Introduction

It's been a dream of mine for eons to tour Europe in a motorhome and I have been an avid reader of blogs like Our Tour and Our Bumble for many years, vicariously living the lives of the respective authors as they have freely wandered the roads of the European continent, and beyond, with no fixed agenda.  

Having retired at the end of August 2021, I now have the time to live that dream.  But before we could do so we had to find a vehicle in which we could achieve it comfortably.

We've been enjoying the van life since my partner Lisa and I first got together in 2007.  At that stage she had recently acquired a converted VW T4 van called "Hilda" and we spent the following 3 summers in her touring various music festivals around the country.  Here she is at the Green Man Festival in Wales in 2010.

Then in 2011 we upgraded to our first proper motorhome, "Bertha", a Rapido 709F, and she became an intrinsic part of our family for 11 years.  With her we continued to enjoy our love of the music festival scene as well as some short UK tours to destinations as far afield as Devon, Anglesey and several Scottish trips including one to the Outer Hebrides.

But when it came to longer term travelling we just felt that at 5.5 metres Bertha wasn't really going to be big enough to give us the space to live comfortably over an extended period of time so sadly we had to say goodbye, albeit that we sold her to a friend and have already camped with her as a near neighbour several times since.  

I had spent a long time scrutinising the pros and cons of the various different models and layouts of motorhomes currently available on the market.  It's simply impossible to squeeze everything you might want into the available space but top of our list of priorities were: a fixed double bed, a reasonably large kitchen area with a gas oven, a shower, a payload of more than 500kg and a garage big enough to store a couple of bikes.  I was also predominantly looking at vans with a maximum length of 7.25m, a criteria which I ultimately broke.

What we settled on was a 7.4m Dethleffs Pulse GT T7051 on a Fiat Ducato base vehicle.  She has a 160 BHP 2.3 litre engine with a 9 speed automatic gear box.  She has all the criteria which we were looking for mentioned above as well as a 175W solar panel, a refillable LPG system, a large fridge/freezer, TV, on board Wi-Fi and an additional dropdown double bed for any visitors we might have staying with us, or for spare clothes and bedding storage when we don't.  In addition I have had air suspension fitted to the rear axle in order to achieve the desired payload and have also had a 4 metre wind out awning fitted.

To date the van still doesn't have a name on which we can both agree.  I quite like the name "Lentil" (she's a Pulse - Geddit?) but for now she'll just have to be "the van".