garage. As we drove away everything was working perfectly except....., Except that there were four reverse gears and one forward (which is quite possible, I'm told, if you replace the diff the wrong way round). That evening my dad was due to attend a conference in Manchester and had to do the journey in the garage proprietor's Ford Anglia.

	Four of us and a Labrador puppy, Sir Rowland Morgan, lived for three months of a very wet autumn in a crudely converted totally immobile Bedford bus very, very similar to this (non) starter home.
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    By then we were living in a converted Congregational chapel (you'll understand the significance of that, if you've seen the film). During the 80s I saw the film a few more times on TV and taped it and lost it. Twice! It couldn't be bought anywhere in the UK, but finally, in 2003, after I'd bought a US-only copy of the DVD and a multi-region DVD player especially to watch it, it was released on DVD in the UK too.

    In the 80's for £100 I bought from my dad a wonderful 1959 Beetle with the dreadful 6 volt electrics. Dad had hand-painted the Beetle in a deep yellow and it had a huge folding sunroof. I quickly relearned the use hand signals to compensate for dozy semaphore indicators, and to operate the reserve petrol tank lever with my left foot, but after about twelve months of ownership I killed the engine while driving too fast on the M61. To my shame I'd wrongly adjusted the valve clearances. The roof was cut off and the rest of that fine little car went for scrap.

    I bought another Beetle, a 1970-something 1303S which was pretty dreadful. Until a so-called VW specialist garage made it worse.

    In the mid-70s on a kayak trip I'd injured my right foot and by the '90s it had become really quite painful (probably because I'd become heavier). The best way to alleviate the pain was to wear open sandals with lots of arch support. So, what sort of vehicle goes well with open sandals?

    It's hard to believe, I know, but it was 2000 before Jo and I managed to get our own VW camper, a T3 hightop which for a couple of years was undoubtedly the best van in the world.

    In September 2006 we bought a VW T4 Westfalia California Freestyle but I do still sometimes wonder why we might think that we need anything more than a panel van, an awning, an airbed, a washing-up bowl and a primus stove.