Three Years, 16 Countries, and a Self-Converted VW Caddy Maxi

"But you don't actually live like that full time, do you?" ... Alice Sutton, aka @spindriftvan on Insta, is a Roamer through and through. She's lived in her self-converted VW Caddy Maxi for over three years now, travelling 16 countries and filling her time with work and play along the way. 

Now part of our Creator Crew, Alice shared with us her honest thoughts about all things vanlife and alt living.  

I’ve lived in a tiny self-converted VW Caddy Maxi, whose interior is no wider than a double bed (and not really that much longer than one either!) for over three years now, in 16 different countries. I’ve stayed in a campsite only three times. And I’ve found out what makes me happy. 

Hopefully there’s something here, whether it’s to do with nature and neurodivergence, solitude and community, work and burnout, or pure wanderlust inspiration, that can help you too.

It all started with the vague idea that it might be nice to travel after uni if only it wasn’t so expensive… and the more urgent and desperate feeling that I had to be outdoors in order not to feel utterly overwhelmed - I won’t make you listen to tales of working in intensive care units during covid, whilst doing two years of a practical degree online (there are far worse sufferings people are undergoing today), but that post-covid era is the context to this time period. 

I spent three years’ worth of savings from my photography and waitressing work on an ex-British Gas van that I found at a garage a mile from my parents’ house, after six months of trips to view second-hand vans as far apart as Scotland and Devon - the irony!

The next seven months felt like an eternity as they were spent converting my new home, which I christened Remi - I love the film Ratatouille, and the singer Remi Wolf… and wolves, but ‘Wolf’ is the name I’m saving for my first dog, so Remi it was!

The conversion was all made possible by the wages from managing a restaurant (shout out to Pizza Express in Woking and Chertsey), a huge amount of help from my engineer dad - I would draw everything and then dad would find a way to make it structurally possible, and do a huge proportion of the carpentry along the way - and my mum, who reminds me how lucky those of us who are welcomed back to live at our childhood homes are.

Spurred on by my best friend announcing she was going to leave her job in a month and set off to Europe with me, progress rapidly increased, and some cardboard prototypes became £1500 worth of raw materials and another £1500 of second-hand purchases, including a roof-rack, fridge, leisure-battery, and gas hob, until a livable van emerged. Yes, I was still carpeting the back doors and sewing my curtains in the night before our ferry booking, but hey, it turned out ok in the end!

Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, France, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany… 90 days and 12,000km later, and I knew I couldn’t go back. Well, I had to return Jess to her job and her family, and I had to leave the schengen zone as I’d used up my EU allowance, but I knew after that taste of freedom, of going exactly where I wanted, for exactly as long as I wanted, and watching the sun set and the moon rise every day and washing in rivers and climbing mountains and roaming around discovering the endless sources of stimulation and peace around me, that I couldn’t go back to life as it had been before. Except I had to.

This had effectively been a holiday, funded by hard work and the privilege of six months without paying rent, and if I was going to make ‘vanlife’ my lifestyle, I needed to find a way to make it possible within the framework of today’s society which demands a lifetime of labour and measures our success and ability to survive in terms of money. Amie McNee writes a lot about creativity, work, fulfilment, and having an intolerance for a life that doesn’t sparkle:

Vanlife had given me a sense of that magic and a life that I loved. So I worked in the camera team in the film & TV industry Monday-Friday, and waitressed at the restaurant on weekends, until a few months later I secured a digital marketing job in the festival industry, whilst on location halfway up a mountain! 

I could work the UK festival season (May-September) in-person, as a member of the media team doing photography, video, and social + advertising strategy for festivals such as Glastonbury and Boomtown, and then work the off-season (October-April) doing editing and marketing work from wherever I was in the van.

I added a shower and more shelving to Remi and set off for Europe once more, solo this time, and have called this little self-converted VW Caddy Maxi my home ever since that day. I’ve since gone fully freelance and worked for festivals in nine countries, with capacities ranging from 400 to 250,000, but come Autumn-time, I’ve always chosen to be in places that are mountainous or coastal, rural, remote, and generally as far away from any people as possible! I feel at home there. Thrilled and excited and calm and at peace. All those paradoxical emotions! 

