Why A Campervan Road Trip Needs To Be On Your Bucket List

Last Updated on 3rd April 2021

A campervan road trip is a travel experience that I firmly believe should be on everyone’s bucket list.

It’s an adventure unlike anything else and provides you with ample opportunity to hit the open road with your favourite road trip playlist and create some truly incredible memories with your road trip buddy.

Our two campervan road trips in New Zealand and Australia were without a doubt some of the best times of my life and I wish I could relive them all over again for the first time. It’s definitely a style of travelling that I know I want to do again and again over the years to come and I’m already excited about heading to places in Europe and America in a campervan and exploring as much as we can!

If you’re still not convinced on the idea of living in a vehicle, eating noodles and pasta for almost every meal and sh*tting in public toilets, then I’ve got just the post to convince you that a campervan road trip needs to be on your bucket list 😉

“It’s a sense of freedom you don’t get with other holidays”

A campervan road trip provides you with so much freedom

Following on from the hilarious Inbetweeners quote above (which then goes on to follow with “It’s a sense of shitting in a bucket in a cupboard you don’t get with other holidays… in England… with your parents!”), a campervan road trip really is a chance to explore your freedom with regards to travel as much as possible.

All jokes aside, once you’ve hired your campervan, packed the essentials and are ready to hit the open road, there’s very few limitations on what you can achieve.

Whether you decide to venture to the most remote parts of Iceland and explore the epic scenery and landscapes there, or you stay closer to home and traverse across the English countryside for a few days, you’ll be treated to some of the most liberating and freeing experiences of your life!

You’ll learn so much about yourself (and your travel partner)

While a campervan road trip might look incredibly “Instagrammable” and you might think you’ll always be sleeping next to the beach or on top of a mountain, it can actually be quite a strenuous and tiresome experience too.

One great thing about embarking on a road trip in a campervan is that you’ll learn so much about yourself. I learned so many lessons by living in a campervan for 10 weeks and I’ve never been more grateful for an experience in my entire life.

If you’re travelling with someone else, whether it be family members, your partner or your best friend, you’ll also learn an awful lot about them too, regardless of how well you thought you knew them before! There’ll be many challenges that you’ll likely face while on the road and how you deal with them as a team will be a true testament to the strength of your relationship!

A campervan road trip teaches you to appreciate the small things in life

One thing that a campervan road trip really will teach you is how to love and appreciate the smaller things in life.

Depending on where you’re embarking on your trip, chances are that you could go days without power or electricity or even a shower!

There were numerous times during our road trips in New Zealand and Australia where we couldn’t charge our phones, use a proper toilet or freshen up for a couple of days at a time so when you’re finally able to do so, it’s sure to make you appreciate those seemingly tiny and insignificant things!

It’ll also teach you that you really don’t need as much stuff as you think you do; whether that’s with regards to the things you’ve packed for your road trip, or the food, activities and gadgets you think you need.

You’ll soon learn to love a basic diet of bread, noodles, pasta and the occasional bag of sweets and crisps like we did (of course, you don’t have to live on this at all, a campervan road trip allows you to cook whatever you want but I guarantee you’ll want to cook and eat the most basic food where possible!).

You’ll discover hidden gems and places that you never even knew existed

I think one of the main reasons why a campervan road trip needs to be on your bucket list is that you’ll get to see a truly unique side to a place.

There were many times in both NZ and Australia where we drove down a certain road that we hadn’t originally intended to and we stumbled across wild seals, penguins and we even saw a whale breach one time as we were driving along the coast in Sydney!

It’s things like that, that make travelling by campervan really amazing as you never know what you might discover next; the utterly thrilling sense of adventure is an indescribable feeling and I wholeheartedly encourage you to pursue it as often as you can!

You can make your itinerary entirely unique to your needs and wants

Travelling in a campervan allows you to tailor your road trip itinerary to perfectly suit what you want to get out of it.

You can choose how long you want to go for (the longer the better in my opinion!), where exactly you want to travel to and you also have the freedom to pack up and drive on if a place isn’t to your liking.

This is one of the things I loved the most about our road trips as there were a couple of places we visited that we just didn’t love as much as we thought we would; so we simply packed everything back into the van and moved on.

I think this really is one of the most invaluable reasons to choose a campervan holiday as you have so much flexibility and control over the itinerary. If you book an all-inclusive hotel resort in Spain for your holiday for example, you might get there and realise it’s not what you thought at all and then you’ll spend the next week being stuck somewhere that’s not quite to your taste. A road trip will allow you to move swiftly on to the next place if you’re not enjoying yourself and you can curate the perfect itinerary that suits you.

Providing that you have proper travel insurance and car insurance, your campervan road trip should be one of the best experiences of your life.

Writing this post has really made me miss van life but I sincerely hope that I’ve encouraged you guys to add a campervan road trip to your bucket list; I promise you won’t regret it!

Related posts

• Hiring a campervan in New Zealand: what you need to know
• 5 week South Island New Zealand road trip itinerary
• 1 month East Coast Australia road trip itinerary
• Making the most out of your road trip
• The ultimate road trip essentials I couldn’t live without

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This post contains mentions and pictures from a previously gifted collaboration. Please see my disclaimer for more.

Is a campervan road trip on your bucket list? If you do embark on one, make sure to tag me on Instagram or let me know in the comments or on Twitter @imjustagirl_16.