VANILLA 🧡

Grey metal. Orange details. Thousands of miles. One very big adventure.

Some vehicles get you from A to B.

😎

She gets me from A to somewhere I hadn’t planned on going, usually with a camera in the passenger seat, a drone in the back, coffee somewhere within reach and another road disappearing towards the horizon.

Vanilla is my campervan.

But that description doesn’t really cover it.

She’s my hotel. My kitchen. My power station. My changing room. My cinema. My photography basecamp. My bike transporter. My road-trip headquarters.

And sometimes she’s simply somewhere to sit with the side door open, watching the world go quiet. 🌅

Welcome to Vanilla. 🧡

Vanilla started life as a 2022 Volkswagen Transporter T6.1 T28 SWB Highline.

I bought her from Leighton Vans in April 2024, and from the beginning I knew I didn’t want a campervan that looked like every other campervan parked in a field.

The base colour was perfect.

Indium Grey.

Dark enough to look purposeful. Clean enough to look modern. And absolutely perfect with the colour that would gradually become part of the whole NIX identity.

🧡 Orange.

Grey roads.

Orange sunsets.

Dark landscapes.

Warm light.

Without really planning it, the van began to look like the places I wanted to photograph.

And eventually Vanilla and NIX started speaking the same visual language.

Vanilla isn’t a show van that spends its life being polished on a driveway.

She’s built to travel.

The camper conversion includes a Skyline pop-top, a proper Rock ’n Roll camper interior and everything I need to disappear for a few days without needing much from the outside world.

That’s always been the point.

Freedom.

Not luxury for the sake of luxury.

Useful luxury.

A fridge full of food. 🥓 A heater when it’s freezing outside. 🔥 Proper electricity. ⚡ Somewhere comfortable to sleep. 🛏️ And the ability to stop somewhere beautiful and effectively say:

Yep. This’ll do.

One of the things I’ve become slightly obsessed with is Vanilla’s electrical system.

Actually, slightly may be doing some fairly heavy lifting there. 😂

I love knowing exactly what power is coming in, what’s being used and how long I could realistically stay off-grid.

The electrical system has gradually evolved into something I’m genuinely proud of.

At the heart of it is the leisure battery system, supported by Victron equipment including:

⚡ Victron SmartShunt ⚡ Victron Orion Smart 30A DC-DC charger ☀️ Victron SmartSolar MPPT 75/15 ☀️ PV Logic PS-8688 200W thin rigid-frame solar panel

That solar upgrade completely changed the way I think about the van.

My old solar panel must have been doing something, but I never really knew what.

Then it failed.

And suddenly I realised how much I wanted to understand what was actually happening on the roof.

Now I can watch the system producing power.

Sunshine comes down.

Electrons wander into Vanilla.

And somewhere inside the van I’m staring at the Victron app thinking:

136 watts! YES! 😂☀️⚡

Perfectly normal behaviour.

Probably.

For me, being off-grid isn’t about proving I can survive three weeks in a forest eating beans.

It’s about removing the dependency on campsites.

If there’s a beautiful location, I want the van to work.

The compressor fridge keeps running.

The lights work.

The Webasto diesel heater keeps the van warm.

Phones, cameras and drone batteries can be charged.

And I’ve got my Jackery power stations as another layer of portable energy when needed.

My little electrical fleet currently includes:

🔋 Jackery 240 v2 🔋 Jackery 300d 🔋 Jackery 1000 v2, nicknamed Kindle 🔋 Jackery 2000 v2, nicknamed Forge

Yes.

I’ve named the power stations.

We’re well beyond pretending this is a normal campervan now. 😂

This is where Vanilla really starts to become something more than a camper.

She’s effectively the mobile headquarters for NIX.

I’ve travelled with drones, cameras, action cameras, bikes, projectors, chargers, tripods and enough technology to make a small branch of Currys nervous. 📸🚁😂

Vanilla can become a photography basecamp in minutes.

Park somewhere beautiful.

Open the rear doors.

Get the drone ready.

Check the weather.

Fly.

Come back.

Make coffee.

Review the shots.

That’s my kind of office. 🚐📸

There is usually a flying machine somewhere in Vanilla.

My drone collection has included:

🚁 DJI Mavic 2 Pro Nemesis 🚁 DJI Mini 4 Pro Zoom 🚁 DJI Neo 2 Sneaker 🚁 DJI Spark Twitch

They’re not just gadgets I happen to own.

They’ve changed the way I see travel.

A road that looks ordinary from the driver’s seat can become extraordinary from 100 metres above it.

A coastline suddenly reveals its shape.

A mountain road becomes a thin ribbon through the landscape.

And Vanilla often becomes part of the photograph too.

A tiny grey and orange dot parked somewhere enormous.

That’s one of my favourite perspectives.

