Our New Mazda Bongo Campervan
It needs a bit of work doing...
We bought ourselves a Mazda Bongo Friendee.
We named her “The Snug Bug”.
She is filthy. She is rusty in places a girl should not feel rusty. She has a missing door handle. A bit of her tailpipe fell off. The tent roof is mouldy. She may or may not have a few leaks. The tyres need changing soon.
Oh boy, we are in love with her.
The bumpy ride home across the fens, with its sunken, twisty roads and potholes the size of a small lake, in a rear-wheel-drive van, was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I’ve only ever driven two cars leading up to this point, and to say I was cacking myself is an understatement. I was shaking as I pulled away. By the time we got home, I was having the time of my life, singing along to my music and loving the ride. Who knew driving high up was so much fun?
We plan to restore her over time, making her our second home on beach trips with the dog. Our shelter when we travel south to see my partner’s family. Our romantic getaway vehicle. Our special place in the world, wherever we may be.
This little campervan is going to cost us a fortune and will be a labour of love, but we already knew that. We just need to work out what to fix first.
We learned to open a window.
Owning a new vehicle is always a learning curve. Owning a camper for the first time, with nobody around to show us how to do anything, even the simplest of tasks like opening the back door or the side windows, is an even bigger learning curve.
I’m not kidding, it took two of us at least five whole minutes to work out that we had to pull a latch open to the side of the window.
You would think these things would be common sense, but we appear to be lacking in that department. But what we lack in common sense, we make up for in keenness, and we have only had her a day. If only we were not so afraid of breaking her (even more than she already is!).
I’m not even going to go into the confusion about how to switch on the diesel heater…
My partner did give the outside of her a good scrub, which she thoroughly enjoyed and now looks quite shiny and lovely without all the bird shit, so we’ve made a start.
Being practical.
Being financially challenged is what ultimately made us choose a doer-upper in the first place. That, and we can hopefully decide how she will look as we fix her, so we can customise as we go along. We could never afford a finished van, so we needed one we could start working on in smaller pieces instead.
I suppose the first step would be to take her to my local garage to make her a little more road-safe, before we start thinking about trips further afield to our local Bongo specialist, Pitstop Autos, about an hour and a half away. With Christmas approaching, they are likely to be very busy. And why does everything seem to cost twice as much this time of year? But safety first and all that.
Besides, I’m terrified of breaking down on the motorway.
See you in the next “thrilling” instalment, where we will hopefully have started doing something useful.
