The VW California

Roll on to early 2020. Danny was planning to retire in a year and our boys were both over 18 and doing their own things. We talked about buying another camper van and started looking. Because we now lived in the Ultra Low Emission Zone a Bongo wasn’t an option. (They’d stopped making them in 2005.) We looked at VW campers and liked the California Ocean although we thought the décor rather corporate (grey on grey). We investigated conversions of VW and other vans, but found the decisions to be made overwhelming, plus they didn’t seem much cheaper and would take many months to be ready. Then lockdown happened and our search stopped.

Just before garages opened up after the first lockdown, a dealer we’d visited rang us to say he had a nice VW California if were still interested. As soon as they opened we went to look and liked it. Danny bravely test drove it. The salesperson took us on a local route which involved driving through a 6 foot 6 gap. Danny coped admirably. We decided to buy the VW California, a year old but with only 50 miles on the clock and never used. It’s lucky we did as they then became almost impossible to find and the prices shot up. We decided we could live with the Indium grey exterior and could brighten up the office-like grey interior with cushions and blankets. In June we brought it home.