More recently Vanilla has gained another travelling companion.

My Scott Aspect eRIDE 910 e-MTB.

Or, as it’s known around here:

The combination of campervan and e-bike has opened another layer of travelling.

I can park Vanilla somewhere, unload Torque and suddenly the exploration radius expands dramatically.

Forest trails.

Canals.

Old railway lines.

Villages.

Pubs.

Viewpoints.

And the extremely important process of cycling somewhere simply because there might be cake at the other end. 🍰🚲

The van gets me to the landscape.

Torque gets me inside it.

🎬 YES, VANILLA HAS A CINEMA

Because apparently a normal television wasn’t ridiculous enough. 😂

Vanilla can turn into a little mobile cinema using my Nebula Capsule 3 Laser projector, a 50-inch screen, Fire TV and Sonos Roam speakers.

Curtains closed.

Lights down.

Film on.

Outside might be a field somewhere in Wales.

Inside feels like a tiny private cinema.

This is exactly the sort of unnecessary-but-absolutely-necessary feature I love.

🔥 COLD WEATHER? BRING IT ON

British campervan life means accepting one unavoidable fact.

At some point the weather will attempt to ruin everything.

Rain.

Wind.

Cold.

Possibly all three simultaneously.

That’s where the Webasto diesel heater becomes one of Vanilla’s greatest weapons.

Set the van around 21°C and suddenly a grim evening outside becomes something completely different.

Rain tapping on the roof.

Warm lighting.

Heating running.

Food cooking.

Music playing.

That is campervan weather.

Sometimes the bad weather actually makes the experience better.

When I’m staying somewhere longer, the van can spread out a little.

There’s the Vango Haven, the Trail Air Gazebo 3×3, the Fiamma shade and other bits of camping gear that gradually turn a single VW Transporter into a small travelling settlement. 😂

The idea is flexibility.

Quick overnight stop?

Keep it simple.

A few days somewhere?

Build the empire.

Vanilla has already taken me across Britain and Europe.

Scotland.

Cornwall.

North Wales.

Belgium.

The Netherlands.

Germany.

The Czech Republic.

France.

And plenty of places that were never really on a plan until the road started pointing that way.

During my European Drift adventure alone, the journey stretched to roughly 4,000 miles.

That is where a campervan earns its identity.

Not sitting on the drive.

Not looking perfect in photographs.

But collecting miles.

Dust.

Rain.

Fuel receipts.

Campsites.

Ferry crossings.

Unexpected stops.

Sunsets.

Stories.

And Vanilla still isn’t finished.

That’s probably the important bit.

A campervan is never really finished.

There is always another improvement.

Another idea.

Another piece of equipment.

Another moment when you find yourself saying:

Which is generally an expensive sentence. 😂💳

The latest transformation is towards a stronger swamper-style look.

My choice is the 17-inch Leighton LV4 wheel in matt black, paired with chunky all-terrain-style rubber.

The aim isn’t to turn Vanilla into an off-road expedition truck.

She’s still a road-going camper.

I just want her to look tougher, more planted and more capable.

Grey body.

Black wheels.

Chunky tyres.

Orange details.

Exactly how Vanilla should look.

The strange thing about owning a campervan is that eventually it stops feeling like you own a vehicle.

Instead, you own possibility.

Friday afternoon suddenly contains possibilities.

A free weekend contains possibilities.

A good weather forecast contains possibilities.

You start looking at maps differently.

You notice little roads.

Remote car parks.

Coastlines.

Forests.

National Parks.

Places where you could wake up and make coffee while looking at something far more interesting than the kitchen wall.

Vanilla has changed the question from:

“Where should I go on holiday?”

to:

“Where shall I go next?”

That’s a very different way of thinking.

🌅 GREY ROADS. ORANGE SUNSETS.

Maybe that’s why the NIX colour scheme feels so connected to the van.

Grey roads stretching ahead.

Dark landscapes.

Black silhouettes.

Warm orange sunsets burning through the windscreen.

Vanilla isn’t simply painted in the NIX colours.

In many ways, Vanilla helped create them.

She’s where the photography happens.

Where the journeys begin.

Where the stories are collected.

Where the equipment lives.

Where the maps get longer.

And where many of the ideas behind NIX have been dreamed up while parked somewhere with absolutely no intention of going home yet.

A 2022 Volkswagen T6.1.

A campervan.

A photography basecamp.

A bike transporter.

A solar-powered experiment.

A cinema.

A kitchen.

A bedroom.

A road-trip machine.

A ridiculously elaborate excuse to keep exploring.

And one of the best things I’ve ever bought.

There will be more modifications.

There will definitely be more gadgets.

There will almost certainly be more orange. 🧡

There are a lot more roads left.

Built for the road. Powered by curiosity.