My wife and I had always wanted a Type 2 Bay
after spending a weekend in Newquay in 1993,
we didn’t know it at the time, but the Run To
The Sun festival was on and after spending the
weekend watching Campervans and Beetles
drive around we had been bitten by the
VW bug. However, still being an apprentice
and being on apprentice wages there wasn’t
much chance.
Fast forward 7 years to November 2000, I had
heard about a van from a lady that I worked
with and she told me that her husband who
was a gardener, had spotted it in a barn at a
large house in the Cotswolds that he had been
working at. When the gardener asked about it,
the owner told him that it had been sat there
for 2 years and that they wanted to sell it.
When I heard about it, I rang the owners and
arranged to go and see it.

It was poking out of the barn with one wheel
arch split through with rust and hanging off,
a damp fusty smell inside of it, some of the
brakes were seized, the engine was running
on 2 cylinders, there was various rust holes in
all the usual places and it generally looked very
sorry for itself. The owner agreed to get it taken
to a local garage on a trailer to let them have a
look and give me an idea of the work required
to get an MOT pass on it. After looking at the
fail MOT sheet, we agreed a price and the van
came home with us.

It was placed on my in-laws’ drive and work
started right away. I spent most of the
weekends that winter welding and replacing
parts with a view to getting the van ready for a
trip to Cornwall the following Easter. After lots
of cold, hard work, 2 weeks before Easter we
got our MOT Pass certificate and had a great
first trip.