Mountains amaze me with their size and their beauty. They interest me with their ecosystems and history. They scare and challenge me with their dangerous weather and power. And at any point whilst immersing myself in all this wonder, I can retreat to the safety, familiarity, and routine of the little safe haven that is the inside of my van, which shelters me and transports me to these places.

My neurodivergence isn’t something I’ve really discussed with anyone beyond my closest friends, family and professionals, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how relevant it is to my relationship with nature, the way vanlifers and nomads live, and the creative industry… so here goes!

People with ADHD typically need routine to stay ‘on track’, but typically get bored with said routine. That feeling of being trapped, out of control, and unstable despite trying to control everything, melts away when I’m in nature, living in my van and on the road. The mountains don’t dissolve my worries, but they help to put them into perspective. A hike doesn't make my difficulties easy, but it makes me feel capable of achieving hard things. Cold water isn’t comfortable, or instantly healing (even though sometimes the post-swim euphoria feels like it!), but it makes me deal with discomfort head-on and try to learn how to cope with it rather than panicking. 

It’s easy for people to recognise that ‘the outdoors makes you feel good’ but it is so cool to try and work out why - whilst we all share some of the same reasons like the fact that it’s our intended habitat, the fresh air is healthy, the quietness is medicine for the loudness of modern life, there are many other factors that are different for everyone.

Travel gives my brain the stimulation and dopamine it needs. And the van gives me the security and structure that keeps me calm when I want to wind down. Vanlife forces you to be more minimalistic, less materialistic, and helps you to be more mindful by making you consider what you really need. It affords you the time to be more present in the moment, and removes you from society’s expectations and rules of rent and responsibilities.* 

It allows you to live a freer life. The nature of my work means that (outside of the summer season when I madly sprint around buzzing fields of music with a camera in my hand, revelling in the sense of community and overstimulation for months until I inevitably crash in September, feeling equal parts lucky and drained), I get to choose when to work, who for, for how long, or not at all. My overloading of work in six months of the year affords me the privilege of working less, should I choose, in the other half.

And so I do.

I spend hours just looking at the views from the back of the van, days walking between different mountain huts, washing in rivers and lakes, and spotting deer, marmots, vultures, lizards and hawks along the way. I spend months following the sun south as winter threatens me with shorter, darker, colder days until I turn to my books and cups of tea and cinnamon oats and watching storms from the shelter of my van. 

It sounds like a beautifully romantic hibernation, but the actual depths of winter are stupidly cold and hard and quite claustrophobic in a tiny home without a heater! I won’t pretend that that isn’t when I turn up for hot showers at my boyfriend's and parents’ houses a week or two before I actually need to be there for Christmas.

But these idealistic days of river-bathing and star-gazing and filling my time with observing and absorbing the nature around me has given me more mental clarity than I thought my previously spiralling brain was capable of. I don’t know what I want to do with my life if I tire of constantly moving and I don’t have a big plan or set goals, but I do know exactly what the recipe for my happiness is, at this point in my life, and that is:

My little nest inside my van

The peace and empowerment that solitude affords me

Our world of mountains, and a healthy amount of hiking, climbing, swimming and moving my body outdoors

A team of supportive and inspiring festival creatives

And my close circle of friends and family who trust that I love them even though I disappear off for months on end.

*I say this with the full understanding of the privilege that my vanlife situation affords me, which not all vanlifers experience. I live in a van out of choice, as it benefits my mental health, and allows me to travel and live in a way that I could not if I paid rent in the UK. 

I can support myself because of minimal outgoings and an untraditional job, but it is not so fun and simple for the many people who live in vans out of financial necessity and a lack of affordable housing. Vanlife frees them of traditional rent, but the responsibilities of children, debt, needing to pay to pitch somewhere permanently or find work wherever they move, and a whole host of other factors, complicate things far beyond my relatively easy experience of ‘vanlife’.

Follow Alice on Instagram @spindriftvan, where she documents her honest vanlife adventures and how she lives life on the road full-time from her self-converted VW Caddy Maxi.