Two new parents decided to take their six-month-old baby and three-year-old toddler travelling for 455 days - and set off around Europe in a self-converted campervan. Ida Britzén, 39, and 40-year-old André, had Noa six years ago and then Odd arrived nearly three years later.
With Noa they had lived in a house but they wanted to go down a different route with their new child, so they bought themselves a Citroen Relay and set about converting it themselves. Soon they had their home-on-wheels decked out with bespoke furniture and cosy wooden panelling, and they set off to raise both of their children on the road.
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Ida, who uploads on Instagram as @Happilyfamilyinavan, said: "We decided in 2014, when we started to plan for a family, that we wanted to go out travelling with our future kids, in a van for two years.
"Immediately, we started to work double jobs, saving as much money as possible. The whole reason was that we wanted to spend free time with our kids, not having to work every day, and basically bond as a family.
"Also, of course both mum and dad love travelling and being on the road so the decision was easy.
"We lived permanently in our van for 455 days, from July 2019 to November 2020.
"When we left our youngest, Odd, was only six months old and our oldest, Noa, was three. We were blessed with not having to work, so we did not really face any challenges when living four persons in a small van.
"We sometimes stepped on each other's toes when patience ran out and, on rainy days, we had trouble keeping the kids motivated in such a small area."
Ida said there were dark days on their trip, like when the family dog died after eating something poisonous as they weren't able to get to a vet in time.
But she insisted that overall the huge trip was a positive and the four of them made many memories they will never forget - including "perfect sunny surf days in the Basque country" and "cold crispy winter days skiing and snowboarding in the Swedish mountains".
Ida added: "I guess we have faced the same challenges as many other vanlifers do: where to park for the night?
"Lots and lots of 'camper vans forbidden' signs pop up at more and more places around Europe. Where to fill up water? Where to empty the grey water tank/toilet tank?
"Since both our old and new van are equipped for free/wild camping, we don't really go for campings/campsites and therefore it's not always super easy to find service stations.
"Except if you are in France, they are really good at having 'Aire de camping cars' stations all around the country!"
Ida and André had planned to travel for two years but they had to cut their journey short when the pandemic hit so they decided to sell up, pool their resources, and buy a more traditional home.
Ida continued: "We did not really have a choice, after about eight months Covid-19 hit the whole world, making life on the road pretty hard.
"The borders in Europe closed and we were stuck in Åre, Sweden. When the borders re-opened in August 2020, we drove straight down to Portugal and tried to continue our journey.
"But it was just too hard, everything was still closed and we felt that we shouldn't even be there. So after 455 days on the road our planned two-year road trip was over.
"In October 2020, we made a decision: Let's use our last travel money to buy an apartment and move to Åre - a ski or mountain resort in north Sweden.
"We bought the apartment from Portugal, without seeing it in real life, scored one job each via Facetime, drove back home, sold the van and started our new life.
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"Here we ski or snowboard, hike, bike, paddle with our kids as much as we can."
But for the family, the journey is far from over because as soon as they sold the old van, they ordered a new one.
Ida added: "Straight after we sold our van we ordered a new one which arrived this spring.
"Now we are weekend warriors - with our Hymer GCS 4x4 van we go away on as many road trips as we can! We still prefer driving down south in France, surfing, but now we have 3,000km to the waves.."
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