The Van Route exists because most van advice online is written by people who have not done the thing they are describing.
Search for how much solar you need and you will find a hundred pages saying the same vague things, none of which help when you are stood in a field on day four with a flat battery and a fridge full of warm food. Search for what a 6A hookup actually gives you and you will find contradictory answers, because most of them are guessing.
We write from a van we own, on trips we take, with numbers we measured ourselves.
Who we are
We are a small outfit based in the north of England, running a converted panel van across the UK and western Europe. Between us we have a couple of decades of professional background in vehicle operations, which is a dull sentence that mostly means we are the sort of people who weigh things and check the arithmetic rather than trusting a spec sheet.
That is why the technical posts here go further than most. When a manufacturer claims a figure, we want to see it on a meter first.
We keep our names off the site. Not because we are hiding anything, but because we would rather the work stood on the measurements than on who wrote them. Every number here is one we can show you, and if you think one is wrong we would like to hear about it.
What we cover
Van Gear. How the systems in a van actually work, and how to fit and upgrade them. Heavily weighted towards electrical, because that is where most of the confusion lives.
Festivals. Taking a van to UK festivals. Passes, fields, and going five days off grid without a generator.
Trips. Routes we have driven and the paperwork required to drive them legally.
Reviews. Kit we own and have used long enough to have changed our mind about at least once.
How we make money
The site carries display advertising and affiliate links. If you buy something through one of our links we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
That funds the site. It does not decide what we say. We recommend things we use, and we say so when something has disappointed us, including things we are paid to link to. Our testing policy and affiliate disclosure set out exactly how that works.
We do not accept payment for reviews and we do not publish sponsored posts written by anyone else.
Getting in touch
Corrections, questions and disagreements are all welcome, particularly corrections. If we have a number wrong we would rather know. Contact us here.