Built From the Road, Not a Boardroom 🛠

Wild Van Guide wasn’t created in a fancy office, by a big team of developers or by people looking at vanlife from the outside.

It’s just the two of us.

Two people who have spent most of our lives around campers, caravans, road trips, festivals, builds and life on the road.

We’ve owned them. We’ve built them. We’ve broken them. We’ve fixed them. We’ve lived in them.

And we’ve had more adventures along the way than we could ever fit into one blog post.

So, before we tell you more about Wild Van Guide, we thought we’d introduce ourselves properly.

Meet Victoria & Paul 👋

Our story actually goes back much further than the day we met.

We grew up in neighbouring villages in Lincolnshire. We went to the same school, although not at the same time, knew many of the same people and had plenty of connections without ever really knowing that our paths would eventually cross.

Life took us in completely different directions.

Then, in 2023, we crossed paths again at the Adventure Overland Show.

And then again at the brilliant Night of the Living Dubz.

Somewhere between the vans, events, conversations and shared love of this lifestyle, something clicked.

And here we are.

Victoria 🚐

My love of campervans started before I was even old enough to know what vanlife was.

I was the youngest of nine children, so my parents needed something rather bigger than the average family car.

Their solution?

A 1974 orange VW Bay Window camper.

It wasn’t bought because it was trendy. It was bought because it was big enough to get all of us from A to B!

We travelled between Brighton, where I’m originally from, and Lincolnshire, and I spent many hours sleeping in the back, colouring, playing games and eating fish and chips around that little table.

As a teenager, however, the romance wore off slightly.

Being dropped off at school in a big, noisy orange camper wasn’t exactly the height of cool when all your friends were arriving in normal cars. 😆

I was rather relieved when it was eventually replaced by a Vauxhall Nova and I could finally regain a little street cred.

But the camper bug had already got me.

My parents later bought a Bedford Bambi before eventually upgrading to a huge Fiat Autotrail motorhome. We travelled around the UK during school holidays, alongside our Caravan Club membership and Guides.

There was always a caravan in our garden.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that after leaving home in the early 2000s, I bought my first air-cooled T25.

That led to joining Club 80-90, attending meets and festivals, and eventually owning a water-cooled T25 and a T5.

Later, I bought an ex-British Gas Caddy and converted it into a tiny micro-camper, complete with a pop-top and kitchen.

It may have been small, but it packed a lot of adventure into a very small space.

Campervans have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Paul 🚚

My story started in the caravan industry long before I could drive.

I was born into the family business in the 1970s.

My family owned Jackman Caravans, where we sold everything from touring and static caravans to traditional traveller wagons. We also had VW Bay Campers, and some of my favourite childhood memories are of family holidays spent travelling together.

Once I passed my driving test, my attention temporarily shifted elsewhere.

I discovered Max Power cars and spent a few years owning and modifying cars that even ended up appearing in magazines.

Eventually, though, I found my way back to Volkswagens.

I bought a T25 and converted it into a camper after my first son was born, dreaming of creating adventures with my family.

That led to several more VW campers and a lifelong obsession with building things exactly the way I wanted them.

Eventually life changed, and I sold everything to help buy our family home.

A few years later, I founded a homeless project and needed a practical van.

Enter a Ford Transit Mk6 Jumbo.

I converted half of it into a day camper for my boys and we had countless brilliant trips away.

Before long, the camper bug had returned with a vengeance.

The Transit eventually became a full off-grid adventure camper, complete with chunky tyres, a snorkel, oversized lights and everything I needed for life away from the beaten track.

Then life threw another curveball.

After my marriage ended, the Transit became my home.

For the next two years, I lived in it full-time.

My boys and I spent weekends exploring the UK and making the kind of memories that stay with you forever.

I even bought a narrowboat and spent a year living that life too.

But the road kept calling.

From Transit to Expedition Truck 🌍

Then one evening I watched a YouTube channel called Just Escape.

Two friends were converting DAF military 4×4 trucks into incredible expedition vehicles with plans to travel the world.

Six months later, those same two guys had become friends of mine.

And I was selling everything I owned to build my own dream DAF.

In November 2019, I delivered the truck to LGF Commercials and the build began.

Four months later, just as COVID restrictions were being introduced, I collected it.

And my next chapter of full-time life on the road began.

I lived in that truck until 2024.

Some people may recognise it from Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, where Ben spent a week experiencing life on the road with me.

Others may know me as The Off-Grid Nomad, from camper shows around the UK or from following my YouTube adventures.

But for me, it was simply home.

And Then There Were Two ❤️

In 2024, I got married again.

Victoria joined me in the truck and, for a while, we lived full-time together on the road.

But eventually we realised we wanted something slightly different.

We’d always dreamed of creating an off-grid life, but finding suitable land to park up and build that life in the UK was becoming almost impossible.

So we made another big decision.

We sold up and bought a property in Bulgaria to give ourselves a base.

We’re now settled there, but the road hasn’t left us.

Quite the opposite.

We’re already looking for our next dream camper — the one that’s going to take us into the next chapter.

Because we don’t think the adventure is over.

We think it’s only changing direction.

So Where Does Wild Van Guide Come In? 🛠️

Somewhere along all those miles, builds, breakdowns, festivals, events and conversations, we kept seeing the same problem.

There is an incredible amount of knowledge in the vanlife community.

But it’s scattered everywhere.

We’d find ourselves thinking:

“Why isn’t all of this in one place?”

That question eventually became Wild Van Guide.

Not because we think we know everything.

Because we’ve spent enough time on the road to know how useful it would be if somebody brought it all together.

And if we’re going to build it, we want to build it properly — for the people who actually use it.

“We didn’t want another cold, corporate directory. We wanted a vibrant hub that feels like chatting to a mate who knows all the best spots — comprehensive, honest and accessible to everyone.” — Victoria

We’re Still Living the Adventure 🚐

That’s probably the most important thing to know about us.

We’re not sitting in an office designing a platform for a lifestyle we’ve never experienced.

We’re still out there.

We’re still looking for our next van.

We’re still travelling.

We’re still meeting people.

We’re still learning.

And we’re building Wild Van Guide because it’s the resource we wish we’d had ourselves.

So that’s us.

We’re Victoria and Paul.

And this is our next adventure.

We’d love you to come along for the ride.

✌🏼
Victoria & Paul