Bertie Bus

Well, Alan announced that this is the year of the camping car, and here it is - It’s a Ford Grand Tourneo Connect that I’ve christened Bertie Bus.

After quite a bit of research, we decided on this model as it’s a 7 seater, with a lot of headroom and is very configurable with all seats folding flat, which is perfect for Alan’s day van conversion that he wants to do. He’s going to do the conversion himself, and although most of the time it will have the normal car seats fitted, he wants the ability to remove them and have a small kitchen and a seat that folds out to a bed, should we fancy camping overnight.

The other advantages of its size is that when we’re with Rach, Scott and the girls it means we can all go out in one car, and also we’ll be able to fit the bikes in it - perfect when we go to the South of France in the summer as we’re going to drive and have a bit of a road trip, so we’ll be able to take the bikes with us.

These cars are quite unusual and there aren’t many for sale, but we found 3 to look at in Tunbridge Wells, Bromley and Grays, then this morning Alan got a notification of this one in Chelmsford. So we set off quite early, taking the boys with us as we knew we’d be out most of the day. We went to Bromley first, and while we were there we had a call to say the car in Tunbridge had sold yesterday. The Bromley car was quite scratched and had a few dints, so we didn’t even take it for a drive. We then went to Chelmsford to see Bertie - he’s only done 3,000 miles so despite a few minor marks is like new. The deal was done and they’ve taken our little Merc in part exchange and we pick him up next Friday.

Alan’s really pleased and is already starting to plan the conversion, let the adventures begin!