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.