Nice Van. Got a Story? Here’s What We’re Up To

It is a filthy night on Benone. The wind has been at it long enough that the top layer of dry sand has packed up and moved itself down to Downhill, and what we’re sitting on now is the compacted damp stuff underneath, the kind that’s been there since before anyone thought to put a car park next to it. The rain has started. It is pitch black beyond the windscreen, except for a handful of cars parked near the water’s edge, their lights catching the waves. To the right of us, two campers are parked side by side, a motorhome up front and another camper further along.

It is, in every possible sense, bliss.

Not everyone sees it that way. Tomorrow the day trippers will arrive, kids in tow, dogs on leads, and the ice cream van will be doing a roaring trade. But tonight it is ours. The dedicated ones. The ones who are not satisfied with the sofa, the same TV shows on a Friday night, the takeaway box on the coffee table, and the lumbering march upstairs to bed. Not us. We are out here hustling, writing, walking the dogs in the dark with a torch that loses its nerve after five seconds because the batteries are failing, feeling the wind in our faces and getting sand in our eyes at thirty miles an hour.

What’s missing this weekend, is the Overlander.

If you have been to Benone with any regularity, you may know the one. Old Ford Transit base, the really old version, corrugated tin sides, aluminium window frames, boxy shape, spare wheel bolted across the back. Across the top of the overhead sleeping area, in capital letters: OVERLANDER. Same on the back. There are usually two women in it. Last weekend a fella was along for the day. I have walked past it more times than I can count and every single time I want to knock on the door and ask: what is the story with this van, and how did you end up in it?

That impulse is what started all of this.

The flier

A few weeks ago, with some help from Claude Design, I put together a flier. It is not subtle. Across the top, in large letters: Nice Van. Got a Story?

Below that, a quick introduction. We are Darron and Kathy, full-time in a motorhome, touring Ireland and Northern Ireland. We are nosy about the vans parked around us. How they are funded. What brought about the decision. What the inside looks like. How their owners ended up here, at this particular point in their lives.

The flier gives two options. One, they fancy a chat, thirty minutes on camera, filmed by someone who actually lives this life too. They DM us on Instagram or they come and knock on the door. Two, they are not interested but they are welcome to follow along anyway, because this channel is the honest version of van life: the costs, the breakdowns, the weather, and all the bits people leave out of the photos.

There is, if we are being honest, a third option. Straight in the bin and not another thought given to it. That is fine too.

How it actually works

The fliers have been ordered and are on their way. In the meantime, the method is already in play. When I am out with Milo and Lucky in the morning, picking up their contributions to the local ecosystem, and I spot an interesting van or a motorhome I want to know more about, I will have a flier in my back pocket. If the owner is about, I hand it over directly. If they are not, it goes quietly on the windscreen.

If they come back to me, brilliant. We will come over with the camera gear, run them through what is involved, get them mic’d up, let them get comfortable around a stranger with a curious nature and a tendency to ask random questions, and see where it goes. No script. No agenda. Just a conversation.

And here is the thing. Last weekend, on this very beach, I got talking to a young couple. Without giving anything away, the circumstances that had brought them to van life were not a lifestyle choice. They had been pushed into it by a set of events that had nothing to do with wanderlust or social media or the dream of waking up somewhere beautiful every morning. It was just life, landing on them in a particular way, and a van turning out to be the answer. That conversation lasted twenty minutes and I could have listened for two hours.

That is the video I want to make. That is the blog post I want to write. Real people, real vans, real reasons.

Why this works for everyone

The content angle is obvious, and I will be straight about it. A video about someone else’s van, their life, their story, is shareable in a way that a video about my van rarely is. They will share it with their family. Their friends will watch it. Some of them will subscribe. It extends out in a way that the usual format simply does not.

But it is not just content extraction. If someone lets me film them, they get a proper little mini-documentary about themselves and their van, made by someone who understands the life because he is living it. That is not nothing.

So if you spot a flier on your windscreen, hello. You are in the right place. And if you fancy a chat, you know where to find us.