Selling our Camper Van turned out to be as emotional as the purchase. At NHSonTheRun we really wanted Nessa to go to on to greater things, much like an adult child leaving home.
Here, we have gone through both these life events this week.
Firstly, our youngest son left us to start a fresh in Haggerston. A place so hipster that unless you have an extraordinarily manicured moustache, check shirt and knitted beanie, you will certainly never have heard of it.
He has come and gone over the years. We are hardened to it. But we are grateful for the room back. With only two spare bedrooms, it was starting to feel a little cramped here at NHSontheRun Towers. No really mate, we will miss you. We've changed locks, home phone number, and moved your furniture to the Hospice shop, but we will genuinely miss you.
Van Nessa has been the subject of soul searching and debate for too long. She has played a big role in our lives, taking us thousands of miles around the UK and Europe since the pandemic. We have enjoyed the freedom and mobility she gave. We've spent a cumulative total of several months on the move over the three years. But all good things come to an end, and that journey ended this week. There is an enormous van shaped hole in our lives, and a great deal more space on the drive.
From Italian lakes ....
...to festival fun.
My experience of buying and selling camper vans is tremendously limited. Bought one, sold one. But our experience is worth adding to the pantheon of guff about van life up here on the web.
I've alluded before to the viscerally emotional experience of buying Nessa. Due diligence and logical process went out the window to be replaced by rose tinted hippy spectacles and a gnawing need to have her. Negotiations then, were perfunctory and I am sure we exuded such an air of desperation to buy that the seller gave us £500 off just to get two doe eyed loons off his drive in Bridlington.
(Wonderful beach fire pit on the way to Skye - great memories)
(Hungarian rainbow)
Fast forward three years and now we are selling. Despite a wealth of CVW experience (campervan wanker), we found the sales process equally emotionally triggering. One might have expected better of us. But despite ourselves we wanted to find an emotional purchaser, someone who just couldn't help themselves. A psychologist coined the term limerance to describe the feeling you get when in the first flush of falling in love. When one can completely overlook someone's worst characteristics and see them instead as quirky but entirely loveable part of that person. Only months later noticing their foul breath, body odour, excessive wind and coercive behaviour for what it is. That's the person we wanted to have her, for better or worse.
We would have sold her to Jeffery Dahmer himself if he had turned up with the right cash, but ideally you want your baby to be loved not bagged up and put in the bin.
So imagine our joy when the first person to view her turned out to be the final purchaser. We will call him N because that's his initial. A man so besotted that I'm certain her imposing physical size, her body rattles, her home made carpentry, and her multiple imperfections just stood out as lovable cute little dimples on the face of his new love. Just like us. Contrast this with other viewers, who did things like question her carpentry, ask probing questions about the body work, go over the electrics tutting and lift ing the bonnet sucking air through their teeth.
We were so delighted. And even better N and his wife HS (genuinely her initials) are planning to live in her! Perhaps they will start a blog entitled N&HS on the run, so we can all enjoy her ongoing trials and tribulations? #vanlife #bestwishes #havefun #eatsleepdrift
Goodbye Nessa it's been a blast.
We sold through Quirkycampers who charged a paltry thirty six pounds. She had over 800 on line viewings, 6 viewings, offers from 3 people and sold in a week. Pretty remarkable and it shows absolutely clearly that #vanlife is very much alive and well.
So Nessa has gone and the boy has moved out.
Parents will know the happiest day is the day they are born, and the saddest, the day they go.
In complete contrast, it's well known amongst boat owners that the two happiest days are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Perhaps the same applies to camper vans? Our journey continues, thanks for being with us during the Nessa days.
Well I for one am sorry to see her go.
Agreed it will be easier to leave a car after too many wines in your kitchen, but the joy of these posts where you were mechanically out of your depth as she let you down will be a big miss.
Not so much the utter FOMO that has been my overriding emotion when reading of your adventures and travels in her. So long Nessa, but I feel that her financial dowry will just facilitate more of the same.