Meet the van
Walden (he answers to Wally)
Walden (Wally to his friends) is a 2015 Fiat Ducato that started life as a Knaus Boxstar conversion. He has been a perfect home to us, always giving us what we expected and more. We bought him in Germany from a man who had barely used him and kept him maintained to the millimetre; he was almost showroom-new the day we drove away. Nearly 100,000 miles (somewhere around 160,000 km) later, he is still the best small decision we ever made. We named him after a book about living deliberately in a small space. It seemed only fair.
Since then we have reshaped him piece by piece to fit our own lives rather than someone else’s. Most things fold, stack, or double as something else, though the bed, happily, stays a bed. The kitchen is small (a two-burner stove and a small fridge) but Diane produces amazing meals from it every day on little more than talent; you’ll find her recipes in our Vanlife Meals collection. Here’s what keeps us on the road.
2015
Fiat Ducato
600 W
Of solar
120 L
Fresh water
~400 Ah
Of battery
The kit that earns its keep
Nothing here is sponsored. It’s just what we have added, swapped, and come to rely on.
Kitchen
Three Burners & Refillable LPG
We swapped the exchange cylinders for refillable LPG bottles we can top up at the pump across Europe, instead of hunting for the right canister in the right country. Cooks everything we need and nothing we don’t.
Power
600W of Roof Solar
Six hundred watts of quiet up top. Enough to run the fridge, charge two laptops, and feel a little smug about it on a bright day in the mountains.
Battery
Bluetti AC200L + B230
A Bluetti AC200L paired with a B230 expansion battery, around 400 amp hours all told. It is what lets us park up off-grid for days without rationing the kettle.
Water
120L Fresh Water on Board
A week or so between fills if we are careful, rather less if we are making a lot of coffee. We make a lot of coffee.
Bathroom
The Clesana toilet
It seals each use in its own film, no black tank to empty, no chemical smell to live with. An unglamorous upgrade we would fit again in a heartbeat.
Sleep
A Fixed Queen-Size Bed
No folding, no making up a sofa each night, a permanent queen-size bed with an IKEA memory-foam mattress under a thick topper, more comfortable than most beds we have slept in at home. The one part of the build we would never change.