5 in a T5!?
How we lived full-time in our VW T5
In 2023 when we announced that we had sold our house in the Midlands UK to live and travel full-time in Amber the Camper (our beloved VWT5), the reaction of most people was that we were either crazy, or very brave! How could a family of 5 possibly live full-time in a little van? In all honesty, our 6 months travelling full-time in Amber was both the most fun yet the hardest thing we’d ever done.
The main reason why we found it hard though, wasn’t so much living in such a small space. It was more living in such a small space during what turned out to be one of the wettest summers on record in the UK! During the whole 6-week stint travelling the UK during July and August we only experienced 4 days when it didn’t rain. Then when we travelled across Europe and settled in Central Portugal for 8 weeks to explore the area and view properties, we hit one of Portugal’s wettest autumns on record and it rained almost the whole time there. Now those who are familiar with the weather in Central Portugal will know - when it rains it RAINS!
So our first experience with full-time vanlife was rather a soggy one!
But in-between the shower-dodging, dealing with flooding in the awning, attempting to cook around a sea of bodies and the never-ending stream of wet laundry with no means of drying, we continued making memories as a family, that we will cherish for a lifetime.
For us, when the weather is on your side - full time van life is the best thing ever! We love the sense of freedom it brings and being able to just go with the flow. Planning new and exciting places to visit each day, then waking up every morning to new and beautiful scenery is just wonderful.
We loved being able to give our children all these adventures and experiences, exploring our beautiful world whilst learning more about different countries and cultures.
How did we fit everything we needed in?
We’d managed to utilise every single bit of space in our tiny home on wheels and had somehow found we had adequate room to store all we needed including enough clothes for the 5 of us, toys and books for the boys and basic living essentials like kitchen utensils and personal care items. We’d stripped so much of our previous lives back to the very bare minimum, but it gave us a deeper appreciation of what we had, and the beauty of the here and now.
Our OLPRO awning was a game-changer for us. It gave us a whole extra room for living space, and is inflatable so super-quick to put up. Without this, during the weeks of rain, our whole vanlife experience would have been a lot harder.
We also had a pop-up toilet tent in the galley of space between the van and the entrance of the awning, with a little porta-loo and plug-in shower for our bathroom.
Then at night time, the back seats of our camper roll out for a double-bed for us two, the pop-top became our two eldest’s bedroom and we created a bed out of the double front-seats and a mattress for our littlest one.
Some of the things we loved best about travelling in a smaller camper rather than a motorhome or caravan:
You can be more adventurous and ‘wild’ with the places that you explore and park up
Your van can still fit into a standard parking spot when out shopping, or visiting certain places with height-restricted car parks
Campers are considerably cheaper to run than standard motorhomes
We loved getting creative and making the best use of the tiny space we had
We were always super cosy and with our little diesel heater, we never felt cold, even as we headed into the winter months.
Some of the things we found hard:
The daily packing down and re-setting up (when your bedroom is also your living room, kitchen and car back seats) there is a lot of shuffling about going on every day
Managing bags of wet clothes/laundry when the weather was wet with little space to dry it
We missed having a decent oven to cook on. We had planned to do a lot more outdoor cooking over a fire and bbqs, however the unseasonably wet weather prevented this from happening as much as we would have liked.
Would we travel full-time in our VWT5 again?
With the boys - probably not full-time travel in her, especially now they are getting bigger. But we will most definitely be using Amber for our short-term breaks and get-aways and can’t wait to explore more of Portugal in her this year.
But when the boys are older, and have flown the nest, as a couple we would definitely do full-time van life again in our beloved VWT5!
