Why did we buy Willow Nuggins

Willow Nuggins is our Ford Nugget Plus Campervan. We purchased her in the Summer of 2022. we traveled over 5000 miles in the first few months. Looking back to why we purchased it, it might surprise you that it wasn't about camping.

Let's go back a bit further to early 2019.

<Queue the wavy lines and cut to a flashback>

On a quiet road in the heart of Kent stood a three-bedroom semi-detached house. A house that's the home to the Greenstreet family. It's a lovely location with the countryside on its doorstep. The only flaw was its size it needed to be a little bit bigger. Moving was a possibility, but in this area, there's a huge jump in price to move up in size. Extending was the next logical step. With planning permission approved, designs being drawn up, and builders being contacted, disaster struck in the guise of COVID.

COVID put the brakes on all our plans until early in 2202. Once we started again it dawned on us how much the world had changed. An extension we thought was going to cost £80k was now 120k+ and going up by the day. Finding a good builder was like hunting for gold. A decision needed to be made; it was hard, but extending seemed out of reach now.

So what now? What options do we have? We could move to areas where house prices are lower. This had one small snag, and she's called Heather. She's in school and moving her did seem a little harsh. Residing ourselves to being stuck where we are, for now, we drew up some longer-term plans. We want to move to another part of the UK where we can get more for our money in 6 years.

House hunting locations

That gave us 6 years to tour the country to search for the perfect location. At this point, we thought buying a holiday house would fit the bill, something in the area we like with mountains, lakes, and isolation. We could visit several times a year, getting familiar with the location and making sure it was what we wanted. We started looking for houses in Wales, Northern England, and Scotland, thinking these would be suitable locations. For anyone who's thinking of moving to an unfamiliar location that's hundreds of miles away. Here are some of the issues we faced.

• Where do you stay when you need to view a house?

• How do you travel up to 9 hours there and 9 hours back again?

• How quickly can you view a house when it is sold in less than fortnight?

After some careful consideration, a campervan or motorhome seemed like the ideal solution. Having hired a motorhome earlier in the year, we knew what to expect and had a basic understanding of what we needed. We knew we didn't want it to be too big so it could be used as a second vehicle. It would need to sleep three with beds long enough for me (I'm 6 ft 2 inches or 189cm).

Now comes the fun part. Research. I love to research, learning all I can about anything that's attracted my attention. We found YouTube very useful. Starting with the MMM channel, Peter Vaughan's reviews were very insightful and informative. A few videos in, we came across the Ford Nugget Plus, and it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

Now you must remember this is post COVID with the campervan sales being higher than ever. Getting a new vehicle seemed impossible, but we started the hunt anyway, calling dealers in South Wales, Essex, and our local dealer in Maidstone. Bridgend Ford had a few vehicle's coming in a few months but Haynes Ford in Maidstone had a demo vehicle in stock and available. The next day we went to view it and loved it. It even comes with 0% finance. We went home to consider it further, and the next day, we paid a deposit. Taking it home a week later. Since then, we've seen on social media buyers waiting a year or more for theirs, and ours only took a week from beginning to end.