, so this is about as small as a campervan gets. That means it's easy to drive and park, but the living space is as dinky as a doll's house. We finally found the Bongo of our dreams: low mileage; good condition; a back seat belt long enough for a child seat; a 'pop top' (lifting roof) for standing room inside; and a six-foot long 'rock'n'roll' bed (a back seat that unfolds into a bed). Once we had bought our new home-on-wheels, we booked a ferry ticket to Santander. There was no turning back. Loading the van was a moment we had eagerly anticipated. Packing light is crucial in such a compact vehicle, so we had to be ruthless. You'd be amazed how many household items){kind=link}
Why travelling with a four-month-old across Spain and Portugal in a Mazda Bongo is not as daft as it seems
When our first child was born, my wife Zoe and I were blessed not only with a beautiful little girl, but with six months of simultaneous parental leave. With so much time on our hands, we decided it would be entirely sensible to buy a campervan, strap baby Grace in a car seat, and roam Spain and Portugal for two months.
In fact, the idea of a big trip with the baby was conceived long before the baby was. Both keen travellers, Zoe and I relished the prospect of seeing the world as a family. So when Grace came along in November 2021, we applied for her passport while the ink was still wet on her birth certificate.
With one foot rocking Grace in her bouncer chair, I sat at our kitchen table in London, scrolling through used campervans for sale online. The next stage was family outings to inspect the vans in person. England’s industrial estates in winter seemed a far cry from the dreamy photos of #vanlife we’d seen on Instagram.
Having rented a campervan for a week in Scotland before Grace was born, we stuck to the model we knew: the Mazda Bongo. A people carrier popular in Japan in the 1990s, Bongos are now imported privately to the UK and converted into campervans. In other words, they are given a bed, sink, fridge, gas hobs and cupboards. They have roughly the same wheelbase as an SUV (albeit taller), so this is about as small as a campervan gets. That means it’s easy to drive and park, but the living space is as dinky as a doll’s house.