Meet Nicola
Why Wait for Retirement to Have Fun? Peripatetic Nhs Clinician Nicola Bought Her Nv200 Campercar From Sussex Campervans for Both Work and Leisure Time.
Working as a peripatetic NHS clinician means that Nicola spends a lot of time driving to various hospitals around Kent and Sussex. On her travels she’d noticed quite a few professionals using motorhomes and compact campers as mobile offices and a place to bed down, and it got her thinking. Could she buy a campervan to use for both work and pleasure?
She certainly didn’t fancy driving a great big motorhome around every day, but was there something more car-like that she could buy? After much research online, she visited Sussex Campervans just as Storm Ophelia was about to break. In the half-light a gleaming Starlight Silver Nissan NV200 mini camper van for sale caught Nicola’s eye, and after taking it for a drive, she decided that was exactly the right size for what she needed.
They had their compact Nissan Camper conversion built to order by Sussex Campervans and collected it in August 2015. Steve asked for no stag livery, but instead embellished the sleek Twilight Grey bodywork solely with his favourite creature – a lizard.
Why a lizard? “I like climbing with lizards – it means that I’m in a warm and dry place,” says Steve with a smile. He enjoys climbing, especially calling into Fontainebleau on the way home from the Alps, an area just outside of Paris used by many Alpine mountaineers for training. There were certainly lizards climbing alongside Steve as he tackled the famous boulders in the region.
Warm, dry weather is clearly a luxury for Steve. He recalls a more typical camping trip, which really made him appreciate the shelter of the campervan: “In North Wales I was climbing on Cader Idris, which was cold, wet and miserable. I was belayed on a ledge and watched a slug beat me up the rock!”
She says, “I am so glad I didn’t wait until I retired to join the campervan gang. Life is for living… not waiting, and it is definitely for sharing and giving, which I can do more of now with my fabulous new wheels.”
Like so many campervan owners, she has given her van a name. She says, “Ophelia is really beautifully crafted and lovely to drive. We will be going to work every day round Kent and camping out to cut down my work miles. Then it’s back to Sussex at weekends and up to Scotland for holidays.”
