ZigZag Wanderer

This should have been published in October 2025 – and here we are in January. No excuses…

Time to come clean!

A look at the trip to Ireland (and a little bit of Wales) in retrospect. What did it achieve, what did it cost, and what conclusions can we draw?

The cost of such a trip is always a little nebulous to be fair. What does one include, and exclude? Are running repairs part of the cost of the trip? And how do you balance what you spend to live when you are obviously not spending that same, or more, money at home? We eat at home, and consume and heat water, and burn gas and electricity, so these costs are really just ongoing and transfer to ‘the trip’ (apart from the extortionate utility standing charges that you obviously can’t wriggle out of. Grrr).

As touched on much earlier, the van is just a bit on the small side for two humans and a mutt. The idea of it, originally, was for weekend-type use, and maybe the odd week on a campsite, hence equipping it with a drive-away awning etc. It’s fine for this kind of use, and even permits one person to sleep in the van and one in the awning (although we’ve never done that, just using the awning as an extended living area).

However, the itch for more extended ad-hoc off-site travel was far too strong. We both dislike regimented campsites (and of course the often eye-watering cost of them) and we badly miss our trips to France, Spain, Germany etc. hence this recent five-and-half weeks sortie. We had to decide where to go, of course, and my preference was always France, but M wanted to revisit Ireland, and, well, I know my place 😉.

Mind you, I’m not so sure how well the alternator incident would have gone had it happened in France…

Anyway, to the hard facts. We attained just shy of 25mpg for the trip overall.

Now, that seems low (MPG), but it has to be taken into consideration that we were laden down for a near-six-weeks trip, so very heavy (sacks of dog food, our food and water, clothing, camping gear, walking boots, extra gas canisters, pots and pans etc. etc.). The route was also very hill-heavy, covering quite a bit of mountainous terrain, so a drop in economy is to be expected. With a light foot, and empty of kit, you can expect around 29 or 30mpg out of these, so they certainly aren’t renown for their fuel efficiency. All in all, it was around expectations.

Other Costs

Nothing is cheap in Ireland, either, so food bills, eating out, snacks, coffees etc can soon burn away the financial reserves.

(All converted to Sterling where appropriate)

• Ferry: £372

• Cottage for week: £322

• Campsites (8 nights): £250

• Aires (6 nights): £72.35

• Days Out/attractions: £194.24

• Grocery Shopping: £670

• Coffees/Eating Out: £770

• Launderette: £13

Cost of alternator rebuild and new battery not included as these were going south (west, as my Grandmother would have said) anyway!

Conclusions and observations

It was a cracking trip overall.

Yes, in the first couple of weeks or so, Ireland threw its worst at us, weather-wise, which is not much fun in a small van (well, MPV) that you can’t even stand up in. The pop-top helps considerably when you can use it, but theoretically, using it equates to ‘camping behaviour’ so it can only be erected on campsites and most aire-type camper stops. Also, realistically, it shouldn’t be deployed in very windy weather for obvious reasons, so we really couldn’t put it to much use (approx 10 nights all together). So space-wise, we struggled. Three bodies in a small van, in which you either have to sit or stand while bent double, as the rain lashes down outside isn’t much fun. It got much better of course, and even though the top stayed down most of the time, we could at least venture outside!

Bedtime brings a few other issues too. We fairly quickly established a routine in which I took Her Lacyship for her final emptying of the day – me being equipped with torch and head torch mostly, as we were often parked in pretty dark spots – and M prepared the bed. We’d developed a system before the trip, whereby the sleeping bag (the huge sleeping bag!) was attached to the bed frame adjacent to the rear door, and could be rolled and unrolled quite easily, and strapped in three places in the morning, compressing it quite substantially. This was a boon, as we’d had the whole lot – pillows and all – leap out of the back when opening the tailgate on previous trips. Not ideal – particularly on wet ground. This was definitely one of the small wins of this trip! Mornings could be a bit of a trial too, with only a tiny area of floor space (while the bed is deployed) in which to perform one’s ablutions. We quickly adopted a procedure in which I rose first, transferred Her Lacyship from her bed (actually the swivelled front passenger seat) to my side of the bed, and then readied myself. I then took her for a walk/empty while M got ready and then folded the bed and rolled and stowed the bedding. We (M!) got quite proficient at it all, but it’s far from ideal.

We can, conclusively, say that Ireland is very much worth a visit, but enough time should be allowed to cover as much as possible while giving enough time to explore locally. There’s too much to see for flying visits, and to be honest, we still missed large chunks that, in hindsight, we could have taken in if we’d (I’d) planned better. We both regret moving swiftly on from Enniskillen after the alternator incident. In retrospect, we should have found a park-up locally and explored the town the next day. We also missed a few coastal sections of the WAW, which, with better planning we could have explored. Still, there are no real regrets, and we did pretty much all we set out to do (and more, in the case of Ulster – the Antrim east coast is stunning, as is the north coast across to Derry).

So, do we keep on keeping on? We still want to visit continental Europe again, but is it something we wish to tackle at our (well, my) age in such a small van? And the short answer is, no.

What does that mean? Well, it means that Zig Zag Wanderer II will shortly, regrettably, be up for sale.

It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly as we’re well aware that whatever we buy as a replacement will need work. Campers are very personal, and unless we’re extremely lucky, we will struggle to find one close to our ideal, especially on a limited budget.

One thing is for sure, it’ll be a converted panel van rather than a motorhome (been there, done that, not going there again), and preferably a relatively short one with decent headroom inside. Which probably means an L2 H2 Ducato or Boxer or Relay. Decent Sprinters, Crafters, MANs will be out of the price range, I’m afraid.

We’ll see what transpires over the winter, and then update.