Dora was bought from a car dealer close to Shaun's house. I would love to say she is from Earlsfield, but the truth is - she is a Tooting girl.
We went to South Africa in April for a holiday and this also happened to be the month between moving houses in London. This worked out perfectly for us, because we got to stay at Craig and Nicole's place for a few days, but we also managed to save that rent for that month. The rent from April then paid for Dora.
Dora, named by Lauren, is a 2003 Caucasian Vauxhall Combo Van. A 1.7 diesel engine with 200 odd thousand miles of experience. (320000km). A relatively used model, but reliable as ever, so far, and really light on fuel. She lacks a bit of power and top end speed but we are in no rush and this will ultimately save us on speeding fines.
We have panelled her and added a good amount of insulation. We have built a bed inside that had 4 lids to access underneath, where will have plastic crates with all our goodies. We have a really comfortable mattress we bought at Ikea as well. She had old trade stickers on the outside that we had to wash off and this took a good deal of elbow grease.
Other features on Dora include: Towbar with a towbar-fitted-bicycle-rack; An inverter to convert 12Volt cigarette
plug to 230V to charge laptops, batteries etc and an ipod from Shaun connected to CD player for some sweet tunes on the road.
All in all it has been good fun doing Dora's makeover and would not have been possible without Lauren's help. Lauren doesn't show up much in the photo's partly due to my incompetence in operating a camera, but very proud of you poopie.
Looking forward to departure... 5 weeks and counting